( 18 reviews )
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( 0 of 1 found this review helpful ) Posted: Aug 3 2009
I love travel essays but these are flat. They aren't so much travel stories - stories that make you laugh but also give you enough insight as to whether or not you'd like to put the place on your must-see list - as they are a journal about an odd woman who seems to revel in how cheap she is and how dirty she can get. If she loves the places she's been or the people she's met she doesn't show it. Stephen Colbert's endorsement was way off mark.
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Posted: Jul 22 2009
This book was a waste. This girl is far from a travel author. First rule of being a travel author is to be likable, readers have to want to travel with you while reading your stories. Ayun is far from likable, I kept reading in hopes of hearing she was robbed, kickded off a bus, or ditched by her travel mates. I certainly would not want to travel with her, nor would I read anything else about here so called travels. This girl was nothing more than a cheap tourist who whined about everything and everyone. She did not seek out unique experiences, places, or adventures that come being off the beaten path and away from the tourist centers. I am convinced that she planned her trip using the lonely planet guides and made it a point to hit every tourist trap she could. She is the kind of person who goes somewhere so she can brag that she has been then, as those listening to the bragging hope she chokes on an ice cube. I just wish I could give this book a 0 star rating. Avoid this book and get something by Rolf Potts, Peter Allison, or Bill Bryson. Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel In a Sunburned Country
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( 1 of 2 found this review helpful ) Posted: Jun 13 2009
What a dreadful book. I suffered through 226 pages of it before finally giving up. This is not a book about a young woman going interesting places and learning new things which she shares with the reader. This is a book about a spoiled suburban Indianapolis brat who gets to go to many of the world's most wonderful places, but completely fails to appreciate them because she's either too stoned, too homesick (for either suburban Indianapolis or suburban Chicago, though she pretends to be from the city), or too wrapped up in her own judgmental view of the world to be open to the experiences around her. I've been to many of the same places that the author has and this could have been a wonderfully quirky, interesting, and informative book. But it's not. It's barely a travelogue, and comes off mostly as a 16-year-old girl's delusional diary. Make that a foul-mouthed 16-year-old. The book pretty much starts off with the girl quizzing her mother about oral sex and goes downhill from there. How many times do I need to read the F-word in a book? Not even as quotes, but as descriptions in the text. She describes one of the world's greatest, most legendary and exotic hotels as "F---ed in the head" for adhering to the social norms of the city in which it is located. That's classy. And pretty much gives you an idea of the tone and quality of the writing for the rest of the book. Granted, I didn't finish this one, but I feel at 226 pages I gave it a fair shot. She has wasted years of her life visiting the world's best places in a fog of dirt, self-imposed self-righteous poverty, and marijuana smoke. I don't think her book deserves to waste any more of my time.
