At its peak, the British Empire owned territories around the world on almost every continent from Africa to Asia to Australia. I’m sure most of us have been to countries that made up this empire. At its core were illustrious cities like Bombay, Hong...

It is a good thing I didn’t read this book before I went to Myanmar (Burma). If I did, I probably wouldn’t have had such a carefree mindset. Finding George Orwell in Burma is an American writer’s attempt in 2003 to trace Orwell’s life in the country...

Twenty years ago, Indian writer Arundhati Roy wrote a novel that ended up winning a Booker Prize. In 2017, she released her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which sounds like a cheery, whimsical work, but that is not the type of...

As one of Hong Kong’s most well-known mountains, Lion Rock is regarded as a symbol of Hong Kong’s working-class resilience as it developed into a prosperous financial hub in the latter half of the 20th-century. This idea originated from a local...

  The Chao Phraya River curves along Bangkok, bisecting the older, western part of Thonburi from the more populated and bustling eastern part. If you plan to go to places like the Grand Palace, Wat Pho, Wat Arun or Khao San Road, you’ll...

Green Island is a novel about the life of a Taiwanese man imprisoned after the 228 Tragedy in 1948 and his family as they endure Taiwan’s decades of repressive martial law before it became a democracy in the late 1980s. I read Green Island earlier...

Kyoto is a city full of historic temples, but it also has several imperial and shogunate castles right in the middle of town. The most well-known one is Nijo Castle, which served as the shogun’s residence after it was built in 1603, and then became...