Chasing the Dragon: Into the Heart of the Golden Triangle - Hardcover

Cox, Christopher R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805038639 ISBN 13: 9780805038637

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 1996

Synopsis

The features desk of an American newspaper may seem an unlikely launchpad for a journey into one of the world's most remote and dangerous regions, but for journalist Christopher Cox, it was where the story began. It would end nearly three years later in the almost inaccessible mountain fastnesses of Shan State, Burma, as Cox brought off a journalistic coup even hard-bitten foreign correspondents might envy: a rare personal audience with General Khun Sa, the man U.S. law enforcement dubbed "The Prince of Death," the man thought to control a third of the world's supply of heroin.
Accompanied by an obsessed Vietnam vet who had given up everything in his single-minded search for American POWs left behind in Southeast Asia and an eccentric expat with close personal ties to the general, Cox was going to cross forbidden borders to enter a region long off-limits to Westerners. And armed with little more than a backpack stuffed with vodka, porno tapes, and cigarettes, he was going to succeed.
His journey would take him deep into the Golden Triangle, a shadowy zone of banditry, drug smuggling, and the ghost armies of past wars. He would begin in the red-light district of Bangkok, with its sex bars and soaring HIV rates, then head up into northern borderlands newly discovers by package-tour groups, and finally cross a jungled no-man's-land into the world of the Shan, where tough tribesmen trade opium and precious gemstones for the arms they need to fight the Burmese.

About this title

About the Author

An award-winning journalist, CHRISTOPHER R. COX has written on and traveled extensively through Southeast Asia for more than 20 years. His work has appeared in The Boston Herald, Reader’s Digest, Conde Nast Traveler, Audubon, Men’s Journal and ESPN: The Magazine. His books include Chasing the Dragon and A Good Death.

Synopsis

A feature reporter relates his adventures and misadventures as he enters Burma in search of an interview with the drug kingpin, Khun Sa, who controls thirty percent of the heroin entering the United States.

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805038639
• ISBN 13: 9780805038637
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336