Journalist Luke Williams travels to Asia to escape hard drugs, high rents and cold nights - he finds adventure, temples, and for the first time - people actually weirder than him: Westerners in Asia. Or are they? Extreme Asia is about Westerners who go to Asia for the things they can't find at home - riches, wives, ladyboys, cheap living and even cheaper drugs, cults, spices, mountains, tropical beaches, 'self-esteem' necklaces, and ascended masters. Luke fully immerses himself in these environments, going far beyond reportage, while aspects of his own history - his dreams, disappointments, urges, and his inherited struggle with mental illness - begin to catch up with him.
In this searingly honest book, Luke invites you into his headspace as he travels all over Asia. He spends a month working as a prostitute in Pattaya, eats snake heart in Vietnam, and consults an American medium in Ubud, while tracing the history of Westerners - from the Greeks to Marco Polo and the colonialists - and their extreme experiences in the east. Ultimately, Luke is confronted by what is, and what was, and his own footprint upon it all.
