The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong [Hardcover]

Edward Gargan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 22, 2002

The River’s Tale is a deeply informed personal chronicle of a remarkable journey down the Mekong River as it runs through China, Tibet, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. In it Edward A. Gargan tells a stirring tale of adventure that reveals the Mekong’s many worlds.

Beginning in 1998, Gargan was at last able to pursue his long-held dream of traveling the three thousand miles of the river and lingering where he wished. He was, in a sense, coming to terms with places and peoples with which he had already linked his life. His youthful opposition to the Vietnam War had been the first manifestation of his passionate interest in Asia, where he subsequently spent much of his career as a New York Times correspondent.

His travels show us a kind of modernity settling uneasily on regions still mired in backwardness and poverty, and shadows that linger so many years after the end of the Vietnam War. We visit Internet cafés in dirt-streeted towns near thatched-hut villages without electricity. The magnificent Angkor Wat, a hub of tourism, is surrounded by the ruins engendered by Pol Pot’s genocidal reign. We see plodding mule trains caravanning sacks of opium through Burma on their way to China to be processed and distributed to the West. Tibetan horsemen adorned in silver and amber jewelry herd yaks across endless grasslands as their ancestors did, though their culture is under siege by the Chinese. Vietnamese salesmen scooter around Saigon hawking American soaps, passing by outcast children fathered by American soldiers and left behind. Buddhism flowers in a Laos ravaged by communism. Sex tourism thrives in prosperous Thailand, a trade chiefly involving teenagers, who pay a deadly price.

And throughout, there is the Mekong—shaping landscapes, linking cultures, sustaining populations, showcasing spectacular beauty. Edward Gargan is an acutely observant, sympathetic guide to a fascinating world, and he has written a powerful and lyrical book.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"The Mekong scours some of the saddest history of recent years," writes Edward A. Gargan in this richly described and melancholic tale of his journey through Tibet, China, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Thirty years after landing in jail for refusing to register for the draft, the war-protester-turned-foreign-correspondent decided to see for himself how these countries have brought themselves back from the brink, and how their myriad cultures are struggling to preserve themselves. Beginning at the source of the Mekong River, near a camp of nomads high on the Tibetan plateau, he followed the 3,000 mile-long waterway through the heart of some of Asia's most complex and wounded societies. While the first half of Gargan's story, which focuses on China's demolition of Tibetan and other minority cultures, is interesting, it becomes gripping in the claustrophobic paranoia of Laos and post-Pol Pot Cambodia. Ultimately it becomes clear that while America lost the war in Vietnam, it has never left the region--lingering in the scars of war and inversely the creeping acceptance, if not embrace, of all things American. --Lesley Reed

From Publishers Weekly

A chronicle of a year-long journey along the nearly 3,000 miles of the Mekong River as it descends from the Tibetan plateau through southern Asia, Gargan's book is a vivid look at the disparate peoples settled the length of the river's path. As the living is often hard on the river, so too is the journey for Gargan (China's Fate), a former New York Times correspondent in Asia: he finds himself sleeping on floors, stranded on rutted highways and arguing with fickle boatmen over the course of his travels. But his own misadventures don't overshadow the larger story of the region, a story of the tension between tradition and modernity in an area long accustomed to the influences of outside forces: "Tibetan Khamba horsemen lathered in yak butter... gallop across endless grasslands rising from the river's pebbled shores, herding yaks as their ancestors did; while two thousand miles to the south, Vietnamese cosmetics salesmen... scoot about on Hondas... hawking American beauty shampoos and face soaps." Gargan's passion for the subject makes him acutely sensitive to the rhythms and details of the communities he visits; it also makes his prose slightly purple. At times so many faces and facts are packed in that they blur as if Gargan were traveling by train instead of the various rickety contraptions he does take. Still, it's an absorbing and informative read for anyone interested in the region.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1ST edition (January 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375405844
• ISBN-13: 978-0375405846
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,267,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a great ride, January 31, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong (Hardcover)

Ed Gargan has taken the kind of trip we all daydream about: a year's adventure through an exotic corner of the world, where time is measured by sunrises and sunsets and success by the width of your smile. His trip is part Indiana Jones and part Mark Twain, but mainly it's that little part of all of us that wishes we had the time, the strength and the grace (and maybe the money) to do something similar. His book is a luxurious read filled with skillfully drawn characters and places that are impossible to forget. Gargan's long experience in Asia gives the book heft and helpful perspectives in understanding an important part of the world. And his writing and wit make it a joy. It's a exciting ride, guided by the best.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gargan's Tale....., February 14, 2005

By 

nto62 (Corona, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong (Hardcover)

From Tibet to the South China Sea, Edward Gargan follows the Mekong while opining upon the people who call the watershed home. As travelogues go, this book is neither fantastic nor particularly poor. What heights it could have hit are limited by the imposition of his political views, yet Gargan's powers of description save it from becoming an ideological screed. Gargan deftly intertwines his geographical position with complaints about the oppressor most responsible for the local malaise. Some of these complaints are beyond doubt, such as Tibetan treatment at the hands of the Chinese and the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, but others seem a bit overwrought. Indeed, one is tempted to remind Mr. Gargan that, had he one positive observation about the U.S., he would not stand convicted of jingoism.

Edward Gargan makes a telling statement near the end of the book where he summarily announces that he'd rather live abroad than in any city in the United States. A reader of travelogues should expect an honest attempt to address the cultural issues, flora, fauna, geography, architecture, etc., of the locality advertised. Gargan's The River's Tale doesn't quite get there for the need to repeatedly identify an entirely different part of the world as worthy of his disdain.

Unquestionably biased, bereft of humor, at times shockingly myopic, (Gargan just can't wrap his mind around why many Vietnamese hold America in high esteem), The River's Tale somehow remains an entertaining read. I picked it up hoping for a riverine excursion through leafy asian jungles. Gargan doesn't deliver this, but something else: political travel. It deserves 4 stars for overcoming my disappointment. But, then, I love travel so much, I was willing to go along for the ride.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At heart we are all world travelers, June 16, 2002

By 

Ashok Sadhwani (Los Angeles, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The River's Tale: A Year on the Mekong (Hardcover)

At heart we are all world travelers. Even for those of us who have not traveled more than 50 miles from where we were born, our mind attunes to the imagery that abounds in far away places and our hearts recognize that there are wonders in this world of ours that can certainly be read about if not traveled to.

Covering the swath of this exotic and intriguing part of territory in one of the world's lesser-known places, Edward Gargan gives us that spotlight not easy to mount from many other angled and elusive written pieces. A bit of local politics, more of its history, peppered with the faces of people and the kind of food, bamboo worms prepared with, "garlic, fermented beans and chili peppers" or "feng-er - bee larvae" all combine to remove us from our reading positions and hover precariously over this geographical region fearing that at any moment, Gargan may sever the cord that ties us suspended over his river journeys and cause us to tumble downwards to his reality.

For reality it is for Mr. Gargan when he braves the elements to travel from the high plateau of eastern Tibet down to sea level along the Mekong in Vietnam. It is as if the jungle encroaching the river viewed from Mr. Gargan's commissioned boats of various types and sizes as they careen southwards, seem to loom up in front of our eyes every time our eyes lift from the pages of the book.

The exemplary choice of words, I admit, contained a few that made me scrimmage for my bedside Oxford dictionary. The word 'pirogue' could only be located in my 2200 page Random House Unabridged Dictionary. This word, by the time I was half way through the book, had appeared more than a dozen times. Seems there is no other accurate substitute for 'native craft' or 'local boat'. I kept wondering what the boats Mr. Gargan was motored on looked like or how they were different from each other as he traveled down from Yunnan, through Burma, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam though there is one photograph in the book of such a boat.

A unique style of describing scenes evokes the sharpest imagination and makes the world alive. Witness the onset of dusk being portrayed such: "A fat copper sun slunk away into the Burmese jungle, dragging dusk behind it". "Myanmarese jungle" just would not have cut it. Also, our majestic sun personified in yet another beholden way! And to imprint the picture of a town in our minds, Mr. Gargan uses, "....the town.... was draped over the pate of a small hill, was little more than a gnarl of small byways that wrapped around tidy whitewashed cement houses." Uniquely the town is presented to us and instantly, we perch.

Mr. Gargan "marvels at people...in the underdeveloped world.... with a procession of porters bearing luggage...". This might hold true in most areas he visits in the book; it certainly is not true in other regions and of other people in the underdeveloped world. Executives and housewives alike board and alight from trains, buses and airplanes with nary an eye for a porter. Could the people he sees be transporting merchandise to trade across the borders of China and Burma or between Thailand and Laos that burden these porters, as he himself writes about in other parts of the book? Generalization, albeit a tiny spot, hurts and takes away from other intriguing travel specifics described elsewhere in the book.

If any of us have never experienced a full year traveling without the support of the taken-for-granted amenities, we will definitely cherish an evening consuming the contents of a familiar menu; "insalata mixte, spaghetti aglio e olio, pollo cacciatore and chocolate mousse" in Vientiane, Laos and; imbibing an entire bottle of Chianti. With mixed feelings, I can lovingly relate to such a "glorious" repast and also reminisce about whether those of us who have moved west can ever move back "east".

Within this irresistible journey, well-deserved portions of local culture strike at us at every turn of the Mekong. The delicate history and effect of tea in these parts is really, "the stuff of legend, passion and art". The reader comes away with learning more from these writings than he or she had possibly bargained for. Add to tea, garnishes of the U.S.-Vietnam war, drug trade in the Golden Triangle, the atrocities of Pol Pot's regime on the Cambodian people and embellish it by bits of the Opium War, wanton destruction of the Buddhist Wats, thievery of its artifacts and the state of the local economy, you, the reader will carry away a trophy worth adorning on the mantle of your revered memory banks.

Of course, there are texts that abound in each of these subjects should we choose to study more on historic and social events depicted throughout the jaunt of this 300-page marvel, as Mr. Gargan has so dutifully listed for us under 'Sources'.

Should you perchance not get the opportunity to become a part of Mr. Gargan's travel-by-book group, you should, at least, enjoin in the delectable choice of phrases he has used to describe life's moments, such as the olfactory description of gardens with waterfalls that "..scents the air like a passing woman" and the "....angry gatherings of rocky outcroppings" embanked on the edges of the Mekong.