Expat Tales: Wanderers, Starving Artists and Dissolutes

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  05.06.09 | 3:10 PM ET

Photo by shashiBellamkonda via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Novelist Malcolm Pryce rounds up his top 10 expat tales with heavy representation from Asia and the Pacific: novels and journals on Vietnam, Thailand, Tahiti and Sri Lanka make the cut.

Eurocentrics will appreciate Pryce’s inclusion of the Thomas Cook European Railway Timetable, but, for Asia travelers, the money quote can be found in his description of Bangkok: “The city is, in fact, a combine harvester for the ex-pat male heart.” Something tells me that line will come to mind next time I’m walking through Patpong.


Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


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