Influenced and intrigued as he was by all things Asian, and wanting to escape the monotony of America’s first planned community, when Carleton Cole’s path took him to Thailand, it came as no surprise to him. For years he had been fascinated by Thailand, reading everything he could about the country and even taking a menial job in a local Thai restaurant to rub shoulders with Thais exiled in the American Midwest.

Confronted by the seriously limited employment options open to the holder of a liberal-arts bachelor’s degree, he set about transplanting himself to what would soon become his adopted home, and a base for exploring the rest of Asia. An atypically quiet American who didn’t fit into US society, Carleton Cole has found his place in the Land of Smiles, and has developed and maintained a passion for things Thai and Asian.




Introduction

I am a quiet American who has come to love his adopted homeland, the quintessentially Asian kingdom of Thailand.

The historical origins of Thailand’s people lie in the hills of southern China. Its religion comes from the plains of northern India. It lies at the heart and cultural crossroads

of both Asia and Southeast Asia, not only reflecting the influences of Asia’s two magnates—China and India—but of all of its neighbours, in the true Thai tradition of tolerance.

Thailand features Burmese temples and traditions in the north, cultural affinity with Laos in the northeast, centuries-old stone temples plus linguistic and religious borrowing from Cambodia in Isaan and elsewhere, and the Muslim tradition of Malaya in Thailand’s Deep South. A vibrant history of uninterrupted independence has, however,always ensured the survival and advancement of things uniquely Thai.With such a vibrant and cultural history, it was no wonder I knew that I had found a home away from home even before I got there...More

Reviews
A cultural guide
Reviewed by BERNARD TRINK
April 17, 2009

Bangkok Post
Expats, not to be confused with refugees who go elsewhere to get out of harm’s way and mean to return when the danger has passed, or fugitives who escape the wheels of justice, leave their homelands because they feel that the grass is greener in another country they have in mind. Some then realise they made a mistake and come back. Others feel they were right to move.In either case, a number pen books justifying themselves. Readers may accept their reasoning or may not. Thinking: Under the circumstances he or she laid out, I would have done the same. Or, he’s too sensitive. I wouldn’t have over-reacted like that. This reviewer can well see, after perusing “Destination: Asia,” why there would be both reactions.
As the book is rather short at 200 pages, the author needn’t have spent nearly a third of it on his jobs and moving about in the US the first quarter-century of his life. He attended a Christian Science college, his parents divorced, there were things about America he didn’t like. Getting out obsessed him. A school trip to Asia fascinated him. Delicious food, exotic smells, kind people. This was where he wanted to be.
So
it was that Carleton Cole arrived in Thailand in 1995, joined The Nation newspaper as a copywriter and after a while wrote travel pieces for them. Most are reprinted here. He ought to have focused on the articles and only mentioned his early life - he’s 38 now - in passing. The States has many nice people. In time he would certainly have met a number.

 

The question has long been asked whether visitors to the Land of Smiles mostly come for its vibrant nightlife or its temples. To the author, the answer is a no-brainier. The temples, of course. He ignores the multitude of watering holes, as if they don’t exist. “Destination: Asia” is about cultural destinations in this part of the world, emphasising those of Cambodia…..More


Finding your Siamese twin
January 23, 2009
Reviewed by Paul Dorsey

The Nation

The titleof this debut book from former Nation sub-editor Carleton Cole might lead shoppers to think it’s a travel guide, but despite its visits to many Eastern landmarks, this is very much one man’s memoir. Why someone as young as Cole wants to write a memoir is a puzzle, even with as much to share as he has. Its real value as a “guide” will be in helping other young Westerners who are thinking about transplanting their roots in oriental soil.

The travel accounts are a bit madcap - impressionist glimpses of Brunei, Tibet, China, Laos, Cambodia and of course Thailand, plus a sprint through India and Japan’s most beckoning destinations.

The reports are all positive and the main focus on faith, with temple visits aplenty. Cole was raised a Christian Scientist, and its gentle tolerance is the bright light in his personal character as well as his writing. It certainly helps explain why he’s “an atypically quiet American”, as is noted on the book’s cover (a truthful blurb, this one, as his friends and colleagues can attest).
But the kid from Columbia, Maryland, was a Thai and a Buddhist waiting to be born. He saw a star in the East early on and, unable to dissolve into the great American melting pot, began stashing aside income for a planned year’s sojourn teaching in Thailand.A puddle he was mopping up on the floor of a supermarket somewhere in the chilly US Midwest formed itself into Thailand’s outline… More
Off the Shelf
Reviewed by James Eckhardt
January 10-16, 2009
Phuket Gazette
Go East, your man…..
I moved to Abu Dhabi five weeks ago to work on the editorial desk of a new English-language newspaper called The National.When my colleagues in the press room discover that I lived in Thailand for 30 years, they invariably ask, “Do you speak Thai?” To which I respond, “I learned Thai the hard way. I married one. Then I had four kids who reinforced the lesson.”
Carleton Cole learned Thai the hard way too, working as the first foreign busboy in a Thai restaurant in St Louis, Missouri.He would go on to live in Thailand, marry a Thai, land a job at The Nation, even sharing a desk with me for some time.

I read his book in manuscript form and contributed this blurb, “[The author] romps through Thailand, Cambodia, India, Ladakh, Sikkim, Nepal, Japan, South Korea, Brunei and Laos. This reader happily traipsed along. Cole’s sharp eye and gentle humour make for travel writing at its best.”

I’ve read a lot of Asian travel books, but Cole’s has a unique feature: he tells you from childhood how he developed his fascination with Asia.

He used to hang out with an Indian friend who gave him his first taste of Asia through its food, art and music.

As a college student, he took vacations by train through China and Russia.

He collected a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) degree in San Francisco and then took a temporary job as an English teacher in Bangkok. At this point, he had read everything he could about Thailand.

“More than anything I could have done to have found Thailand, it seemed that the country had found me,” he writes. “Somewhere along the line, Thailand simply struck me as the most intriguing and most practical option for indefinitely enjoying a taste of classical Asia, while still featuring an air of mystery, and offering modernity too.”

He got his passport in 1995. “Little did I know that a decade later, the pages in my passport would be filled with the standards of Thai bureaucracy: non-immigrant visas, police reports on the passport holder’s address as registered with the police, and re-entry stamps and visas for several countries.”

Through his reading about and working with Thai people Cole felt, “I had come to feel at ease with the hat trick of mai pen rai (never mind) jai yen (cool heart) and kwam sanuk (fun).”

In Bangkok, he had fun right from the start. Formerly a teetotaler, he relaxed with beer and gin and tonics with his fellow teachers after class.

His rich students were attracted to him and soon he was patrolling around the streets in their BMWs. Here he met his future wife Sutamon “Mai” Lertmanorat.

“We shared an Asian-style outlook on accepting things that can’t be changed, and rejoicing in our time together, appreciating each moment to the fullest,” he writes. “At all times, she had a Buddhist air about her, respect for the religion and philosophy instilled in her at a young age. As in the case with many Asians, she put her family first when making important decisions in life. She did not take frustrations out on others, and instead soldiered on as best she could. For this, I greatly admired her.”

Their romance survived a two-year absence at graduate school back in the US and Mai would prove to be an ideal companion in his travels around Asia.

Publishing three stories about Cambodian culture in The Nation, Cole was offered a job in 2000.

The last sixty pages form the meat of the book, namely, his travels around Asia.

Cole takes a long time to reach this point with some aimless meandering and the occasional turn of phrase, but overall, his love for Asia shines through and you’re happy to take the journey with him.

 

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