The Straits of Malacca, Siam and Indo-China

A biographical account of travels in South East Asia by one of the great 19th-century documentary photographers, who spent ten years in the mammoth task of creating a photographic record of the Orient.

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First published in 1875, this is the first part of a volume which also includes travels in China (to be reissued separately) and comprises fourteen chapters - some 550 pages in all. The six chapters of the present volume describe John Thomson's travels in Malaya - from Penang to Singapore - Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam. Thomson's observations are acute, his style an easy one and the whole makes very agreeable and entertaining reading. Judith Blamer, who contributes the Introduction, focuses the reader's attention on Thomson's role as one of the very first photographers of the region; indeed, during his visit to Bangkok he was summoned to the Royal Palace to take the King's portrait and the portraits of other members of the Royal Family.