As the writer Martin Bradley unwittingly discovers, there is nothing quite like uprooting yourself from your home of fifty-four years in suburban, temperate England and transplanting yourself into rural, equatorial Malaysia. Bradley attempts to make a new life for himself in provincial Malaysia, living with poisonous snakes, chicken-killing civet cats, and water buffalo intent on chomping his delicate mango shoots and trampling the saplings he has nurtured for many weeks. The idyll he hopes to find is far from idyllic, his stoicism far from stoic and his temper far from temperate. Follow the hapless author as he undertakes a personal seven-year journey into a new religion that he is not suited to, a love affair which should never have been and a culture that requires the patience of the saint he is not. It is a humorous seven-year battle with country living, country people and the whole concept of a rural retreat from which, in the end, he must retreat.