Harold Stephens

Biographies, short stories, travel and adventure books set in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific by writer extraordinaire, Harold Stephens, who has explored the South Pacific and Southeast Asia for forty years, writing 24 books about his exciting experiences and about those of others he has met.

The South Pacific and Southeast Asia travel and adventure is brought to you by Harold Stephens who has searched for Lost Cities of Southeast Asia, hunted for sunken treasures in Southeast Asia waters including locating Battleship HMS Repulse, fought Pirates of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, tracked Southeast Asian Big Foot, explored forgotten Caves of Southeast Asia, drove Around the World in a Jeep, bought Yachting to Southeast Asia aboard Schooner Third Sea that he sailed in the search for World War II Wrecks.

Harold Stephens brings us his accounts of adventure travel and exploration in 24 Southeast Asian adventure books and some 4,000 newspaper and magazine articles from Washington Post to Bangkok Post.

On sea or land, Harold Stephens sees what there is to see

THE DAILY PROGRESS, CHARLOTTESVILE, VA, MARCH 1, 1988

By DAVID A. MAURER, Daily Progress staff writer

People passing by the Singapore shipyard would stop and stare with bemused delight at the cement hull that was taking shape.

Many of them read the large words scribbled on four pieces of cardboard bailed to a nearby pole.

“Schooner Third Sea under construction,” the top sign read. “This is a boat. It is a cement boat. Yes, it will float! No more questions, please.”

By Harold Stephens
Published: June 2009
Pages: 223
ISBN: 0-9786951-2-7
Price: $14.95
Wolfenden Publishers: printing June 2009

It’s a long lonely road to become a writer, tells Harold Stephens, and although the getting there is difficult, he insists it’s not impossible. Stephens is a prolific writer and dedicated to his profession. He has written more than twenty-five books—travel, adventure, biographies and novels—and over four thousand magazine and newspaper stories, TV and video scripts, movie documentaries, and just about anything that has to do with the written word. In the beginning, when he had the dream, he was told to give it up. “You’ll never make it as a writer,” editors told him, as did most everyone else.

The Story of the King Narai and Constantine Phaulkon

By Harold Stephens
Published: November 2008
Pages: 321
ISBN: 0-9786951-1-9
Price: $14.95
Wolfenden Publishers

The author takes us back to Ayutthaya in the 17th century when it was the capital of Siam, and the greatest city in the world.

Once Europe tasted the spices of the East, felt the fine silks of India and learned of the might of the gunpowder of China, the continent was never the same. Europe was lured by fine silks and porcelain, elephant tusks of pure ivory, jade and rubies, gunpowder, sandalwood, and for their tables, unknown before, the spices of cloves and pepper, nutmeg and mace and more. A bag of peppercorns was worth more than its weight in gold. The quest was on. But the journey overland along the so called Silk Road across Asia was long and arduous, as Marco Polo had proved in the 13th century. Caravans were plagued by disease, and ravaged by hostile robbers and bandits. These caravans, often defenseless, moved slowly, could carry little, sometimes taking years, having to cross threatening mountain passes often blocked for months by fierce snow storms and on to suffer burning desert wastes.

When Marco Polo in the 13th century declared Hangzhou the world's most beautiful city. He never went to Qingdao, but I imagine if he had, Qingdao might head that list. I thought about this as I stood at the end of Pagoda Pier and looked back at the city. But then when Marco Polo was in China, Qingdao was nothing more than a tiny fishing village. It was the Germans who changed all that when they took possession of the port in 1898. Then things began to happen. They built a marvelous resort town with a Teutonic influence and, in German style, they established a brewery which today produces some of the finest beer in Asia. They called their new town Tsingtao and the beer, naturally, Tsingtao Beer.

By Harold Stephens
Publication date: May 2007
ISBN 0-9786951-0-0
List Price: $14.95

You have read and enjoyed books by Harold Stephens, and now Wolfenden Publishers is proud to announce the publication of another book by Stephens -- TALES FROM THE PACIFIC RIM. Although this collection of short stories is fiction, Stephens felt he could better tell the truth about the social habits and traditions of the people of the Pacific Rim, from Tahiti across the vast Pacific to Southeast Asia. What happens when a man wants to buy an Asian wife or when an American woman wants to impose her ideas of liberation on an Asian woman? Educate an Asian servant girl and what are the results? What are the consequences when a top gun fighter pilot changes his mind about the war in Vietnam? Can a schoolteacher impose foreign concepts on kids of a different faith, and can a beachcomber find true love in Tahiti?

The answers to these questions and others can be found in this compelling book of short stories by an author who has lived most of his adult life in Asia and the Pacific.

Reader Paul Weissleder sent along the following comments after reading The Last Voyage, and we include them below with his permission:

I can see why there has been no shortage of praise for "The Last Voyage".

I can skip the words "amazing" and "wonderful" because I have had some similar travel experiences. What you have described is not fantasy but real life, as real as it can get. That's what makes it so great.

The book is deeply autobiographical but you are not the hero.

The real heroes are the people you befriended on your voyages, without whom you would not be as happy & successful as you are today.

The Bangkok Restaurant Reviews website re-launched this week.

Perceptive Travel is a new "web magazine written for independent travelers with open senses and open minds." The first issue is running my article Cruising Thailand's Chao Phraya River with Admiral Zheng He.

Originally appeared in the Bangkok Post

The Imperial Russian Ballet is coming to town in early November and Bangkok is beginning to buzz with ballet fever. What excitement. Not since the great ballet dancer Nijinsky performed at The Orient Hotel in Bangkok in 1911 has there been such enthusiasm. The company consists of 40 artists from the best ballet schools of Russia and they will dance Tchaikovsky's famous ballet The Nutcracker, the classic story about the little girl who is swept away to a magical dream world, and will include memorable music such as the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, the Waltz of the Flowers, the Russian Dance and the Decoration of the Christmas Tree March.

We can only imagine the drama that will take place at the Thailand Cultural Center during rehearsals before and during the two-day performances. I can see them now, warming up, practicing the pas de deux, doing their pirouettes and arabesques, the pas de chat, the port de bras and the most delightful of all dance steps to watch, and for dancers to perform, the emboitein in which the dancers jump, alternating legs moving forward.

It's wonderful, when the dancers are good, to watch them do leaps and bounds, spins and twirls. It was when I saw Maria Tallchief warming up behind stage that I fell in love with her. She was exquisite, divine, a living goddess, and she never even noticed me. It was the summer season when I danced with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. many years ago. Well, it wasn't the whole season, just part of it.