Through a collection of real letters written to his best friend and father in England, and from his own personal diary entries, the young planter John Dodd has bequeathed us a fascinating, and often hilarious, memoir of what life was really like on Malaya’s rubber estates in the late-1950s. With true stories that would make even Somerset Maugham Read More

Following the runaway success of Growing Up in Trengganu, Awang Goneng now takes his journey further to map out the town where he was born. This book looks at the terrain of Trengganu, the landmarks that are still standing and those that have fallen to rubble at the hands of developers, the winds that bring chill and change to the inhabitants of his coastal town, and people – the important and the ordinary – who walked the streets and breathed the air that is laced with more than a whiff of dried shrimps, the sweat of toil, the aroma of röjök in Pök Déh’s plate, and salt coming in with the spray from the South China Sea.

A Map of Trengganu gives a vibrant and extraordinary topography of the land and its people for the uninitiated and for those who are familiar with the terrain and territory. Time does not stand still in Kuala Trengganu as Awang Goneng notes, but it moves at a different pace in every fascia, and then it is gone forever. So who moved the clock tower from the roundabout in the town centre? You’ll soon be pondering this important question and many more things that you never knew about Trengganu.

About the Author

Awang Goneng moved from Trengganu to Kuala Lumpur to attend the Victoria Institution where he and a schoolfriend (who later became a judge in Singapore) involuntarily broke the school’s medium-distance record while fleeing a gang from a rival school near the Merdeka Stadium. With this newfound talent for power running, Awang Goneng proceeded swiftly into subsequent chapters of his life: first through the doors of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where he took a Law degree (from the Academic Registrar’s office one night when the door was left open), and then through an academic career (briefly) and journalism (less briefly) during which time he interviewed, among others, Anthony Burgess, Barbara Cartland and Adnan Khashoggi. He now lives in London as a freelance writer.

Reviews of Growing Up in Trengganu

“Awang Goneng does with words what Lat does with pictures.” Annabel Teh Gallop, Head, Southeast Asia section, British Library

“A trip back in time for Babyboomers who remember P Ramlee movies, kampongs by the sea, and itinerant hawkers. The author now resident in London has a prodigious memory for amusing detail and his food descriptions will make your mouth water.” Lifestyle

“If life in idyllic Trengganu takes your fancy, get insight from a book by a journalist who takes a nostalgic look on his younger years in the East Coast … It is a collection of tales on growing up in a Malaysian village, of small town charm and a sense of pride at being part of it … The book that Hulaimi wrote has become something of a phenomenon. Terengganu recently hosted the return of its prodigal son for a book signing and a reading … The 300-page book reflects the personality of its author superbly. That is, it’s humble, frank and unassuming.” New Straits Times

“Veteran journalist pens bestseller. Veteran journalist Wan Ahmad Hulaimi has compiled his childhood experience in a placid fishing village with a book Growing Up In Terengganu. The former London-based Bernama journalist, better known by his byline Wan Hulaimi, has described the lifestyle in old Kuala Terengganu for the younger generation who would never have seen the good old days of the fishing state and how his grandparents lived. The book became much sought n Malaysia soon after its debut at the world famous Frankfurt Book Fair in October. It is now among MPH’s top 10 in the non-fiction list. Publisher Monsoon Books is making preparations for the book’s second print of 3,000 books. ” The Star

“NORZITA A. SAMAD pays a visit to Terengganu of decades past by dipping into the pages of Awang Goneng’s Growing Up In Trengganu. I COULD almost hear in my mind my Tok Ki relating snippets of his many sojourns in the many isles of Nusantara and Indo-China, sailing in perahu besar earning a living trading sea salt, among other things. Reading Awang Goneng’s Growing Up In Trengganu is a walk down memory lane for me; the book really stirs up countless memories of my own childhood days in the quaint town of Kuala Terengganu in the 1970s. ” New Straits Times

“Melalui bukunya, Awang Goneng alias Wan Ahmad Hulaimi memberikan kita begitu banyak peluang untuk mengenali sosiobudaya Terengganu dan sedikit kesempatan memahami dirinya yang sentiasa nostalgik kepada Terengganu walaupun beliau kini memilih untuk meneruskan hari-hari tuanya di England…” Utusan Malaysia

“Growing up in Terengganu, the book authored by former London-based Bernama freelance journalist, Wan Ahmad Hulaimi, had a sort of spiritual homecoming when it received its Terengganu launch at the Alam Akademik bookshop here Tuesday. Going by the acronym of GUiT and written under the pseudonym Awang Goneng, it portrays the life of a typical mischievous Terengganu boy in years gone by. Terengganu-born Wan Ahmad Hulaimi, 60, who was present at the launch, said: “I regard this as the spiritual home of GUiT. I bought my first books here and my father used to take me here to buy his kitabs (religious books) and newspapers. It is very apt that GUiT gets its Terengganu launch at this shop. My children were all born and brought up in London and have no idea what it is like to grow up in Kuala Lumpur, never mind Kuala Terengganu,” he added. The 336-page book became a much sought after title in bookshops in peninsular Malaysia soon after its debut appearance at the world famous Frankfurt Book Fair in October.” Bernama

“Growing Up in Trengganu karya Awang Goneng mengulit nostalgia zaman kanak-kanak dan remaja pengarang buku ini ketika di Terengganu selain kerinduan kepada kaum keluarga dan handai taulan yang enggan dilepaskan meskipun sudah beberapa dekad menetap di London. Kebetulan tirai buku ini dimulai dengan kisah sambutan Hari Raya ketika negeri yang kaya dengan emas hitam itu masih jauh daripada pembangunan dan suasana Syawal masih hangat diraikan di Malaysia, membuka ruang kepada pembaca meninjau corak sambutan Ramadan dan Syawal pada zaman kanak-kanak Awang Goneng di Terengganu.” Berita Harian (Malaysia)

In 1953, Peter Mooney, an adventurous young Irishman and newly qualified advocate — the Scottish equivalent of a barrister — decided to forsake the stately precincts of Parliament House and the Advocates Library in the historic city of Edinburgh and accept the position of Crown Counsel, Sarawak in far-off Borneo. All thoughts of returning to the elegant world of Edinburgh were soon forgotten, however, as he became Read More

Considered one of the world’s most popular holiday destinations, the tropical island of Bali in Indonesia has long been the site for Western fantasies about paradise. Millions of tourists visit the Island of the Gods every year, from families treating the kids to a beach holiday to single men looking for cheap booze and sex. And for many young Westerners and Singaporeans, hardcore partying Read More

The surreal true story of how a Western teenager came of age in 1960s Bangkok, turned international drug smuggler and walked the prison yards of Thailand’s notorious “Bangkok Hilton”

It is 1967 Bangkok, the Summer of Love, and for teenager Jon Cole, son of a US Green Beret colonel serving in the Vietnam War, life as a young Westerner in the City of Angels is sweeter than mangoes on sticky rice with coconut milk … until he is introduced to the infamous House of Lek. Drawn to the underbelly of Bangkok, Read More

Country Madness is a delightfully quirky memoir of a Singaporean psychiatrist in rural England that spans five seasons (the fifth season being a Chinese state of mind that might equate to an English “Indian Summer”).

In humorous and insightful Read More

Klong Prem prison, Thailand. The “Bangkok Hilton”, where 600 foreigners among the 12,000 inmates of this walled prison city also wait and rot. Among the tragic, ruthless and forgotten, one man resolves to do what no other has done: escape. This is the true story of drug smuggler David McMillan’s perilous break-out from Asia’s most notorious Read More

‘Living Fast’ Redefined As Bangkok Hilton Escapee David Mcmillan Opens His Past As A Teenage Drug-Trafficker

In this gripping prequel to ‘Escape: The true story of the only Westerner ever to break out of Thailand’s Bangkok Hilton’, drug smuggler-turned-bestselling author David McMillan tells it from the beginning. Throwing away an expensive education as a teenager then a promising executive career, McMillan hits rock bottom only to shake off the dust Read More

Tropical = Paradise, right? Wrong! Travel writer Stu Lloyd simply wanted to enjoy seamless sunshine, frolic in azure waters with dusky maidens, and drink chilled beers in exotic climes—all at the publisher’s expense. Too much to ask? Apparently so … In this riotous romp through The Tropics, Stu often finds more Purgatory than Paradise, more Hell Read More

Growing Up in Trengganu started life as the much-celebrated blog of Awang Goneng (the pseudonym of UK-based Malaysian writer Wan Hulaimi) until it was found to be too good to exist only in cyberspace. Through a collection of memories retold in glorious colour, he evokes the pleasures of a kampung childhood for the benefit Read More

intrepid journalist and bestselling author Gerrie Lim invites you to join him on an unusual road trip, through his adoptive home town of Los Angeles, California, and its deceptively suburban San Fernando Valley—the ground-zero of the ever-booming, US$12-billion American porn industry. His chronicle spans a ten-year cycle, during which he interviewed Read More

Stamford Raffles is that rarest of things — a colonial figure who is forgotten at home but still remembered with affection abroad.

Born into genteel poverty in 1781, he joined the East India Company at the age of fourteen and worked his way up to become Lieutenant Governor of Java when the British seized that island for some five years in 1811. Read More

Stepping off the SS Hamburg on a moonlit night in January 1901, Edwin A. Brown knew little about his new home—the Straits Settlement of Singapore. Through diary extracts and personal memories, this young Englishman brings to life characters and events in a country few would recognise today.

Life for the early settlers Read More

When New York chef Frank Visakay traded in the sweaty heat of the restaurant kitchen for the glorious tropical heat of Thailand, he thought he had found paradise. Not only was the lifestyle laid back, the food delicious and the beers chilled but he was even attracting the attention of beautiful Thai women.

Or so he thought. With Jasmine Fever, Read More

This is a true story of 1930s Malaysia, of jungle operations, submarines and spies in WWII, and of the postwar Malayan Emergency, as experienced by an extraordinary man. Read More

Andy Botts began his criminal activities as a young “car banger” in his native Hawaii before graduating to drug-dealing and trafficking. After a number of successful and highly lucrative drug runs to Asia (though not without some chillingly close calls), Botts was betrayed by a close associate. Arrested in Bangkok’s Don Muang International Airport Read More

When Mahita was 15, her teacher at Catholic school in Singapore said she could see the devil in her eyes. While growing up, then raising a family of her own, she constantly fought to understand and control this ‘devil’ inside her. Read More

On a hot August afternoon in 1811, an army of 10,000 British redcoats splashed ashore through the muddy shallows off Batavia (the former name of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital) to conquer the Dutch colony of Java. They would remain there for five turbulent years. Read More

‘I’ve not slept for seventy hours or more, walking, watching, waiting, praying for the end of this nightmare from which, at some stage, I must wake. But the reality is beginning to set in and I know only too well that, at least in this life, I shall never speak openly with my son. Never again shall I laugh with him, drink with him, Read More

Written in a fast-paced episodic style that pays fi tting homage to the black-and-white cinema adventure serials of yesteryear, this is an engaging memoir of the unpredictable (and at times perilous) life of the late Wong Kee Hung, an itinerant cinema manager swept up in the postwar cinema industry boom of 1950s and 60s Malaysia Read More

This is the true story of a long-vanished Singapore and the dangerous carnival known as Bugis Street.

After four years of romping around West Africa and the Brazilian Amazon, James Eckardt cut a raffish figure as he stepped off a sailboat at Clifford Pier in Singapore on March 30, 1975, en route from Manila to Jakarta. Little did he know that he would become Read More

Back in January 1995 in Los Angeles, California, a Singaporean pornstar named Annabel Chong took cultural rebellion to an extreme, on terms that had never been negotiated before. She was filmed having sex with a long receiving line of men, Read More

‘I was looked at, criticized, and after much bargaining sold for $250.’

So begins Janet Lim’s ordeal as a mui tsai, or slave girl, in 1930s Singapore. But this is only the beginning of a remarkable journey, which sees the author freed from child bondage to assume a position of leadership, and obtain true happiness, Read More

Perhaps more than any other Southeast Asian city, Singapore has seen tumultuous changes that have catapulted this once-sleepy colonial port into a buzzing metropolis. From its humble beginnings, it has emerged with an identity, social lifestyle and language imbued with the most fascinating mix.

In Stir-fried and Not Shaken, Read More

In 1942 a ship carrying 500 escapees from Japanese-occupied Singapore set sail from Padang for Ceylon. Halfway to safety she was torpedoed and sank. Amidst the horror and confusion, only one lifeboat was launched—a lifeboat built to carry twenty-eight but to which 135 souls now looked to for salvation.

For twenty-six days she drifted across Read More

In 1880, Isabella Bird visited the Malay Peninsula — romantically dubbed “The Golden Chersonese” — and was still able to refer to it as an almost unknown land. The world’s most famous female travel writer of the nineteenth century set sail from Japan and called at Hong Kong, Canton and Saigon before reaching Singapore. Bearing letters Read More

Weakend by hunger, thirst and ill-treatment, author Charles McCormac, then a World War Two prisoner-of-war in Japanese-occupied Singapore, knew that if he did not escape he would die. With sixteen others he broke out of Pasir Panjang camp and began an epic two-thousand-mile escape from the island of Singapore, through the jungles of Indonesia to Read More