1 comments about South Africa Travel Map (Globetrotter Travel Map).

1. Just what we wanted for our upcoming trip. It is a bit big and hard to fold to see just selected parts of the map, but nicely laminated.

5 comments about The River at the Center of the World, Revised: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time.

1. This travel essay from the author of "The Professor and the Madman" is subtitled, "A Journey Up the Yangtze and Back in Chinese Time". Here, the author uses all his journalistic and investigative skills to tell the story of his 1996 journey through China. He is an Englishman who has lived for many years in Hong Kong and had taken several trips to China at the time of the writing. His desire, however, was to explore areas where westerners were few and far between as well as learn more about this 3,900 mile river which runs through the entire land mass of China and begins in Tibet. As he is a trained geologist, he includes all the interesting details of the natural wonders of this river, as well as discussing the cultural history and introducing us to the varied ethnic groups who consider themselves Chinese.
   
   Most of the area he explored is off-limits to foreigners because there is just too much red tape involved. But he planned his trip carefully, enrolled a Chinese companion and, starting in Shanghai, used whatever means available to take this journey. He was a passenger on several different kinds of boats and there were also some legs of the trip that included motor vehicles. The result is a lesson in history, geography and culture that is unique in its perspective.
   
   The outside world connected through China through trade in its waterways and the history of this trade is fascinating. I learned about the tea industry and the opium wars and the agreements with the United Kingdom that changed the face of China forever. I also learned about the cultural revolution from a different prospective and started to understand the kind of man Mao was who was able to bring about a change from imperial rule to a communist country in just one generation. Mostly though, I learned about the environmental disasters that China is now bringing on itself, especially in the construction of the Three Gorges Dam project. As the book was written in 1996 I was curious about what was going on with this project my internet research found out it is scheduled for completion in 2009 and cost more than 25 billion dollars.
   
   Simon Winchester is a fine writer. His descriptions made his journey come alive for me. There's a big map in the front of the book and a smaller map at the beginning of every chapter. The big map did not include every place name he talked about and so I had to look at the little maps. This made it a little confusing to follow but I was determined and so I had to put some effort into following these maps.
   
   Armchair traveler that I am, I definitely recommend this book. I especially liked it because it piqued my interest in learning even more.



2. I had never read Winchester before. On our recent trip down the Yangtze a fellow traveler was reading this book and recommended it. After reading it I would consider it a rich cultural experience through the history of this river.



3. Simon Winchester's books are all excellent reading with lots of facts, even on related matters. This one is no exception. Although I am only one-quarter through with this book, I am learning a lot.



4. I read this book just a few days before I departed on a trip to China that was to include a cruise of the Yangtze. The book is a bit dated, but nonetheless I found it to be extremely useful. I especially appreciated the historical side trips that the author associates with stops along the way. The writing is excellent, and reading the book is a pleasure.



5. I can think of few experiences better than traveling up the Yangtse (Changjiang) after reading Simon Winchester's terrific book.
   Knowing when to look for a brief glimpse of the Pilutan monument (to one of the few Englishmen to have created something good in China--he charted the river)
   That was in 1999, a year later my son and I hiked Tiger Leaping Gorge, further inspired by this amazing book
   Like so many of his books, Winchester shares a delightful passion through his writing. If anything his writing, especially this book, is contagious.
   River at the Center of World is wonderful book. How many other travel writings still glow after traveling the same path?

3 comments about The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole.

1. I had to go to the post office to pick up my package and couldn't wait until I got home to open it. I opened it right there in the post office, "This is beautiful," I said out loud. The layout is so perfect for the pictures - it opens lengthwise. Other people standing in line all had to take a peek and loved it too.



2. For those of us who aren't likely to ever visit Earth's southern extreme, Stuart Klipper has done more than offer armchair travel--he has brought an artist's eye to make just tribute to a landscape that is both forbidding and uncannily beautiful. This uniquely rendered, gorgeously printed book is among the best records we have of a space that is altering in the midst of global warming; use it to celebrate and imagine the diversity of life on our planet. Stuart, by the way, is a Minnesotan who knows from snow, and his repeated visits to the Antarctic reflect a keen, wintry poetics. There are numerous Inuit words for snow; how many words are there for "ice floe"? Stuart's bountifully descriptive photographs suggest that there should be scores.



3. Stuart Klipper's gorgeously photographed book is a stunning, visual delight to the eye. He captures Antarctica's beauty in a way that makes you stop, go back for another look at this brilliant icy world, unbounded by the limits of time. As a many-time visitor to this heart-grabbing place, I can honestly say I have never seen it captured on film
   so perfectly as Klipper has been able to achieve here. The raves that OPRAH has given it are certainly well deserved. This beautiful book is a sure winner!!!

4 comments about A Time to Keep Silence (New York Review Books Classics).

1. "A Time To Keep Silence" is travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor's beautifully written account of visits to a number of European monasteries (Benedictine and Cistercian) and later to the ruins of an even older Turkish desert community in his efforts to understand the continuing appeal of the monastic way of life. An outsider, Fermor frankly acknowledges his contemporary bias, making it clear he's a man of the world whose direct intention is not to seek a believer's purification of soul. Instead, he wants to discover why an initially unattractive way of life, one that must strike a big-city dweller like himself as filled with deprivation and sadness, has continued through the centuries to exert its appeal upon men, men of a sort he discovers through his own experience to be not only psychologically balanced, but largely happy.
   
   The telling insight Fermor receives from his initial stay at St. Wandrille's, one reconfirmed after visits through the years to other Benedictine abbeys, is that hidden within abbey walls is something truly magical, "the slow and cumulative spell of healing quietness." Whereas the abbey had struck him first as a place about as exciting as a "graveyard," it becomes one where he discovers, after a painful adjustment, that he can dispense with interfering trivalities and begin to look at life steadily and whole. Not surprisingly, when he returns to the outside world, he has to adjust once again, the world now seeming after his monastic stay "an inferno of noise and vulgarity entirely populated by bounders and sluts and crooks."
   
   Fermor's insights in this book are equally matched by his extraordinary descriptive powers. Like any true poet, he is enough a lover of the world's body to give it a memorable description. When he speaks of the long sleeves of monks' robes brushing the floor, for instance, he says they are "like the ends of elephants' trunks." And describing the arid desert location of the long since abandoned Turkish monastery, he talks of "lion-colored uplands" and "biscuit-colored villages." Far from simply telling what he sees, Fermor through stunning word painting allows his readers the pleasure of seeing with him.



2. Another great book by a great travel writer. This is a very quick read, but absolutely stuffed with erudition. For all but the most educated, it wouldn't hurt to read this with Wikipedia as a companion piece. As with his other travel books, the mix of architecture, history, linguistics, and an obvious personal touch lend an air of familiarity which, in the end, help give the impression that you have experienced these things yourself.
   
   I once read a review which stated this book concluded that the vow of silence and other retreats from secular life were not effective or warranted in some circumstances. In my opinion, this conclusion was not reached by the author. The opposite appears to be true - Fermor's return to secular life seemed to be more traumatic than his adjustment period during his first visit. His understanding is remarkable and serves as a good lesson to the casual reader - his hosts honestly believe they are suffering in order to atone for the sins of the world, and they ask for nothing in return.



3. The other night, needing a calm book after an agitating day, I re-read this short but typically-- granted this author's ability to convey much depth in a few pages-- account of the famed travel writer's visits to monasteries. His simple account focuses on a long stay at St Wandrille's in Belgium, a bit of Solesmes, more at La Grande Trappe in France, and the journey later among the ruins of Cappadocian foundations in Turkey.
   
   Fermor knows his limitations in retreating to such places in search of solitude to work on his own manuscripts. He tries to take on the mystery of the call to silence even as he tries to put it into words, to account for its appeal to a few and its strangeness to many of us. The results may not please all readers, for Fermor submits to the difference he encounters, and so by his lay status must remain too at the margins of what the monks take decades to live within. Writing well before Vatican II, Fermor conjures up an astonishingly austere regimen that he glimpses among the Trappists at their motherhouse; the Belgian Benedictines, by contrast, earn much more time for study and scholarship.
   
   I wondered, in the decades since, how many monks remain at such European houses. Fermor provides us with efficiently told summaries of the past depredations and recoveries of such venerable communities, and one closes Fermor's depictions of life as it was lived there a half a century ago with a realization of how close it was to observances centuries older. Again, such a description leaves me to ponder how much as been altered and how much remains the same given the enormous shifts in Catholic practice and the decline in vocations since then.
   
   This reflection leads to the comparatively short glimpse of the biscuit-colored mountains, with their pyramidical, anthill-like terrain, that housed some of the first monks in Christianity. The photos, as the one on the cover show, of this forbidding terrain remind me of an objective correlative for La Grande Trappe. The caves, the few remains, the hostile environment present, it seems, Fermor with a sense of an otherworldly terrain in more ways than one.



4. I'm a big fan of Fermor's writing and this little gem of a book is a departure from the classic travel works he has given us. In this short book, Fermor describes life in several monasteries where silence defines the world of the monk. Fermor stipulates that as a guest in these places he will never achieve the level of faith and monastic practice that the monks do, but he shines a light on their world, giving the reader a glimpse of an existence we've always wondered about but rarely got to know.

No comments about Extreme Restaurants.

No comments about Thailand's Islands & Beaches (Regional Guide).

5 comments about Travelers' Tales Thailand: True Stories.

1. This book arrived in great condition. It is a very helpful guide to first time visitors to Thailand



2. This is a hybrid bewteen guide book and an anthology of travel stories. Quite a novel concept, except that it doesn't work so well as a guide book. There are only a couple of dozen pages on visas, weather and other practical issues towards the end of the book. This book works much better as a collection of beautifully essays - some of the best work by authors like Pico Iyer, Joe Cummings, Ian Buruma and many others.
   
   These essays are highly varied in terms of style and theme. Some are downright romantic and introspective. Some provide a little insider's information on things that most tourists miss out. Some are incisive social commentaries which touch on subjects which may be considered taboo by the sensitive Thais. The editors have attempted to organise the articles in 4 main parts, namely:
   
   1.Essence of Thailand
   2.Some Things to Do
   3.Going Your Own Way
   4.In the Shadows
   
   The 5th part only has one essay. The way these parts are named may cause some confusion. For instance, "some things to do" may contain Pico Iyer's musings on the impact on Thai tourism.
   
   I would give it 5 stars for the great prose, highly enlightening pieces like "Who Was Anna Leonowens" by William Warren and the brutal honesty of many of the articles that are not afraid to go against everything the travel brochures tell us. It's an extremely goo read for people who wish to explore the kingdom or stay awhile. But for the somewhat misleading format and arrangement, I would minus one star.



3. Well written; excellent research. Will be using the book during my stay... I want to visit all these wonderful places that are off the track.



4. I love collections of stories about any one country, all rendered in one book. They allow true insight into the geography, demography, religion, and customs. This book on Thailand is superb. The stories about the cities, villages, the parks, the forests, people, absolutely beautiful and incredible. Getting around doesn't sound as cumbersome as some reports from acquaintances. Taking the water route in Bangkok instead of taxis sounds delightful, and the stories on the "sex trade" don't make it sound so awful.
   
   After reading all the tales, I feel as if I had actually been there. I hope to find more books on other countries just like this one.



5. I was surprised to find my own story published in this book. Anyone thinking of visiting Thailand should do it. I have been there two more times since I wrote this story about 30 years ago. Hello to any former Peace Corps volunteers who lived there when I did.

5 comments about French or Foe?: Getting the Most Out of Visiting, Living and Working in France.

1. As the relatively new kids on the geopolitical block, we Americans often misunderstand how the rest of the world operates, none more so than our amis ancien the French. I came across this book in a Genevan bookstore shortly after moving there and it has helped me immeasurably over the years. My Parisian friends have enjoyed and confirmed the truth and wisdom contained in its pages.
   
   Who knew that approaching the French in a typically American way with a big smile and focus on the task at hand is considered disingenuous and rude? How amazingly different is the response I consistently get with a deadpan expression, proper greeting and speaking French first before getting down to business!
   
   A whole host of helpful tips, from playing devil's advocate during an evening together, politically incorrect flirtation, and the customer not always being right, are covered here in a humorous and easy-to-remember fashion. Understanding builds the bridge to friendship. After all, the French have been our friends since before we became a sovereign country, even if it, as President Sarkozy has said, "friendship means accepting that friends can have different opinions."



2. Polly Platt's book is a mixture of valuable insight and eye-rolling pompousness. To give her due credit, the first chapter is full of useful information and essentially contains all that you will need to know from this book. Soon thereafter the book descends into a name-dropping snobbery and gives all the tips you'd need to know if you were visiting with the upper 3% of French society. Much of what Ms. Platt reveals about French culture seems to be outdated and of little relevance to the middle and lower-class French people that a visitor will no doubt actually be coming into contact with. Indeed, the author leaves the reader feeling that they would not be allowed at Ms. Platt's own dinner table.
   
   When I visited Paris I certainly found some of her information useful, such as her recommendation to use "The Ten Magic Words" (again, in the first chapter), and whether many of the French we came across were smiling and accommodating for this reason, I cannot say. Read this book and you will likely make fewer cultural mistakes in France than you would have if you hadn't, but read it knowing it is not the last word on French culture, and does not apply to most of the French population.



3. On my first visit to France, I loved the French and France. Now that I am living here and experiencing full throttle culture shock, it's a little different.
   
   Whilst trying to understand my cultureshock, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't read Platt's book on my first visit..but I did before I arrived here to live permanently.
   
   I realised that while it's 'just a book' she actually did instill some kind of a fear and paranoia within me that I was offending people left right and center when it wasn't the case at all. Her book is totally at odd's with my experiences of people and it has actually created a lot of misunderstandings because her words have echoed in my mind...but in 2008 PP is totally out of touch with reality in France..
   Her book is beyond outdated and she writes for a highly uppercrust society with money. Clearly not the folks I hang out with.
   
   She has a new book out which looks even more stereotypical and cliche ridden than the other two, this time about relationships French style. According to an article about the book she claims French women allow their husbands to have affairs and spend their pay packets on sexy lingerie.
   
   Does PP really live in France? I'm not sure how it's possible..



4. Overall I agree with many of the other reviews here in that the information presented by Ms. Platt is helpful for someone moving to France. Don't expect a well written or well edited book though. Some sentence structure simply doesn't make sense, which is odd because Ms. Platt's native language is english.



5. I just finished reading "French or Foe". I loved it!!!! I am an Australian, I had lived in Paris for almost 2 years in 1997-98 and now find myself living in the US. I have been rather shocked since moving here at the level of cultural misunderstanding there is about the French. I was fortunate enough to make some wonderful French friends whilst there. One friend's family practically adopted me as their own and we still keep in touch today, in fact the whole family - aunts and uncles, mother and my friend will be visiting me and my new American husband out here in Oregon within a year or so. I love that about the French, their loyalty to a friendship once made doesn't dim over the course of time.
   I have been soul sick for France ever since I left and have never stopped longing to return for good. France is one place I could live and die in very happily. Surprisingly your book has helped me understand a lot more about the American culture! Learning the polychronic and monochronic differences helped me no end in understanding why it has been so difficult for me to adjust to living in the US - I now know I am definitely an Australian polychronic personality. Although I think I will continue to have difficulties adjusting to life here, the knowledge has brought a great deal of understanding about my particular situation.
   Thank you for sharing so many interesting stories about your life in your work and for the thoroughly entertaining and educational read that it is, I hope that you and your family are well, and I look forward to reading Savoir-Flair next!

5 comments about The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas.

1. One of Theroux's best train trips. You can really feel the shifting landscapes as he moves through the latitudes...



2. Terrific in every way, as all of Theroux's travel books are! Not a word too many, and not an insight overlooked in this adventure through the Americas. Wonderful, beautiful, and a treasured book in my library.



3. Note: I made some immature Mormon angry because of my negative reviews of books that attempted to prove the Book of Mormon, and that person has been slamming my reviews almost as fast as they are posted.
   
   So, your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks, and note that a short review is not necessarily a bad review if it leads you to a great book.
   
   From Boston to Patagonia by train. What an adventure. As I wrote in my review of the "Great Railway Bazaar," treat yourself to traveling the easy way and read one of Paul Theroux's books.
   
   Peter Mathiessen described the "Old Patagonian Express" perfectly: "Sharp-eyed, honest, and exceptionally well-written...an implacable landscape, conveyed through a series of marvelous encounters."



4. In 1979, Paul Theroux departed from his childhood home in Medford, Massachusetts, and began his train journey from the East Coast of the United States to Patagonia, on the southern tip of Argentina. A seasoned traveler, fluent in Spanish, Theroux brings to life his trip through the northern and southern hemispheres, traveling without a schedule and observing his fellow passengers on the train and people at stops along the way.
   
   In Texas he is astonished at the contrasts between Laredo on the Texas side of the Rio Grande and Nuevo Laredo across the border in Mexico, commenting on society and governments. Traveling through Mexico and Guatemala, he observes the poverty of the Indians and their lack of opportunities. In El Salvador he attends a soccer game and gets caught up in the melee and riots which follow it. In Costa Rica, the cleanest country he has visited, he finds himself stuck on the train with Mr. Thornberry, a New Hampshire tourist so boring that Theroux cannot wait to escape him--only to have Mr. Thornberry "save his life" by offering him a place to stay upon his arrival in Limon. In Panama he meets the "Zonians," from the Canal Zone, and in Cali, Colombia, he meets a married "priest" who cannot tell his devout mother in Belfast that he has "left" the church to marry and have children.
   
   Throughout his trip, Theroux reads classics, particularly enjoying Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson and Edgar Allen Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Related Tales (The World's Classics), both of which provide ironic reference points for his own journey. For literature lovers, the most fascinating section occurs in Buenos Aires, where Theroux spends many days visiting blind writer Jorge Luis Borges, who persuades Theroux to read to him. Ironically, one of Borges's favorite novels is The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. As Theroux takes notes on his meetings with Borges, he becomes Borges's Boswell.
   
   More an observer than a participant, Theroux has an unfortunate air of superiority about what he sees and hears. Sparing little sympathy for American and German tourists, he rarely gets excited about his surroundings, expressing genuine emotion only when he talks with three boys, ages ten to twelve, who live in a doorway and scavenge for food because their rural families have abandoned them. Theroux's self-congratulatory attitude gets a bit wearisome, but the picture of Central and South America, thirty years ago, and the section with Borges are unparalleled. With beautiful, carefully observed prose and a great ear for dialogue, Theroux's Patagonian Express is a landmark travel memoir. Mary Whipple
   
   Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown
   The Great Railway Bazaar
   Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China
   The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific
   Theroux: Collected Stories



5. You may find Thoreaux's openness and directness refreshing, or you may find his brashness, arrogance, condescension, and hypocritical judgementalism revolting. If the latter is true, take heart that this book actually becomes enjoyable once you get past the first hundred pages or so...
   
   Maybe others will better appreciate Thoreaux's attempts at humor, but the first hundred pages of this book could arguably compete for the most off-putting intro ever written. Before even beginning to prove a thing about himself (unless he's relying on an established reputation?), he devotes a few pages to trashing the state of current travel literature as being formulaic and overly focused on the destination vs. the journey. Beginning his story, he immediately picks a couple of confrontations with fellow passengers: correcting an elderly man who likens the New England winter landscape to Siberia ("Actually, there isn't this much snow in Siberia") and contradicting a 20 year old radical girl ("I wouldn't call them radical... they're smug views, self-important ones. Egocentric, you might say.").
   
   Clearly Thoreaux is self-aware enough that this impression must be intentional, but it just doesn't work. Thoreaux is trying too hard to *tell* you to how to regard his work and the people he meets, rather than let you draw the same conclusions by just portraying people and their behaviors. There are so many better travel writers out there today (maybe this wasn't the case in the 70s when this was written) that this is inexcusable. Bryson is far funnier, Dalrymple far more insightful and also pretty funny.
   
   Fortunately, Thoreaux gets more bearable further into the book. He's most insightful when he reflects on the nature of writing and his reasons for traveling alone, avoiding idle chatter that gets in the way of more thoughtful observation ("I am diverted, but it is discovery not diversion that I seek.") After pages of tolerating idle chatter from a fellow traveler Thornberry, I'm finally able to sympathize with Thoreaux's cruel fantasy of pushing Thornberry off the train. The stories get more interesting as Thoreaux's adventurousness and openness lead him into situations where tourists rarely go- a Salvadorean soccer game where the players stop to watch a fight in the stands, the "simmering anarchy" of a Panamian high school (liken to a `50s American high school), the chaos of the utterly untouristy Barranquilla, mass altitude sickness on a train through the Andes... Throughout the journey, Thoreaux colors the narrative with short excerpts from books he is reading including the Adventure of Gordon Arthur Pym and Life of Johnson. By the end of the journey, Thoreaux seems a little more humble, reflecting on the pointlessness of his journey, but knowing the story needed to be told.

5 comments about Flying the Alaska Wild: The Adventures and Misadventures of an Alaska Bush Pilot.

1. gave as gift -- very well received



2. i'm only into the 3rd chapter of this book but i have really enjoyed the read thus far. i'm not a pilot but i do alot of flying in flight sims so i have at least 1/2 a clue as to what he's talking about! its well written, easy to understand, descriptive but not to a point where u get lost in the details. its easy on my imagination if that makes any sense. will certainly enjoy reading the rest! if u like the book, his email address is in the back! just makes it that much more personal.



3. This book is a great read. I really enjoyed the way the author decribed the various (and precarious) places he found himself in. The stories were very entertaining to the point of: I can't put down this book right now... read faster... what's going to happen... is he going to make it?!!
   
   I found the book quite edge of the seat at times, hoping he would make it. At other times, I found myself feeling like I was right in the co-pilot's seat seeing the world as he saw it. Trying to fly from here to there in Alaska makes for quite an adventure, sign me up!
   
   Again, GREAT book. Definitely a keeper.
   
   MJ



4. I enjoyed the book. I'm a flight simulator fan. The book is interesting and only a bit technical. Well written.



5. Oh, wow! This book is fantastic! Mort Mason's personality is hilarious, and he does an amazing job making life as an Alaska bush pilot come to life. He imbues the book with humor and warmth, isn't afraid to make fun of himself, and he leaves the reader with a true understanding of how Alaska and bush flying can become a part of your soul and your identity. He's an amazing writer, a gifted story teller and, apparently, a hell of a pilot as well. His book makes me want to sit down on a wooden swing on the back deck of an Alaska cabin and listen to him tell stories all night long. He gives you good technical info on flying, but it's not dry and it's easy to understand, even for the non-flier (like me). An awesome read!