Ian Poh Jin Tze’s coffee table book is an unusual, refreshing hybrid of travel writing, food journalism and something approaching immersive documentary photography.

The Singapore-based freelancer takes readers on a guided tour of Southeast Asia’s agricultural and hospitality worlds, focusing — with genuine curiosity and an eye for telling detail — on the people who make those worlds spin.

The author journeys from misty melon fields in Malaysia’s Port Dickson to a Balinese coffee plantation, with stops at a durian farm where the fruit drops like “guillotines” overhead, a Perak hot springs resort, and a Kuala Lumpur luxury residence where the author finds a welcoming home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each chapter follows a similar rhythm, with the author arriving as an outsider and leaving with a sharper picture of how invisible labor becomes something beautiful: “Despite the long hours they dedicated to the fields,” he writes of a crew picking melons, “they shared the smiles on their faces at the end of the day. The glistening field may have seemed amazing in the morning, but it was this final moment that really took my breath away.”

The writing is confident and sensory, with a self-deprecating comic touch. (In the durian chapter, the author recalls careening down a muddy hill in a fluorescent-pink helmet while the farm manager’s eyes bulge.) The coffee chapter, narrated from a bean’s perspective, is a risky conceit that mostly pays off.

The photography is captivating, with stunning shots of a melon harvest mid-toss or workers lined across a field passing fruit down a human chain. The food photography is sensual and precise, particularly the steaming scallop dish at the Banjaran resort, looking like something conjured rather than cooked.

Some chapters, particularly the luxury residence section, slide into promotional territory, and the book’s intimate warmth occasionally crowds out its critical distance. But these are minor complaints.

This book is a genuine and affectionate act of attention toward people who don’t often receive such notice.