No Shitting In The Toilet (Other travel guides...)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Other travel guides...
Date:	14/10/02 (115 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny, lively, easy to read

Disadvantages: Not the thing if you're after a serious guide book, more fiction than fact? Maybe.

Yes that is the real title of this book….

Meet Peter. That’s Peter Moore. Australian. Older than your average backpacker and yet that is indeed what he does. He travels from place to place – mainly in 3rd world countries – writing the odd piece to finance himself as he goes. This book is one of those pieces, or rather a collection of them. A cross between „The Virgin Now Boarding“ and „The Top 10 Of Everything“, this is a travel guide with a difference. As it says on the cover, this is the book for “when you’ve really lost it”.

This is a guide book for nowhere and, at the same time, everywhere. There are no blow by blow accounts to where to find the best deals in Hong Kong, nor street maps indicating the more inhabitable hotels and hostels in New York. Moore believes, you see, that you should “never stay in a place recommended by a guide book” – it’ll either no longer be there, or it will be packed to the brim with tourists who all read the same book. There are no photos, no pictures of any kind except for the lovely cockroach gracing the cover. It’s not that kind of guide.

Instead, crack open the cover and you’ll find 256 pages of hard text. 24 chapters covering everything from transport, accommodation and food to souvenirs, sex and surfing the net while you’re away. Then there’s the why to travel, where to travel and when to travel aspects. He even includes a guide to guide books, although I think he lets Let’s Go off a little lightly. After each section there’s a compilation of Peter’s personal Top 10…, for example his top 10 horrific bus rides, challenging border posts, best meals, traveling tunes and what I believe to be one long ego trip for him, his top 10 close shaves. My favourite? Top 10 worst times to travel including, in no particular order, spring, summer, autumn, winter, the wet seas
on, the dry season and so on.

In a lot of ways, Peter reminds me of myself, although I’m not sure whether or not this is a good thing. He thinks “travel is not about relaxing or taking a break. It’s about throwing yourself in at the deep end, and hoping you don’t drown”, a sentiment I entirely agree with.

The book is very easy to read – more like a novel than a text book guide per se. I started it about 9pm on Saturday and it was finished by 12 noon the next day, with an 11 hour sleep in between. It’s full of anecdotes which are certainly interesting and entertaining, if not all that useful. It’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you cringe and if you get a little over-enthusiastic with the page flipping, it’ll give you some paper cuts to make you cry. Worth a look, even at the exorbitant sum I paid for the privilege of buying an English book abroad.

As for the title? I though it was one of those linguistic tranaslationy cross cultural things. But no. The meant just what they wrote. At the bar where this sign hangs, there is a grate over the customer loo so no deposits of the solid variety can easily be left. Gives you something to think about really.

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No Shitting In The Toilet

By Peter Moore

Published by Bantam

ISBN: 0553814516

RRP 6.99 GBP

Summary: