Life in the Well
Tan Kai Yik once dreamed of getting out. Now he pines to return.
Places
Every essay on this website is about a place. Each writer tells us what they see and what they hear, how they feel about the place, what it means to them, and what they think the place suggests about the society in which they live.
We're beginning this website with voices from Indonesia. Our plan is to move slowly north, adding writing from other Southeast Asian nations. Before we publish essays from a country we intend to first have the resources and expertise to do it justice, including the resources and expertise to commission and edit writing in local languages and translate it into English. To help us do this, please consider becoming a member or donating.
We're beginning this website with voices from Indonesia. Our plan is to move slowly north, adding writing from other Southeast Asian nations. Before we publish essays from a country we intend to first have the resources and expertise to do it justice, including the resources and expertise to commission and edit writing in local languages and translate it into English. To help us do this, please consider becoming a member or donating.
Become a Paid Member of This Is Southeast Asia
You’ll not only get unlimited access to all of our content, you’ll also help us to support more young writers from Southeast Asia.
Our Project
The places written about on this website can be as large as megacities or as small as plastic stools. They can be neighborhoods, towns or villages, universities, restaurants, houses of worship, coffee shops, offices, streets, public parks, mountains, beaches, rivers, farms or forests.
A disproportionate amount of writing about Southeast Asia that reaches international readers is authored by non-Southeast Asians. We see a need for more accounts of life in the region written by Southeast Asians themselves, rather than outsiders—to hear more Southeast Asians describing and reflecting on the places they know and call home, balancing the "travel writing" of expatriates and visitors.
