Shopping for English-language books and Thai movies with English subtitles in Thailand

As those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter may know, Tintin and I just got back from a lovely 2-week trip in Thailand. We visited Bangkok and parts of Northern Thailand, stopping in Sukhothai, one of Thailand's big World Heritage Sites, and some of the smaller cities.

One of the main things I like to do when I travel is to find books written by people from that country, especially translated works. My other major goal when shopping in a foreign country is to find movies from that country on DVD with English subtitles. In Thailand, I succeeded in one of these goals and failed in the other.

English-language books, whether used or new, are incredibly expensive in Thailand. I was a bit shocked by the sticker prices. For a used paperback (of a widely available novel, say one by Stephen King), you can easily expect to pay 200 THB (approx. $6 USD) or more, and new books can be in the 600-900 THB (approx. $17-26 USD) range. I was lucky enough to get some review copies from Silkworm Books (more about this in a moment), so my travel budget wasn't completely shot.

Surprisingly, it's really difficult to find Thai literature in English in Thailand. In most stores, the Thai literature is placed in the "Thailand and Southeast Asia" section, so you have to wade through the stacks of travel literature, scholarly texts, and coffee table books to find any works of literature. Even then, most of the books shelved here are written by expats living in Thailand (most published by Bangkok Books). Judging by the titles, these books range from detective stories to romance novels - and anyway none of them were what I was looking for. I was lucky if I could find a single good piece of Thai literature in each store.

From my research, it seems that there are three good English-language publishers working in Thailand (see my post here). Of these, Silkworm Books has published the most translations of Thai literature. I got to meet Trasvin Jittidecharak, the director of Silkworm Books, at their headquarters in Chiang Mai. Silkworm is a small academic press, and the editorial quality and selection of their books is excellent. If you are looking for a book on Thailand or Southeast Asia, I highly recommend you look at their titles, which are available at every bookstore I visited in the country.

Book Shopping in Turkey: Istanbul

Tintin and I recently took a trip to Turkey, with 10 days of backpacking along the Lycian Way bookended by a few days in Istanbul. As you probably have guessed by reading my blog, one of my goals on any trip is to explore the local options for bookstores and book-buying.

This is part 2 of my book-buying tales. In Part 1, I described the difficulties we encountered in finding bookstores along the Lycian Way during the off season. In this one, I describe my attempt to find English translations of Turkish novels during our few days in Istanbul.

Taksim Square Area

After reading a large number of guides (here here here and here) to finding English-language books in Istanbul, I decided to look for Homer and Pandora bookstores near Taksim square. This area was everything I don't like about the big city - terribly crowded (even in the off-season!) and confusing to navigate. Even though I went armed with the names of the bookstores I wanted to check out, it was difficult to get directions from the locals; most people didn't know what I was talking about. 

Book shopping in Turkey: Lycian Way in the off-season

Tintin and I recently took a trip to Turkey, with 10 days of backpacking along the Lycian Way bookended by a few days in Istanbul. As you probably have guessed by reading my blog, one of my goals on any trip is to explore the local options for bookstores and book-buying. 

It was lucky that I brought Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie's 647-page behemoth, with me, because there are very few bookstores along the Lycian Way during the off season. Since I like making lists, here is an account of the bookstores we discovered during our trek. 

Fethiye

The tourist town of Fethiye usually has at least one bookstore that sells English-language books, including translations of Turkish novels. We discovered it while we were looking for food in the cheap, touristy area by the quay. Unfortunately, we didn't write down the name or get the GPS points for you, but if you ask "English kitabevi nerede" you should find it easily. 

It is a small shop with carts of discount books directly in front of the store and on the opposite side of the street. We arrived in the last week of the tourist season, and the English-language pickings were slim. The carts on the other side of the street were full of used English bestsellers (most likely bought from tourists), and the ones in front of the store had all Turkish-language works. When we asked the shopkeeper for Turkish authors translated into English, all he could show us was a lone copy of Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak and a few books by the Nobel-prize winner Orhan Pamuk, all priced at British prices. We got the impression that the store's selection was a lot bigger during tourist season, but they had sold all the English-language books for the year.