During his stay in Malacca, Pires wrote the Suma Oriental, a landmark description of the geography, ethnography and commerce of the Asian coastline stretching from the Red Sea to Japan.
In Malacca and Cochin he avidly collected and documented information on the Malay-Indonesian area, and personally visited Java, Sumatra and Maluku.
[citation needed] From his Malay-Indonesia travels, he wrote a book on Asian trade, the Suma Oriental que trata do Mar Roxo até aos Chins (An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China).
[citation needed] The Suma Oriental is a compilation of a wide variety of information: historical, geographical, ethnographic, botanical, economic, commercial, etc., including coins, weights and measures.
"[3]The book, couched as a report to Manuel of Portugal, and perhaps fulfilling a commission undertaken before he left Lisbon,[3] is regarded as one of the most conscientious first-hand resources for the study of the geography and trade of the Indies at that time.
Although it cannot be regarded as completely free of inaccuracies in its detail, it is remarkably consistent with evidence of the time and makes no fundamentally erroneous statements about the area.
[6] However, he was never received by the emperor, due to several setbacks, including the suspicion of the Chinese, and the plot moved by deposed sultan Mahmud Shah after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca in 1511.