‘Lian was remarkably thin; she wore flip-flops, jeans, and a lightweight tank top. Her shiny black hair swept her shoulders. She stood out from the locals mostly because of her height, her white skin and light blue eyes. Otherwise, she would have blended right in. Thais became confused when they saw her. Her almond-shaped eyes, small, full lips, and exotic features clearly indicated that she was one of them, and even her build might have been overlooked, but her blue irises were real and not a trick of the light or the tint of contact lenses. The most bewildering of all was that when spoken to in Thai, she answered, with slight embarrassment, in English. Lian was indeed Thai, but she did not speak her native country’s language.
She had arrived on New Year’s Eve and been in Bangkok for days, her embarrassment only mounting. She had wanted to travel here so desperately! And now she didn’t know how to continue. She missed New York, which seemed so organized and perfect compared to Bangkok, and she missed her parents. At the same time, she knew, not only with her mind, but deep down inside, that she had arrived home.
For twenty years, she lived in the knowledge that she had been born in New York. She knew, of course, that she had been adopted. Her parents had never hidden this fact from her. They had told her how she had been very small, only a few weeks old, when they had brought her home; they also told her that her mother had been Thai and her father had not, but the couple did not wish to keep her, for whatever reason. Lian accepted these facts and the existence of her “biological parents” did not mean anything special to her. As far as she was concerned, her mother was Susan and her father was Robert, she had grown up in New York, and she had nearly never been taunted by her schoolmates because of her descent. Sure, Lian’s heritage was mixed, but she had inherited the best traits from each of her parents. Her distinctly-shaped eyes and thick, jet black hair were what revealed her Asian ancestry.
She learned the truth on her twentieth birthday. It wasn’t meant to be a birthday surprise; her adoptive parents had only waited with the confession so she would be “mature” enough to understand.
“We brought you to New York from Bangkok when you were only a few weeks old,” explained her mother above the remains of the celebratory dinner. Candles flickered on the table. Her father searched Lian’s face worriedly; her mother didn’t dare meet her gaze, keeping her eyes fixed on the flame of the candle. “We thought you should know. I don’t think it matters much to you. After all, it doesn’t change anything. We never wanted to lie to you, but we also didn’t want to confuse you. You were born in Bangkok and put up for adoption. We don’t know the names of your mother or father, because the agency that referred you to us either didn’t know, or withheld the information. But to tell you the truth, we didn’t want to know too much about them. You were the one we wanted, and we were so excited to have you come into our lives,” said her mother, forcing back her tears, while Lian felt all the air disappear from the room.
Since then, she had thought it over a thousand times: what had changed? Was everything a muddle in her heart and mind because of a well-meaning lie, this withheld truth? From then on, not a day had passed when she didn’t think about the city where she had been born, the city she had never taken interest in before, the city where, perhaps, her biological mother lived, the city she was now linked to. She hung on the Internet for endless hours at night, reading everything she found on Bangkok, feeling this mysterious, distant city beckoning her.
Finally, she knew: she had to go. She took time off from university, borrowed some money from her parents, and told them her plan.
They didn’t understand. Or perhaps they understood all too well.
They bid her farewell without a word, weeping quietly at the airport, as if saying goodbye forever.
“A few weeks or months and I’ll be back. Don’t cry!” Lian had said, holding their hands.
Suddenly she felt Susan and Robert becoming helpless little children. Her parents. They were the people she considered her parents, but they needed to understand that she had to go, alone, to see where she had come from. Parting was hard, because she sensed that something new would begin in her life.
Now, she stood here on Sukhumvit Road, stepping back to let a boy leading a curious baby elephant pass, and didn’t know if she had made the right choice by coming to this strange, yet somehow very familiar and homey metropolis. She missed New York and missed her parents, yet she felt her heart open and something in this chaotic, noisy street drawing her in.’
Bangkok: a sizzling, all-embracing, exotic city where the past and the present intertwine. It’s a place where anything can happen… and anything really does happen. The paths of seven people cross in this metropolis. Seven seekers, for whom this city might be a final destination. Or perhaps it is only the start of a new journey? A successful businessman; a celebrated supermodel; a man who is forever the outsider; a young mother who suddenly loses everything; a talented surgeon, who could not give the woman he loved all that she desired; a brothel’s madam; and a charming young woman adopted at birth. Why these seven? Why did they come to Bangkok now, at the same time? Do chance encounters truly exist?
Bangkok Transit is a Central European best-seller. The author, Eva Fejos, a Hungarian writer and journalist, is a regular contributor to women’s magazines and is often herself a featured personality. Bangkok Transit was her first best-seller, which sold more than 100,000 copies and is still selling. Following the initial publication of this novel in 2008, she went on to write twelve other best-sellers, thus becoming a publishing phenomena in Hungary According to accounts given by her readers, the author’s books are “therapeutic journeys,” full of flesh and blood characters who never give up on their dreams. Many readers have been inspired to change the course of their own lives after reading her books. “Take your life into your own hands,” is one of the important messages the author wishes to convey.
Try it for yourself, and let Eva Fejos whisk you off on one of her whirlwind journeys... that might lead deep into your own heart.
About Eva Fejos, the author of Bangkok Transit
- Eva Fejos is a Hungarian writer and journalist.
She:
- has had 13 best-selling novels published in Hungary so far.
- Bangkok Transit is her first best-seller, published in 2008.
- has won several awards as a journalist, and thanks to one of her articles, the legislation pertaining to human egg donation was modified, allowing couples in need to acquire donor eggs more easily.
- spends her winters in Bangkok.
- likes novels that have several storylines running parallel.
- visited all the places she’s written about.
- spent a few days at an elephant orphanage in Thailand; and has investigated the process of how Thai children are put up for adoption while visiting several orphanages.
- founded her own publishing company in Hungary last year, where she not only publishes her own books, but foreign books too, hand-picked by her.
- Her books published in Hungary thus far are:
Till Death Do Us Part (Holtodiglan) | Bangkok Transit | Hotel Bali | Chicks (Csajok) | Strawberries for Breakfast (Eper reggelire) | The Mexican (A mexikói) | Cuba Libre | Dalma | Hello, London | Christmas in New York (Karácsony New Yorkban) | Caribbean Summer (Karibi nyár) | Bangkok, I Love You (Szeretlek, Bangkok) | Starting Now – the new edition of Till Death Do Us Part (Most kezdődik) | Vacation in Naples – the English version will be published in summer, 2014 (Nápolyi vakáció)
To be published in spring of 2014: I Waited One Hundred Nights (Száz éjjel vártam)
Genre - Women's Fiction, Contemporary
Rating – PG-13
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