Go to South-east Asia, young one

AT NO point in his memoir, even when he knows that Changi Prison beckons, does Nick Leeson sour on South-east Asia. A back-office job for Barings Bank in Jakarta had got him out of a life of pub brawls in Watford. A transfer to Singapore had made a rich man of the plasterer’s son. If he could never have concealed his roguish trading in a maturer market, nor could he have conquered one so fast.

A generation later, from the rooftop of the Bangkok Standard hotel, I would still commend this region over others to the Western young. Before we come to the pull factor, consider the push. A fresh UK graduate confronts a nation in unmanaged decline. For one in the US, it is the ever-fouler politics that might have them hatching escape plans. “A good country,” says a Frenchman here of his homeland. “To visit.”

From despair to where, though? Don’t mistake this case for South-east Asia (defined here as the Asean countries) for the usual one. I have too many ties in the Malay Peninsula alone to view the place as “exotic”. The lure is more prosaic than that. With its ambiguous geopolitical posture, this region is going to be what The Economist calls the “main zone of contention” between the US and China. Each superpower will deluge it for decades with investment and official attention. Even without these feuding colossi, a region so populous and recently poor would exude potential. With them, living here will feel like living in the hinge of the world. I would liken Bangkok to mid-20th century Berlin if the difference in scale and energy were not so hopeless.