The House on the Klong

Extract from Description: A characteristic of Asian cities which has traditionally frustrated western visitors is their tendency to hide their treasures from public view: to contradict, at first glance, their legends of splendour. Generations of travellers have felt, on their introduction to Rangoon or Singapore or Bangkok, as Somerset Maugham did when he made a trip through the Orient in the 1920's: "They are all alike, with their straight streets, their arcades, their tramways, their dust, their blinding sun… their dense traffic, their ceaseless din. They are hard and glittering and unreal as a backcloth in a musical comedy. They give you nothing. But when you leave them it is with a f.