This unusual book is part travelogue, part cultural observations, part memoir. An Exotic Life takes the reader on a roller coaster ride in the footsteps of a man and his family as they live in and travel to various Asian countries before the age of mass tourism and instant communication. Personal experiences from a sink-or-swim total immersion in a truly foreign environment to meeting head-hunters on a street to being sized up by armed Afghan villagers to discussions of state policies with cabinet officials are reported by a keen observer. There is great variety in experiencing everyday occurrences in a strange country through the words of an eyewitness. From an initial decision made on a U.S. Navy ship in a hurricane, the reader goes on to experience through the eyes of the author a part of the world that has, for the most part, disappeared, never to return. That world is post-colonial Southeast, South Central and Western Asia. The cultural habits, mode of dress, attitudes and experiences of life in general in these countries during sometimes tumultuous circumstances are revealed as personal experience. It is at times exciting and revealing, funny and poignant, but always edifying.
