Several years ago, a well-known reporter for the Straits Times who spoke at the Foreign

Correspondents Club (FCC) in Bangkok commented on how dismayed he was to witness tourists

drinking at one of the outdoor bars completely ignorant of the fact that a war was going on in

neighboring Vietnam and that people were dying. Ignorance lies at the root of most human

tragedies, great and small. Our attempt here is to create a space where anyone can enter and

educate themselves about the eleven countries of Southeast Asia, crossing in and out of them,

in actuality or virtually, whether it be Buddhist Burma or Islamist Indonesia. The audience

begins with the high school student wanting to write a report for a class or an adult boarding an

aircraft wanting to be caught up by something engaging, yet truly beyond imagining.

We live in an age of an excess of information to the point of unwanted overload. Here is a

manageable cache of choices in several modes: print, film, audio, internet.

Eleven Countries:

Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Timor Leste, Singapore

Eleven Joint Topics:

History & Politics, Art & Music, Language & Literature, Religions & Belief Systems,

Anthropology & Sociology, Geography & Environment, Education & Health, Economy & Poverty