Word: traveling
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...peace. The tsunami helped extinguish a decades-old conflict between Indonesian government troops and separatist rebels of the Free Aceh Movement (known as GAM by its initials in Bahasa Indonesian), who laid down their weapons in 2005. Despite sporadic political violence, Aceh's war is over. One enterprising local travel agent even offers "guerrilla tours" to GAM's former jungle strongholds...
...Theroux makes a passionate defense of his genre when asked what role travel writing can play in a globalized world where much that was exotic seems increasingly like one giant 7-11 franchise. "That's just an illusion," Theroux claims, "because the customs, obligations, pieties that govern the people in that 7-11 can still be completely different." He still believes there's a wide field to be discovered in "dangerous places, war zones ridden with crime or plagues or terror." And he insists "the travel book should give the lie to those who think they can find everything...
...shirt, Paul Theroux looked a picture of contentment during a recent speechmaking swing through Bangkok. Two Polynesian-style tattoos designed by the 68-year-old himself curved from an exposed wrist and sockless calve. Holding court within the quaintly colonial Authors' Wing of Bangkok's Oriental Hotel, the inveterate travel writer and novelist came off less like some haughty descendant of Conrad or Maugham and more an enthusiastic traveling salesman on a first tour of the exotic East...
...release slated for early next year), the New England-bred author builds on his distinction as the contemporary writer most responsible for the West's vision of Asia. By staying low to the ground (mostly by rail) and true to his raw, first impressions - masterfully bending the dullest of travel encounters into revelations - he has etched indelible snapshots of much of the globe. His 1973 Saint Jack evoked Singapore in the swinging days before its turn toward a more staid Yuppiedom; Kowloon Tong captured the 1997 Hong Kong handover through the petty business deals and shared secrets of Chinese...
...Given the real author's prolific output, the premise hardly seems plausible. As the story line plods through various seedy revelations about India, what really brings it to life are various musings about travel writing that only Theroux - not his stumbling altar-ego, Delfont - could have come up with. "I would never have lived in this wandering way," the author confesses, "if the pleasures had not outweighed the difficulties ... I hadn't chosen my life out of a desire to confront danger but rather because I was lazy and evasive, ducking out or moving on whenever I felt like...