Word: siam
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...Siam, fish-fighting occupies much the same place that cockfighting once did in the U. S. In each of Bangkok's ten halls there are several tables about which are grouped seats for spectators. When the audience is ready, two bowls, containing the contestants, are placed on the table. If the gill covers of the fish bristle to form a ruff around its head when it spies the other, a fight seems assured. A fight is guaranteed if they charge at one another and bump their noses on the intervening glass...
...mistook the landing field and taxied into a ditch. After two days lost in making repairs the girl pushed on through driving rains to Bangkok, 3,000 miles and four days from her goal. Yet perhaps the worst of the journey lay ahead of her: the perilous passage over Siam jungle and Java swamp, the 700-mi. water jump from the Indian Archipelago to Port Darwin...
Author Maugham writes with few illusions about himself, about his writing. Says he: "This book is the record of a journey through Burma, the Shan States, Siam, and Indo-China. I am writing it for my own diversion . . . I am a professional writer, and I hope to get from it a certain amount of money and perhaps a little praise." Exotic parts have a kind of fascination for Traveler Maugham, but little glamour. His book is consequently better reading than most such records...
...kilt. Says he: "I could not fail to notice how much character it gives a woman's face to display her navel." From time to time in his travels Maugham met an outlandish character, was often made confidant of an outlandish story. In the teak forests of Siam he met a Frenchman, a gross fellow, who boasted of his recent prowess in venery, then seeing a copy of Verlaine's poems Maugham was carrying, seized it and read a favorite. "And as he read his voice broke and tears came into his eyes and ran down his face...
...recommends: Tahiti, where a month's visit is too long, a year's too short; French steamships (either the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique or the Messageries Maritimes) the native dances in Martinique; Siam, Ceylon, the lesser-known West Indies (Haiti, Dominica, Trinidad); the New Hebrides. The book is illustrated by Woodcutter Lynd Ward, author of the novel in woodcuts Gods' Man (TIME...