Which Asian country had a killer fish designed as a counter insurgency measure, a president who took over an island to make a private family game park of African wild animals; a revolution involving millions of people without bloodshed; coup plotters who took phone messages for you; more earthquakes, eruptions, floods, landslides and typhoons than just about any other country; a mountain where the bizarre becomes the ordinary; cities and villages where poverty and death display an innocent cheerfulness; corpses that are rented out to gamblers; and coral reefs that are home to more kinds of corals, fish and other marine life than anywhere else on the planet?

Crying Trees, Killer Fish and Rental Corpses: Only in the Philippines follows a journey of discovery in this exciting country during the 1980s and 1990s, before globalization began to strip away its culture along with charming folk beliefs, corner stores and local markets.