Why

Growing up, I learned the histories of other countries more easily than my own. Southeast Asia's stories are there, but they've always felt less legible than what gets written about places like Rome or Paris.

So I go looking for them: through archives, old maps, and firsthand research, then tell them again, to travelers passing through, and to the people who already live inside these histories without always knowing it.

The hope is simple. That people come away informed, and a little intrigued by their own existence. We are, after all, a continuation of these same stories.

Why physical books

• Holding something real in your hands, right where a story actually happened, makes the moment stick.
• It reaches readers directly, the way stories traveled long before algorithms and advertising existed.
• A booklet asks you to slow down. Simple drawings and short stories make a place easy to understand without feeling overwhelming.
• It becomes a keepsake, something carried home that's less a purchase than a small piece of the place itself.

Books are the starting point, not the limit. I'm curious what other mediums these stories could live in.