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HAROLD STEPHENS, NOVELEST, TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE WRITER, YACHTSMAN, WORLD TRAVELER, EXPLORER
Writer and author Harold Stephens takes the road less traveled in exotic foreign lands. He is one person who has lived his dream of exploring the world's most remote corners -- in search of adventure for adventure's sake, experiencing life on his own terms, and writing about it. This wonderful writer shares his exciting experiences with his readers in more than two-dozen travel and adventure books, novels, biographies and in other media as television and video scripts. This includes an historical 10-hour TV script on King Narai of Siam.
A dedicated writer of thousands of travel articles as well as an explorer and adventurer, Harold Stephens traveled deep into Bhutan, motored across Tibet, and followed along the Great Wall of China in a Jeep, and rafted down the Amazon. He trained with a Sir Edmund Hillary team in New Zealand and climbed the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Popocatapetl in Mexico.
In the mid-sixties, Stephens motored around the world by Jeep for a record-breaking 42,252 miles, through monsoon rains and across blazing deserts, over nearly impassable roads through hostile countries with hostile and sometimes uncivilized people, facing untold dangers, disease and hunger. Along the way, he met some very remarkable people and found romance and love in the strangest places.
His great love for the sea inspired Stephens to build his own schooner, Third Sea, which he sailed throughout the South Pacific and Asian waters, and up many wild rivers of Southeast Asia. The famous, and infamous as well, sailed aboard with him and shared his yachting adventures, and more than once encountered raging typhoons and marauding pirates. Third Sea's last voyage was disastrous and terrifying as she smashed against the rocks in a devastating hurricane that ravaged the Hawaiian Islands.
While deep-sea diving, Stephens found ancient Chinese wrecks in the South China Seas and continued his wild and revealing searches for World War II wrecks on lonely Pacific Islands. He located and dove on the Battleship HMS Repulse, sunk by Japanese dive bombers the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Stephens searched for the pleasure of searching, whether it was for Bigfoot in Southeast Asia, lost cities, or for the elusive wild rhino in the Malay jungles. Stephens has lived with Negritos in the Malay jungles and with hill tribe people in northern Thailand. On the empty Australian Outback, he encountered uncertain Aborigines still living in the Stone Age, and survived by eating kangaroo meat.
Through Harold Stephens' travel and adventure books, readers meet some extraordinary people: rubber planter, treasure diver, pirate chief, expat artist, belly dancer/gem smuggler, Asian royalty, trading boat skipper, Asian movie stars, jungle doctor, noted women travelers, and a host of others.
Stephens was raised on a farm in western Pennsylvania, and when a fire took away their house, at the age of 15 he went to work in the coal mines and later the steel mills of Pennsylvania. Shortly before his 17th birthday he enlisted in the Marines and four months later found himself in the Battle of Okinawa. The war over, he went to China as a China Marine, was held by the Red Guard and escaped by swimming out to a junk at sea. Back home, rather than return to the steel mills, he re-enlisted, and was sent to Paris as one of the first US Embassy security guards. Once there, he was chosen by Ambassador Jefferson Caffery to become his aid, an event that changed his life forever. Inspired by the Ambassador to get an education, he took his discharge in Washington, D.C., and entered Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He graduated, joined the National Security Agency, but after two years came to the conclusion that government service was no better than working in steel mills. He decided to devote himself to writing, something he always wanted to do, and has never looked back since.
For the past forty years, Southeast Asia--mainly Bangkok where he is a feature writer for the Bangkok Post and travel correspondent for Thai Airways International--has been home to Harold Stephens--that is when he is not exploring a remote island, a newly discovered ancient ruin, or scouting locations for a movie.
