Here’s a list of all the books I read in 2015. (r) indicates a repeat reading. (*) indicates a book that had an especial impact on me. A lot of my reading last year was prompted by my trip through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Truyen Kieu, Vietnam’s national...
When Lee Kuan Yew died recently, part of his legacy was a new form of government. Long before China adopted free market reforms, Lee was the first to demonstrate that capitalism and democracy do not necessarily go hand in hand. In Singapore he created a state in which...
Vietnam’s coastline runs almost 3,500km from north to south, and for much of its history it’s been split into distinct entities. One of the achievements of the Nguyen Dynasty, which came to power in 1802, was that it managed to unite Vietnam in a single...
On our first weekend in Hanoi we drove to Tam Coc, an area south of the city dominated by enormous limestone karsts. The land they spring from is almost entirely flat, and this only makes them more dramatic; there’s no sense of gradual rise, of hills building up...
The streets in Hanoi are not only thoroughfares but also the place where much of the city’s living is done. Much of their noise and activity can be attributed to this: very little seems to happen in private. One of our first challenges when we arrived was to...
