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What an amazing world we live in...to watch an audio slideshow introducing my website, please click here.
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For anyone unable to attend my recent Teak Talks in Chiang Mai, I have prepared a YouTube presentation of the same content. Just click on the link below and enjoy! 
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Upcoming talks in Chiang Mai If you are going to be in Chiang Mai in the near future, please come along to my TEAK TALK at the Suriwong Bookstore (25 Feb) or at Payap Lifelong Learning Center (1 March). Details below. Also, here's a link to a short interview (7 mins) about the book TEAK LORD with Pim Kemasingki of Chiang Mai CityLife magazine: https://www.facebook.com/ron.emmons.56   Now that my novel Teak Lord is flying off the shelves of bookshops and zipping sightlessly into Kindles and other e-readers, I feel it's time to offer a bit of insight to the background of the book. For that reason, I'll be posting a few short articles that go behind the scenes of the novel, beginning with Tracking the Teak Lord – Part one: the tree, the history and the characters.
 Photo by Paul Silvan on Unsplash I've been watching heated arguments recently in the UK Houses of Parliament that remind me of kids squabbling over sweets in a school playground, and I'm thinking "These are the people that run my country!"
I'm reminded of a passage in a novel I'm re-reading at the moment – News from Nowhere by William Morris. Written in 1890, it's about a man named William Guest who falls asleep and wakes up in the 21st century to find the grimy, stinky, noisy London of the Victorian era transformed into a peaceful, friendly, unpolluted utopia, where society is so enlightened and advanced that there is no need for money, policemen, prisons, or – get this – government! As Guest is walking around with Dick, his companion from the future, he says "Why, there are the Houses of Parliament! Do you still use them?" Dick answers, "Use them? Well, yes, they are used for a sort of subsidiary market, and a storage place for manure. " Let's hope that the recent antics in this hallowed building are an indicator that we're well on the way to Morris' utopia, and that eventually this building will serve its rightful purpose – for storing manure.  If you're interested in Southeast Asian history, I hope you'll check out my brief reviews of five of my favourite books that explore colonialism in Southeast Asia, which is posted on a newish website for book lovers called shepherd.com. The website seems to be making a big effort to put titles that readers will relish in front of their eyes. One small warning; the bookshop.org links don't actually link to most books!
https://shepherd.com/best-books/exploring-colonialism-in-southeast-asia  Happy writer – now a novelist! I'm happy to announce that my historical novel, Teak Lord, has been published on Amazon. The ebook is available for pre-release at just $0.99 until 10 October 2022, when it will revert to the list price of $4.99.
The paperback and hardback editions will also be released by Amazon on 10 October, while residents of Thailand can order these directly from me. Full details on the next page. I understand that for a self-published book to be successful, it needs a dozen or more positive reviews, so PLEASE help it on its way if you enjoy this gripping tale. The first of several heritage walks  Graham Jefcoate (centre) introduces the walk After almost two years of Covid-induced hibernation, a small group of intrepid individuals met to look into Chiang Mai’s history as part of the Payap University Lifelong Learning programme. The walk, led by Graham Jefcoate, focussed on the east bank of the Ping River. This was where Chiang Mai’s early farang (foreign) residents – an odd mix of missionaries and mercenaries – lived and worked in the late 19th century.  The former First Church The walk began opposite the former First Church of Chiang Mai, which is now part of the Chiang Mai Christian School. It was designed and erected in the 1880s by Marion Cheek, a medical missionary turned teak trader who was one of the city’s most colourful foreign residents. Besides this church, he was responsible for building the first sturdy bridge over the river and the city’s first hospital.
 I’m sad to hear of the death of Keith Mundy, a long-time friend and colleague, from prostate cancer in Bangkok.
I first met Keith in around 1975 when we were both living in hippy ‘squats’ in Sydenham, London – vast Victorian mansions adapted to a lifestyle radically different from their original intention, with their servants’ quarters, tennis court in the garden and so on. We were never really close (Keith was always something of a loner) and we might never have met again if we had not shared the dream of teaching English abroad as a way to an exciting life, which we then both followed. On the road from Mandalay Win Win “It’s a win-win situation;” joked motorbike rider Win Win as we shook hands on our deal, “you take picture of beautiful Burma and I buy medicine to make my mother well”.
And that’s pretty much how it turned out, apart from losing Win Win at critical moments of the trip. He had a maddening habit of forgetting when he was supposed to pick me up, leaving me fuming at times when I thought he had abandoned me altogether. We were standing on the steps of the 79 Living Hotel in Mandalay, and after some friendly haggling, we agreed that I would give Win Win eighty US dollars and he would take me everywhere I wanted to go on his motorbike for the next three days. My hitlist included the ancient cities around Mandalay, the hill station of Pyin Oo Lwin to the east and the cave temples at Po Win Taung, way out west, and Win Win knew them all, so off we went.  A collection of short stories  Image by Justin Otto, Flickr Back in the 1980s, I studied an M.A in English (Emphasis: Creative Writing) at San Francisco State University. As part of the requirement for the degree, I wrote a collection of short stories called In Transit. I recently pulled out a copy of this long-forgotten work, dusted off its yellowing pages, and have decided to share these stories on my website. They are mostly based on my own experiences and observations in Africa, South America and the USA, mixed with a heavy dose of imagination to be able to call it fiction. You’ll find these stories in a new section of my website called Short Stories, which I’ll be adding to as I dictate/transcribe the stories. I have begun with four stories, all set in Africa, and below is the first one--Beyond the End of the Road. I’ll be glad of any feedback that you would care to give. Happy reading! Lost and found in the Sahara I stood, literally, at the end of the road. The fresh tarmac ended in a neat ledge above the golden sand, and a clear blue sky pressed down on all horizons. From here, tyre tracks fanned out southwards into the vastness of the Sahara. It was only mid-morning, but already the sand burned my toes, which stuck out of my sandals. I pulled my pack under the sparse shade of a tree beside the last petrol station for 400 kilometres. All was silent, except for the rustle of leaves in a limp breeze. Every journey has its point of no return and this had to be mine. I had followed the thin vein of my dream, a red line on a Michelin map of Africa, to where the road ended and the dust began. Beyond lay mystery—the infinite spaces of the Central Sahara, the biggest sandpit in the world and ghost of lush forests in former ages. I had arrived the night before at In Salah just in time to see the bus pull out for Tamanrasset, the next stop on my route. The official told me the next bus was not for ten days. I wandered around the oasis. Mosquitoes droned above a stagnant pond surrounded by crumbling mudhuts and sagging palms. I walked out into the desert before lying down to sleep on my mat. In Salah—if God wills it. If God wills it, I will get a ride out of here tomorrow. If He wills not, then I will not either. |
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Ron Emmonsis a British writer and photographer based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Categories
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