Searching for My Shangri La is the author’s second of book on the region, after Midlife Meanderings in SE Asia. It is about continuing an independent and unstructured journey through this fascinating part of the world on a shoe-string budget.


Largely using public transport, the author travelled from southern Thailand to Malaysia to explore the islands of Langkawi and Penang. A boat then took him across the Straits of Malacca to Medan, the capital of Indonesia, which is to the north of the large island state of Sumatra. After an exhilarating, and often uncomfortable, journey southwards, he found himself opposite Singapore and needed to take a ferry across to this city-state to continue his journey by air to Hong Kong. After a thorough exploration of this former British Colonial outpost, a fast ferry took him on to Macau. A couple of days are then spent in this exhilarating former Portuguese colony preparing to explore southwest China and a comprehensive voyage of discovery of the Yunnan Province to the edge of the Himalayas. Returning to Thailand meant undertaking a bizarre journey down the Mekong, flanked by Burma and Laos. Once reacquainted with northern Thailand there were a few days before it was time to head to Bangkok for the flight back to the UK.