Asia has been a trend in the West for decades. Singapore, Thailand, but also Vietnam and Cambodia are now part of the tourist circuit, even in Italy. A nice plane ride and off to discover places, cultures, tastes, and civilizations so far removed from our own. How much you actually discover by being a tourist on more or less organized tours and staying in the most popular hotels and destinations is another matter entirely. Tourists, after all, travel for pleasure and aren't required to understand, learn, or be taught. Or are they? Let's add another question: before setting off for these faraway places, it's better to have a good Lonely Planet-style guidebook or a book written by someone who has fully experienced those places firsthand. We lean toward the latter, for the simple fact that before visiting a place or nation, one should try to grasp its complexities, its virtues, and even its vices. If only to reflect on the fact that the splendid hotels in Dubai are built with the labor of actual slaves and that the casinos in Singapore are glittering only from the outside.
So, if you're ready to embark for Thailand or Burma, first avidly read Asia criminale (Baldini+Castoldi, 2025, pp. 288) , a journalistic reportage with old-fashioned verve co-written by Massimo Morello and Emanuele Giordana . But why Asia criminale? Because, in effect, a spider's web covers Southeast Asia. It's an immense illegal triangle: the southern vertex is in Singapore, the northwest corner in Burma, the northeast in the Gulf of Tonkin, or the South China Sea. The triangle's bisector passes through Thailand, intersecting Burma, Laos, and Cambodia. It's the New Golden Triangle of this part of the world, where the soil favors the cultivation of opium poppies.
In this vast region, off the beaten track not only of tourism but also of Italian journalism, two reporters, descendants of an increasingly rare journalistic tradition, who have been traveling and living in Southeast Asia for years, investigate the kingdoms of warlords and drug lords, where human beings are a commodity, on a par with opium, heroin, methamphetamine, timber, precious stones, and weapons. These are places where trafficking is disguised as guerrilla movements and vice versa, often in those Special Criminal Zones on the borders between states, where Chinese enclaves have developed in other nations. The biggest business today is in Scam Cities, prison-like cities where over 200,000 cyber slaves operate in fraud and online gaming, a business worth billions of dollars. Even the sea and coasts are crime scenes, from piracy to arms and human trafficking, on the current of refugees. In still other places, the crime is more hidden, among money laundering centers and financial corporations. And it is precisely in a hidden way that the stories of the New Golden Triangle are having global repercussions, unknowingly influencing our lives. Because illegality generates enormous profits for those who manage it, but it also affects the rest of humanity in some way, spreading insecurity, violence, and additional costs to protect ourselves from fraud, scams, and deception. Above all, widespread illegality forces human beings into just two roles: victim and perpetrator. And this is simply inhumane.