This Way More Better: Stories and Photos from Asia's Back Roads

by Karen J Coates, Jerry Redfern (Photographer)

Overview

A collection of essays written through years of Asian travels by a woman who has lived there and explored its distant corners for years, this book brings to life the people who usually are seen only in photographs. Here are their stories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781934159484
Publisher:	ThingsAsian Press
Publication date:	05/15/2013
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Author Biography:
Karen Coates says “I’ve been hooked on Asia ever since I spent a semester of graduate school in Hanoi more than a dozen years ago. Somehow I managed to wheedle my husband, photojournalist Jerry Redfern, into a life on the move. I took a newspaper job in Phnom Penh in 1998, shortly after we married, and we’ve been tromping through jungles and rice paddies ever since.  I’m the Southeast Asia correspondent for Archaeology and I write a Food Culture column for The Faster Times. My work appears in publications around the world such as GlobalPost, Wall Street Journal Asia, Travel + Leisure Southeast Asia, National Geographic Books, Fodor’s Travel Guides, DAYS Japan, GEO Spain, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and many others.”

Photographer biography:
Jerry Redfern began his career as a staff photographer at newspapers in the American West, at a time when papers still had darkrooms and photographers still processed their own film. In 1998, he and his wife, Karen Coates, moved to Cambodia where Redfern shot news, features and investigative stories for Agence France-Presse, The New York Times, The Cambodia Daily and other publications. Redfern’s work has won awards from numerous journalism and art organizations, including the Fund for Investigative Journalism, Center – Review Santa Fe, and the National Press Photographers Association. Redfern’s images appear in publications around the world, includingThe New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Archaeology, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, GEO, Sierra, National Geographic Books, and many others.

 

Table of Contents

Table of contents:
Introduction
A Note on Tone and Tempo
1.     Shu’s Story - 1999
2.     This Way More Better - 1999
3.     The Plain of Jars – 1998, 2005, 2010
4.     Getting to Sophoon - 2010
5.     Picturing Cambodia – 1998, 1999, 2001
6.     Running on Empty - 2003
7.     Om’s Love – 1998, 1999
8.     Baking Bread, Making a Living - 2010
9.     The Dancer King - 2004
10.     The Splendors and Smells of Bangkok - 2004
11.     An Oven in the Jungle - 2005
12.     A Little Sip of Yunnan in Northern Thailand – 2008, 2010
13.     Eating My Way through Krabi - 2009
14.     After the Waves - 2005
15.     Conversations with Exiles - 2003
16.     Shan State Diary - 2002
17.     Inbox - 2009
18.     Sisters on the Sea - 2002
19.     Dr. Dan - 2002
20.     Timor’s Caves of Liberation - 2002
21.     DiliDiliDiliDiliDiliDiliDili - 2002
22.     And We Eat Pig - 2006
23.     The Cradle of Wildlife - 2004
24.     Journeys on a Tea Train - 2004
25.     The Sea Before - 2004
26.     Tibetan Diary - 2000
27.     Stuck in Kolkata - 2007
28.     Finding Shu - 2010
Afterword

Editorial Reviews

Journalist and blogger (Rambling Spoon) Coates weaves a series of vignettes into an album of unsung heroes. Alongside her husband, award-winning photographer Jerry Redfern, she chronicles travels from East Timor to Kolkata with stops in Cambodia and Thailand. Hmong guides Shu, a schoolgirl, and 22 year-old Duc, lead a trek into the remote villages and forests of Vietnam to research the lumber trade, which has surpassed rice as the main industry for the Hmong people. A log smuggler whose brother died during an ill-fated run, Duc inspired the book's title with his frequent use of the phrase. Another intrepid guide in Laos leads the way to the Plain of Jars: stone vessels that rival Stonehenge now sitting in a Vietnam War-era minefield. In Phnomh Penh, Coates meets Cambodia's top marathoner, training alone in track shoes with holes in them. Coates also witnessed the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, where 275,000 died on Thailand's coast, describing the scene as "Waikiki, snuffed of life". After 11 years she reunites with young Shu, now a mother with a tourist business. Redfern's lush four-color photographs convey the complexities of this troubled, yet hopeful landscape. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly