:: travellingcari.com ::

So I’m not totally crazy in that I wouldn’t love to live within spitting distance of work and school, however commuting by bus/train has its benefits. Namely I have my reading time back, something rarely seen last year. Today I read 106 pages between the morning and the evening commutes and loved it.

Much like For Love and a Beetle, Unlikely Destinations/Once While Travelling tells the story of travel in days long gone. I’m finding it interesting to see how Tony and Maureen Wheeler got the idea to start up Lonely Planet and what their own early days of travel entailed. It’s also causing me to get LP some slack. I was a long-time LP devotee until I get fed up. I still find it frustrating that their guides are under-update, but I understand it isn’t easy to find someone to research and update the books. I no longer automatically reach for Lonely Planet, though I still end up reaching for them more often than not. I wasn’t wowed with Rick Steves’ Guides this summer when I tried them and was never overly thrilled with dk/Eyewitness either. I guess I just see LP as being good but would love to see them be great. There’s something to be said for their continued success over the last thirty years.

Also like this book and some others I’ve read, I find them interesting in that they cover some areas where I have very little interest in travelling. I’ve heard wonderful things about SE Asia and know many friends and coworkers who travelled there from Japan. There are some places I would like to see: Angkor Wat is the one that comes to mind first, however I don’t do heat and humidity well. I know that I’d be highly unlikely to enjoy these places, but they’re wonderful to read about. There’s also the other side of the backpacker culture that I don’t find to be much fun, the partying to excess. I think that’s part of the reason I have little to no desire to visit Bali, some of the Thai islands, etc. Nothing wrong with it, I just wouldn’t enjoy it. I remember looking hard to choose a Whitsunday trip where the focus wasn’t drinking to excess and in the end, I enjoyed the Port Douglas reef trip far more, although the views in the Whitsundays couldn’t be beat.

But I think that’s the best thing about independent travel and, along the same lines, the Lonely Planet guides. They allow you to pick and choose among activities that you would like and still have an amazing trip. A better trip, I tend to think, than being herded around. But that’s me…

Unlikely Destinations,  although billed as being written by both Tony and Maureen, is written primarily from Tony’s point of view, much in the same way that For Love and a Beetle was. Maybe I’m strange, but I’d like to hear more from the woman’s point of view, to see what their takes on the trips would be.  The interesting thing, having just read Bad Lands also about Tony’s recent trips, is seeing where the two converge: in both he reflects on missing the Buddhas of Bamiyan in the 1972 trips and consequently never having the chance to see them.
I’d love to one day meet the Wheelers and just have the chance to pick their brains, but for now this book is a good start. Can’t wait to read more tomorrow.