Sightseeing Paperback – December 12, 2005

SightseeingFull disclosure: Khun Rattawut's mother Siriwan (to whom this book was dedicated)is my good friend and once worked as my executive assistant in Thailand. This New Year she bragged to me that her son had won the Whiting Writer's Award 2010. I immediately bought his book for my Kindle and was reading it minutes later, thinking I would give her a polite comment on his work. I couldn't put the book down and finished it several hours later with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. I felt I recognized bits and pieces of several friends and acquaintances over the years in Thailand in Sightseeing's wonderful characters. His writing is compassionate and mature. Many of the stories are written from the point of view of teenagers coming to terms with a confusing adult world. And although the setting for each story is Thailand, Rattawut does not use the kind of exoticism that so many South-East Asian books go for. And his portrayal of tourists is so typical of what real Thais might think. He has a hotel proprietor who says that, tourists only want "pussy and elephant"."You give them history, temples, pagodas, traditional dance, floating markets, seafood curry, tapioca desserts, silk-weaving cooperatives, but all they really want is to to ride some hulking gray beast like a bunch of wildmen and to pant over girls and to lie there half-dead getting skin cancer on the beach during the time in between."I loved all the stories in the collection and it is hard to pick a favorite. I won't easily forget the poignant tale of a son taking his mom on one last holiday to one of the Andaman islands before she looses her sight in the title story, but my real favorite was Priscilla The Cambodian, a Cambodian refugee whose now-dead father put all their wealth in her gold teeth. The tragedy and hopelessness captured in this story is hard to imagine and even more difficult to comprehend.The Thailand Rattawut writes about is a difficult, interesting, complicated place. The stories are pretty bleak - people betray their friends, get old and have their faculties decay, or are humiliated by those stronger than them.But, this is an poignant collection of stories; I look forward to more from Khun Rattawut's pen.

“This is how we count the days. June: the Germans come to the Island – football cleats, big T-shirts, thick tongues – speaking like spitting. July: the Italians, the French, the British, the Americans. The Italians like pad thai, its affinity with spaghetti.”I love to travel. I’ve been to many foreign countries, but one country I’ve always wanted to visit was Thailand. That’s one reason I love books. In Sightseeing, the author takes us on a visit to his homeland without so much as jet lag. The book is actually a series of short stories that give the reader a real sense of Thailand today, from the perspective of the natives. The writing is crisp and the stories seem so real, you can’t help but feel this kind of learning is important. You’re not in Kansas anymore. This is Thailand.

Inhale deep and exhale slow. Seven short stories. All different but all the same. Each pull you in, the reasons will all be different but it's all the same, you're invited, gravitated instantly into a world familiar and unfamiliar at once. Lapcharoensap is a master at this craft, weaving people, perspectives, and circumstance into realities that renew your world. You're going to be walking lifetimes in anothers shoes. Fast mortorcycles, deadly cockfights, bribery, guilt, understandings, misunderstandings -- border seen and unseen. It's going to be an experience. It's going to be many experiences in fact. Lapcharoensap's collection of short stories invigorate your senses and invite you into a world that only seems different from yours. The author is able to capture the essence of memories, which exist in fragments and become anecdotes with themes that connect. Each story offers a glimpse into lives and a way of living few of us have been personally exposed to yet is universal enough to touch us on a human level. How does a child/grown person/one realize the gravity of loss? death? drugs? guilt? borders? Lapcharoensap illuminates the lines that are crossed are not really lines at all.. like his collection... everything is part of one. Each story is connected like memories, with heavy emotions, and wrought feelings. My personal favorite is Cafe Lovely where a boy/now man redefines meaning through understanding memories of his childhood, the loss of his father (and mother) and how he comes to understand the love of his brother and childhood in retrospect. "Children cease to be children once they have realized the gravity of their parents sorrow." And Lapcharoensap allows us to realize the gravity of our futility, morality, vulnerabilities, & human tendencies with all seven of these stories. This is traveling without leaving the comfort of your bed at its best.

A charming and poignant book of short stories based in Thailand. There are themes - mothers and sons, leaving home, tourists and tourism, daily life in a country where corruption is rife and the strong or rich rule without fear of opposition.The book is sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, and definitely worth reading.

I enjoyed reading Sightseeing and i’m eager to read for more of Rattawut’s writting. Keep writing and captivating us.Thanks.

Nice... so nice... it resembles many episodes of our lives, no matter if you Thai or not. It's really worthy

Great stories.

I haven't come across this kind of great book in a while. The characters portrayed in each story are unique, interesting, and believable - old, young, man or woman. The portrayals of the family life and relationship to one another and their unique circumstances are very capturing. The stories are not necessarily all upbeat but the bitter sweetness of life is so well portrayed.