Ian Buruma's 1989 travelogue examines how seven Asian nations — Burma, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Korea, and Japan — construct their modern identities from the wreckage of colonialism, nationalism, and Westernisation. He is a sharp and unsentimental observer: more interested in the contradictions people live with than in romantic notions of the East.
The Philippines chapters are particularly good on the colonial hangover — a nation that absorbed Spanish Catholicism and American pop culture so thoroughly that asking what is authentically Filipino becomes genuinely complicated. Essential reading before visiting, especially if you want to understand why Ferdinand Marcos nostalgia persists and what it means.