d

In the autumn of 2006, I travelled with my soulmate Laila to East Asia for half a year. After working on a new book in Hanoi, the exotic capital of Vietnam, we went on a Grand Tour of Asia for several months. It took us to tropical Malaysia, traumatised Cambodia, post-military-coup Thailand, booming China, and simply weird Japan. Searching for the world’s last opium den, I also ventured into Burma, a Buddhist country ruled by a military junta, and Laos, which is arguably the most chilled-out place on earth. The highlight of the entire journey, perhaps even of all my gallivanting wanderjahre as a writer, was the week I spent in North Korea, the isolated crypto-communist state run by the eccentric dictator Kim Jong Il. Most of the photographs in this chapter are from the capital Pyongyang where, with two government minders at my side at all times, I soon found myself inside a gigantic and utterly surreal communist Truman Show...