Chasing the Dragon is the story of a Boston Herald reporter's journey into Burma/Myanmar to interview the mysterious drug lord, Khun Sa. The features desk of an American newspaper may seem an unlikely launchpad for a journey into one of the world's most remote and dangerous regions, but for journalist Christopher Cox, it was where the story began. It would end nearly three years later in the almost inaccessible mountain fastnesses of Shan State, Burma, as Cox brought off a journalistic coup even hard-bitten foreign correspondents might envy: a rare personal audience with General Khun Sa, the man U.S. law enforcement dubbed "The Prince of Death," the man thought to control a third of the world's supply of heroin. Accompanied by an obsessed Vietnam vet who had given up everything in his single-minded search for American POWs left behind in Southeast Asia and an eccentric expat with close personal ties to the general, Cox was going to cross forbidden borders to enter a region long off-limits to Westerners. And armed with little more than a backpack stuffed with vodka, porno tapes, and cigarettes, he was going to succeed. His journey would take him deep into the Golden Triangle, a shadowy zone of banditry, drug smuggling, and the ghost armies of past wars. He would begin in the red-light district of Bangkok, with its sex bars and soaring HIV rates, then head up into northern borderlands newly discovers by package-tour groups, and finally cross a jungled no-man's-land into the world of the Shan, where tough tribesmen trade opium and precious gemstones for the arms they need to fight the Burmese.

The Golden Triangle region that joins Burma, Thailand, and Laos is one of the global centers of opiate and methamphetamine production. Opportunistic Chinese businessmen and leaders of various armed groups are largely responsible for the manufacture of these drugs. The region is defined by the apparently conflicting parallel strands of criminality and efforts at state building, a tension embodied by a group of individuals who are simultaneously local political leaders, drug entrepreneurs, and members of heavily armed militias. Ko-lin Chin, a Chinese American criminologist who was born and raised in Burma, conducted five hundred face-to-face interviews with poppy growers, drug dealers, drug users, armed group leaders, law-enforcement authorities, and other key informants in Burma, Thailand, and China. The Golden Triangle provides a lively portrait of a region in constant transition, a place where political development is intimately linked to the vagaries of the global market in illicit drugs. Chin explains the nature of opium growing, heroin and methamphetamine production, drug sales, and drug use. He also shows how government officials who live in these areas view themselves not as drug kingpins, but as people who are carrying the responsibility for local economic development on their shoulders.

The incredible story of how Chiang Kai-shek's defeated army came to dominate the Asian drug trade After their defeat in China's civil war, remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's armies took refuge in Burma before being driven into Thailand and Laos. Based on recently declassified government documents, The Secret Army: Chiang Kai-shek and the Drug Warlords of the Golden Triangle reveals the shocking true story of what happened after the Chinese Nationalists lost the revolution. Supported by Taiwan, the CIA, and the Thai government, this former army reinvented itself as an anti-communist mercenary force, fighting into the 1980s, before eventually becoming the drug lords who made the Golden Triangle a household name. Offering a previously unseen look inside the post-war workings of the Kuomintang army, historians Richard Gibson and Wen-hua Chen explore how this fallen military group dominated the drug trade in Southeast Asia for more than three decades. Based on recently released, previously classified government documents Draws on interviews with active participants, as well as a variety of Chinese, Thai, and Burmese written sources Includes unique insights drawn from author Richard Gibson's personal experiences with anti-narcotics trafficking efforts in the Golden Triangle A fascinating look at an untold piece of Chinese—and drug-running—history, The Secret Army offers a revealing look into the history of one of the most infamous drug cartels in Asia.

For the half million people living in the remote mountains of Northern Thailand, survival is dependent upon the forest. This study, based on extended field research, identifies more than 1,000 plant species, with particular emphasis on medicinal plants and their uses. This book is only available through print on demand. All interior art is black and white.

A provocative novel by the most influential living French writer, Recollections of the Golden Triangle is a tour de force: a literary thriller constructed of wildly diverse elements--fantasy and dream, erotic invention, and the stuff of popular fiction and movies taken to its farthest limits. A secret door that is opened slightly by an electronic device, a beautiful hanged factory girl, a pale young aristocrat whose blood apparently nourishes his vampiric lover, the evil Dr. Morgan who conducts his experiments in "tertiary dream behavior," the beautiful and sinister women from the world of horror films, and the investigating police, who are not all what they seem to be, are just some of the ingredients of this intriguing new novel by the French master of the intellectual thriller, whose novels and films have effectively changed the way we can look at the "real" world today. Recollections of the Golden Triangle challenges the reader to find his own meaning in its descriptions, clues, and contradictions, and to play detective by assembling the pieces of the fictional puzzle.

For centuries the mysterious region of Southeast Asia known as the Golden Triangle has exerted a powerful hold over the Western imagination. Today it continues to figure in world news because of the infamous traffic in opium and heroin. Yet this fascinating area is also of considerable interest for a different reason: within it live six culturally distinct peoples - the Karen, Hmong, Mien, Lahu, Akha and Lisu - struggling to maintain the integrity of their beliefs and way of life against all the pressures of the rapidly changing society around them.

"A rousing caper for Pollifax fans." BOOKLIST Although Mrs. Pollifax is determined to give up spying for good, she can't help but agree to carry a small object to an agent in Thailand, and get one in return. The moment she lands, however, Mrs. Pollifax is horrified to find her contact dead and her husband kidnapped. The next thing she knows, she's tramping through the ominous Thai countryside, led by a curious fellow who may be trying to help her find her husband. Or he may have other, more sinister plans....