A Beachcomber in the Orient – Annotated Edition

A Beachcomber in the Orient (Annotated): A travel adventure across Asia in the 1920’s

Discover the Orient of the roaring 20’s beyond the safe world of gentleman travellers, and let Foster take you on a rollicking adventure.

In the early 1920’s American journalist Harry L. Foster embarked on a voyage to Asia with the intention of exploring it in a comfortable and leisurely manner. After being mugged in a Saigon opium den, however, the journey turned out to be anything but.

What followed was a rollicking adventure that essentially turned Foster into a “proto-backpacker”. For him, seeing Asia meant riding freight trains, staying in hovels, and paying his way by working as a honky-tonk pianist in bars for colonial sailors, layabouts and chancers.

In the uproarious book that resulted, Foster’s eye for detail and pithy style brings to life a world—often still recognisable to the modern traveller—that would soon be transformed by war, decolonisation and economic boom.

This annotated edition includes all the original illustrations, a new introduction, a map, and detailed notes. A limited number of changes have also been made to correct some eccentric punctuation, typos and odd spellings in the text of the first edition.