From the foreword by Anthony Bourdain:
'I could not have written A Cook's Tour without this book. There is so much I would have missed. And experience has shown me that no matter how frightening a dish may look on the page, in front of you, on the table, with a proud host watching your first tasting-and the accompaniment of much local beverage, it's almost always worth the ride. For truly-how bad can it be?

'So dig in. Enjoy. Eat without fear or prejudice, secure in the knowledge that millions of people have been enjoying this fare for centuries without ill effect. Get away from your hotel dining room-and the tourist terror domes and range wild and free. Eat. Eat adventurously. Miss nothing. It's all here in these pages.

Jerry Hopkins is the author of 27 books, and co-author of the bestselling biography of Jim Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive, which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list in 1980 and has more than 2 million copies in print. He has a Thai family and divides his time between Bangkok and a small village in Surin in Northeast Thailand.

Anthony Bourdain is the host of A Cook's Tour on the Food Network and the executive chef at the brasserie Les Halles in New York. His books include A Cook's Tour and the best-selling Kitchen Confidential.