MANY OF THE READERS OF THIS revised second edition, and also the original book, will have travelled or lived in East and Southeast Asia, perhaps as backpackers, students studying a foreign language or tourists enjoying a few weeks in an exotic location. When arriving in an Asian country, the initial feeling often is one of being overwhelmed by new sensations and ideas as the familiar gives way to the unfamiliar. Sights, sounds, smells and tastes are usually different, and often very different, from those with which we are familiar. Things are organised in different and sometimes seemingly bizarre ways. Our expectations of how things should be are frequently proved faulty, and this can be a disorienting experience. For some, one brush with the unfamiliar will be sufficient. Others, and we number the readers of this book among them, will find the initial confusing contact with Asia a challenge. They will want to move beyond first impressions to discover what lies beneath the surface. The tourist's passing interest in the quaint and exotic gives way to a desire to understand how peoples from other cultures live and think, to discover the ways in which their societies are different from and the same as our own.