Between 1970 & 1975 Jon Swain the English journalist portrayed in David Puttnams film The Killing Fields lived in the lands of the Mekong river. This is his account of those years & the way in which the tumultuous events affected his perceptions of life & death as Europe never could. He also describes the beauty of the Mekong landscape
- the villages along its banks surrounded by mangoes bananas & coconuts & the exquisite women the odours of opium & the regions other face
- that of violence & corruption.