Along with the other Jetlag Travel volumes, 2003's Molvanîa and 2006's San Sombrèro, the book parodies both the language of heritage tourism and the legacy of colonialism and imperialism.

Also, the districts are the mountainous "Pha Phlung" ("far flung"), the infertile "Sukkondat" ("suck on that"), the hyper "Buhng Lunhg" ("bung lung"; Australian slang 'bung', meaning 'failed'), and the exotic "Thong On".

Like Molvanîa, the humour of the book comes from the guide's attempts to present Phaic Tăn as an attractive, enjoyable country when it is really little more than a squalid, third-world dump.

In fact, the country's national anthem was actually written by him and whenever it is played Phaic Tănese will immediately stand and place one hand over each ear.

Phaic Tăn is depicted as being roughly 650 kilometres abroad from east–west at its broadest point and the same distance from its far geographical north-east tip to the Pong Delta in the country's south-east.

According to the book, Bumpattabumpah means "water convergence" and refers to the fact that the city is situated where the country's main river, the Pong, meets untreated effluent from a sewage treatment plant further upstream.

High smog levels in the capital city mean that office blocks require no window tinting, a result of heavy amounts of air pollution.

Sukkondat is traditionally Phaic Tăn's poorest province, due to the infertility of its soil, lack of natural resources and high number of casinos.

The capital of the province is Sloh Phan, which is located about ninety kilometres north-east of Gunsa Wah, Phaic Tăn's tallest peak, at 2150 metres in height.

Despite the fact that Sukkondat receives less than 2% of all visitors to Phaic Tăn every year, this statistic hasn't stopped its local Tourism Bureau from declaring the province 'the place to be'.

The beach sand's whiteness was formed in the 1980s by the rare combination of global warming and a huge spill from a tanker carrying laundry bleach.

The Phaic Tăn website features a spoof soap opera called Pyangtru Yix Qaugen (Hospital of Hearts), in which the characters (Doctor Lahbkot, 3-star General Kpow and his much younger millionairess wife) speak in what appears to be a dialect of Chinese spoken in Taiwan and parts of Fujian, Vietnamese and some heavily accented garbled sounds made to resemble Korean, subtitled in a stilted form of English, with curious turns of phrase and double entendres.