Sightseeing

Rattawut Lapcharoensap is a Thai-American writer who grew up in Bangkok, and the seven short stories in this collection are all set in contemporary Thailand. As usual when it comes to such collections, I liked some of the stories more than others, but all in all it is a great collection!

One of the best stories, in my opinion, is At The Café Lovely, which is about two young brothers who try to find their way after the death of their father. The relationship of the brothers is portrayed in a humane, realistic way that is emotional and heartbreaking without reverting to clichés.
Another remarkable story is Draft Day which deals with the drafting of young men to the military and the effect it has on their friendships and prospects. It show more highlights the consequences of corruption and financial inequality in Thailand, and I reflected on it for a long time. This story was like a gut punch.

One I did not enjoy that much was Don't Let Me Die In This Place about an elderly British man who moves to Bangkok so that his son and Thai daughter-in-law can care for him. I found it hard to feel empathy for the narrator who is determined to see everything in a negative light, although there is some development towards the end.

The short stories show different aspects of life in Thailand behind the façades and images that tourists are allowed to - and like to - see: Fraud and deceit, hostility toward Cambodian refugees, the effects of tourism, the lack of perspectives for many people. Most stories also deal with family relationships, especially between parents and their children.
Reading this collection was very worthwhile and I would certainly like to read more by this author, but it looks like he hasn't really written anything else since publishing this. show less

'A country that is dynamic and corrupt, full of pride and passion'
By sally tarbox on 2 October 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Probably *3.5 for this selection of short stories set in the author's native Thailand but written in English.
I was particularly struck by 'Draft Day' where two young friends attend the draft lottery, where those who make it through the selection process must wait to see whether they get a red ball or black (exemption.) As they root for each other, the wealthy narrator observes "What Wichu didn't know then was that he needed my prayers more than I needed his" - his parents have bought him a guaranteed black with a bribe. An end to childhood innocence.
Also 'Priscilla the Cambodian', where a playmate suffers Thai show more anti-immigrant prejudice.
In the title story, a young man is accompanying his mother on a first and last holiday as she waits to go blind...
Others feature an elderly disabled American ex-pat living in a difficult relationship with his son and Thai wife; a young Thai man falling for a tourist; and a teen girl whose father is caught up in the murky world of cockfighting...
Some packed quite a punch- I couldn't put it down. show less

A collection of stories exploring life in modern Thailand via a series of key topics that might be expected to interest foreign readers — tourism, elephants, mopeds, relations between Thais and foreigners, Cambodian migrants, poverty, petty corruption, home-working, cockfighting, sex-workers. Quite nicely done and very worthy, but there wasn’t anything that really grabbed me. All the stories are essentially about parent-child relationships, mostly from the point of view of a teenage son (one story reverses this by taking the point of view of an elderly father, and one has a teenage girl POV character who is basically the same as the boys, except that she obsesses about breasts from the opposite end).

Be on the lookout for writer Rattawut Lapcharoensap. His recent collection of stories, titled Sightseeing, is a piercing work that finds a very comfortable balance between the foreignness of Thailand (to an american farang like myself) and the all-too-familiar human condition.

Though primarily a collection of coming-of-age stories, Lapcharoensap very cleverly approaches his writing with effortless characterization from various social backgrounds and viewpoints. Whether female, male, young, aged or foreign (American, Thai, Cambodian) all of his characters equally face the unattractive prospect of receiving life’s kicks to the teeth well before they’re good and ready.

Perhaps Lapcharoensap may be characterised as the Thai-American show more equivalent of Larry David, as his characters are often placed in dangerously uncomfortable situations with only their wit to provide comfort. Situations involving elephants and pet pigs named Clint Eastwood, finding “luck” in avoiding the Thai military draft, an american’s involuntary assisted living in Thailand, and the extremes taken to quit the local cockfighting circuit, these stories are both sadly moving yet familiar; thus, they’re nostalgically comforting, as we can relate with our own colorful and cultural equivalents. Sightseeing is aptly named, as it truly is an eye-opening account of the both the foreign and familiar. show less

Rattawat Lapcharoensap writes with both compassion and maturity and his Sightseeing is a wonderfully self-assured collection of short stories from a first time writer.

All but one of the stories are written from the point of view of teenagers coming to terms with a confusing adult world. And although the setting for each story is Thailand, Lapcharoensap steers well clear of the kind of exoticism that bedevils most South-East Asian literature. Indeed, the Thailand of the tourist brochure is roundly mocked in the opening story Farangs. Says a hotel proprietor, tourists only want "pussy and elephant":

"You give them history, temples, pagadas, traditional dance, floating markets, seafood curry, tapioca desserts, silk-weaving cooperatives, show more but all they really want is to to ride some hulking gray beast like a bunch of wildmen and to pant over girtls and to lie there half-dead geting skin cancer on the beach during the time in between."

There's a gritty social realism in his choice of settings: a down-market brothel, a smouldering rubbish-dump, a refugee shanty, cockpits, with many of the characters living on the edge in economic terms. Lapcharoensap has his characters speak in a street-smart, venacular language which eliminates the distance still further.

In a collection this strong, it's hard to pick favourites. But I won't easily forget the poignant tale of a son taking his mother on one last holiday before she looses her sight in the title story, and the agonising betrayal of a childhood friendship in Draft. And the last story in the book, Cockfighter - at 80 pages more a novella than a short story - is a real heart-stopper.

I've not felt this enthusiastic about a short story collection since Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies . show less

A collection of short stories by a Thai author. This means, crucially, that you're getting stories about Thailand as a complex and real place, not the magical land of golden temples and hookers often described by farang writers. Rattawut is concerned with the regular Thai person, not particularly wealthy, often in a perpetual balancing act just above poverty. He writes about a young boy's relationship with a Cambodian refugee whose now-dead father put all their wealth in her gold teeth; he writes about a young man whose mother is on the verge of going blind; he writes about a teenaged girl whose poor father is losing his cockfights to a rich bully, and the various consequences this has on their family; he writes about a wealthy teenaged show more boy dodging the draft while his poorer friend cannot; and so on. In some stories, the plot itself is not particularly innovative. The entire emotional arc of the draft-dodging story was predictable, for instance. But the way Rattawut writes allows you to really get into his characters' heads and understand their various decisions, so they are not distant or simple stories, and the Thailand he writes about is a difficult, interesting, complicated place. Definitely recommended, especially for readers of realist fiction or those interested in Thailand/SE Asia as depicted by a local. show less

An interesting collection of stories about various people's lives in Thailand. The writing's solid and the personas of the characters fairly vivid. That being said, my enjoyment was limited by the fact that it's a bleak and largely miserable set of stories, with only scarce moments of happiness. All the characters are depicted trapped in harsh circumstances and eking limited pleasure out of meagre opportunities. I don't enjoy those stories when set in the West, no more do I appreciate them set in Thailand. It's not really a setting issue, because it's perfectly possible to write cheerful stories about life in difficult circumstances (see: any historical novel ever), it's an authorial decision. I'd have preferred, if not an artificially show more cheerful collection, at least a broader range of moods.

However, that's a matter of taste, not an issue of quality. The book itself is fine. show less