This is an American journalist's story of his journey deep into the Golden Triangle, a shadowy zone of banditry, drug smuggling and the ghost armies of past wars. His travels began in Bangkok going north to the borderlands and finally ending in the virtual no-mans land of the Shan. His account includes a rare journalistic coup-a personal audience with General Khun Sa. The misadventures he relates are often hilarious, sometimes hallucinatory but always eye-opening.