Comedienne and Fair Trade importer loses everything including her sanity and travels through Thailand in search of solace, mangoes, and food for the soul.
Eileen is off to Thailand, like many winters before. Then it was sun, sand and samples of souvenirs, but not now: she's broke, alone and discouraged. This trip could be her last.
She will bid fond farewells to her trading partners: effervescent Mr Wanchai of Elephant Dung Paper, Mrs ‘Call Me Aunty’ who invented recycled newspaper weaving, and dynamic Boontam who keeps her neighbourhood alive by carving things from coconuts.
She trawls through Bangkok slums, mountain-top weaving collectives, ratty beach huts, and deserted towns near the war-torn Malaysian border. Her grass–roots, first-hand experience in the global Fair Trade network proves that even one lone woman can make a difference in a world of economic elephants.
Her humorous travel journals are the basis of this eccentric, free-spirited memoir and personal love letter to all the Thai people who befriended her. Best of all, she's wrong: it’s not a farewell journey after all. Tsunamis, heartbreaks, and other losses can be survived: hers, theirs, and the world's.
The Noodle Trail contains edible insects, tough questions, out-loud laughs, ambushes of poignancy, and an awful lot of elephant dung.