Not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but I’ve moved my passenger and flight attendant of the month posts over to my Galley Gossip column located on Gadling.com. This month I’m featuring Thant Myint-U, writer of Making of Modern Burma and River of Lost Steps. Make sure to check it out, especially if you’re heading to Bangkok anytime soon, because Thant has a few suggestions for you. Here are a few questions I asked him that I did not post over on Gadling.com….

What inspired you to write The River of Lost Steps? Burma’s been increasingly in the news these past ten years or so, but so many people in the US and elsewhere know so little about it. I wanted to write something people would enjoy reading, that also gave them a sense of this country, which sits right at the crossroads of Asia – between India, China, Tibet and southeast Asia.

Advice for writers? Write what you’re passionate about and what you know about. Otherwise, for me at least, writing would be torture.