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Lonely Planet By the Seat of My Pants (Lonely Planet Travel Literature) Kindle Edition

by Wickham Boyle (Author), Tim Cahill (Author), Joshua Clark (Author), Format: Kindle Edition
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 144 ratings
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Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher

Humorous tales of travel and misadventure.

Lonely Planet knows that some of life's funniest experiences happen on the road. Whether they take the form of unexpected detours, unintended adventures, unidentifiable dinners or unforgettable encounters, they can give birth to our most found travel lessons, and our most memorable - and hilarious - travel stories.

These 31 globegirdling tales that run the gamut from close-encounter safaris to loss-of-face follies, hair-raising rides to culture-leaping brides, eccentric expats to mind-boggling repasts, wrong roads taken to agreements mistaken. The collection brings together some of the world's most renowned travellers and storytellers with previously unpublished writers.

Includes stories by Wickam Boyle, Tim Cahill, Joshua Clark, Sean Condon, Chistopher R.Cox, David Downie, Holly Erikson, Bill Fink, Don George, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Jeff Grenwald, Pico Iyer, Amanda Jones, Kathie Kertesz, Doug Lansky, Alexander Ludwick, Linda Watanabe McFerrin, Jan Morris, Brooke Neill, Rolf Potts, Laura Resau, Michelle Richmond, Alana Semuels, Deborah Steg, Judy Tierney, Edwin Tucker, Jeff Vize, Danny Wallace, Kelly Watton, Simon Wichester, Michelle Witton

About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel.

TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category

'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times

'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)

*#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

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  1. Part of series
    Lonely Planet Travel Literature
  2. Print length
    249 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  5. Publisher
    Lonely Planet
  6. Publication date
    May 1, 2015
  7. File size
    1426 KB
  8. Page Flip
    Enabled
  9. Word Wise
    Enabled
  10. Enhanced typesetting
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  11. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although the essays in this anthology of travel pieces are by an unusual mix of veteran travel writers and beginners, common threads run throughout: travel is surprising; it often tries your patience; and it teaches life lessons. Selected from entries in a competition on the Lonely Planet Web site, these tales of global journeys are almost uniformly funny. In "Blackout in Ushuaia," novelist and editor Michelle Richmond takes advantage of the lights going out on vacation at a South American ski resort with her husband by seizing the moment for a little lovemaking. Getting locked inside a Dutch men's room has travel writer Doug Lansky feeling like he's doing time in a solitary jail cell. In "The Afghan Tourist Office," first-time writer Alexander Ludwick tries to extend his visa with a nutty singing and dancing official who does a manic jog before applying his rubber stamp to the author's documents. Although a few stories in this book are too short to elicit a belly laugh, others will provide a riotous howl and a yen to wander. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

With the proviso that readers should approach anything labeled "humor" with a 10-foot-long barge pole, this collection of "humorous tales" is a genial enough gathering of "misadventures" from some of travel writing's bigger names. And so Jan Morris shares the instant karma delivered upon her for not traveling first class, as she quotes the British navy as traditionally doing. Simon Winchester describes "the most perfect hotel in the world" (London's Connaught) and the singularly remarkable event that once happened there. And the collection's venerable editor, George (he's now Lonely Planet's "global travel editor"), offers up his experience of grandly and unknowingly ordering an entire octopus in a Neapolitan restaurant. By design a lightweight book, this collection of 32 short pieces will provoke sympathetic nods, if not a steady flow of laughter, from its readers. For the larger travel collection. Alan Moores
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00V9CD500
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lonely Planet; 2nd edition (May 1, 2015)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 1, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1426 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 249 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 144 ratings

About the authors

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  1. Don George

    Don George

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  2. Christopher R. Cox

    Christopher R. Cox

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    My name is Christopher R. Cox and I am a recovering journalist. After nearly 20 years as a staff feature reporter for daily newspapers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Lowell and Boston, Massachusetts, where I racked up numerous national and regional awards -- but little financial lucre -- I left the business in 2005 to embark on a full-time regimen of freelance writing, Larium, and Third World travel. Alas, the lucre still escapes me. In its stead I've been able to visit the back of beyond (East Timor, anyone?) for such glossies as Conde Nast Traveler, Audubon, Caribbean Travel & Life, Global Traveler, ESPN: The Magazine, DestinAsian and Reader’s Digest.

    My non-fiction efforts also include the critically acclaimed adventure-travel book, "Chasing the Dragon: Into the Heart of the Golden Triangle" (Henry Holt & Co., 1996; Owl Books, 1997), about Burma’s narco-warlords, and travels-from-hell (Cambodia Section) dispatches to two Lonely Planet anthologies, "Tales from Nowhere" (2006) and "By the Seat of My Pants" (2005).

    "A Good Death" (St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books, 2013) is my first novel. One of the first rules of fiction is: Write about what you know. Having traveled to Southeast Asia nearly 40 times since 1991, I had a wealth of material to draw upon for the narrative, which begins in Bangkok, Thailand, skirts Kanchanaburi (site of the Bridge on the River Kwai)and runs through the kingdom's little-visited northeast Isan region before plunging into off-the-grid Laos. How undeveloped is the one-party Communist state wedged between Thailand and Vietnam? When I first visited in 1992, four digits were enough to handle the country's entire telephone system. Communications have since vastly improved, though Laos remains an enigma -- the perfect setting for the long-standing mystery at the heart of my story.

    Happy trails!

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  3. Judy Tierny

    Judy Tierny

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Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
144 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Jessica Richardson
5.0 out of 5 stars A mockery of life :D
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2020
Let's say it's was when I was sojourning for freedom in London hosted in a lovely modern youth hostel that I came across this fantastic book. I took it as a present from destiny, a gift of life that is a seasoning mix of divers/various "comic" misadventures of common individuals in uncommon places set in emotionally eloquent surrondings that have the remarkable aptness of defining and giving what it takes to travel in an unfamilliar world by "undaunted" adventurers characters. Those tales talently recreate or deconstruct statures through customs of well-to-do societies surely inviting similarly, cheery, sincere, jocund, self-righteous, insensitive and sarcastic persons in a clownish style and with sophisticated, amusing punchlines. As I read it, feeling undue awareness of oneself during that process I would shyly recommand some to download or buy the book, it really worths the try.
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Superior.Shores
4.0 out of 5 stars Better Than Expected
Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2020
I have read travel collections of short travel stories and have never been impressed. Perhaps it is the variety of experiences by a variety of authors, however this one kept me going over a period of about three days, and now I want more!
Travel should be an adventure and these authors certainly did have adventures. Each story will have a meaning for every traveler who has seen the world and wants more. The last story (and don’t jump right to it) struck me the most. I couldn’t believe that that was the end.
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Nici Locher
3.0 out of 5 stars Easy reading
Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2018
Verified Purchase
A book of various personal travel experiences, some more interesting than others. My preference is traveling with one person rather than various people.
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Amcd19
5.0 out of 5 stars Travel stories
Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2021
Wow! Some if the stories were so funny, I laughed out loud, and a few were sad and heartfelt. I recommend this book.
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Pescatarian pete
4.0 out of 5 stars Move ‘em Out
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2020
Picked this fir some light but entertaining material while traveling about - a mixed bag here, some essays were funny and bright, a few just so- so, or... a ‘mixed bag’ of sorts . Some of the situations written about were indeed funny and for these I’d recommend this collection .
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vegstuf
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read
Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2021
Lots of great stories, laughs and goofy stuff plus just interesting happenings while traveling. If you like short stories and travel, you’ll enjoy this
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Earthtripgirl
5.0 out of 5 stars Great variety of stories
Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2020
You will be moved. Transported. You will laugh out loud. You need to read this book. I want to read it over and over again. Want to go to the places in the stories. I will bring many pens, practice my dancing and suspend my appetite. But for now I must quarantine while the world waits for this Coronavirus to go away.
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E. Ward
3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable but predictable
Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2019
I never realized how similar that most travel writing is. Interesting predicaments in different locations. Like Norman Lear plays.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Very amusing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 10, 2020
Verified Purchase
Very amusing stories, some funnier than others and many laugh out loud stories. Also encouraged me to want to go on new adventures
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Bronwyn
3.0 out of 5 stars Para aprender sobre otros países sin moverte de tu casa
Reviewed in Spain on April 14, 2016
Verified Purchase
Por supuesto hubo unas historias cortas que me gustaron más que otras, pero en general me gustó el libro y poder viajar con la mente a sitios tan distintos.
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 stars Two Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2015
Verified Purchase
It's very much an "OK" book and probably not worth the full price.
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Martin Green
1.0 out of 5 stars One Star
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 14, 2014
Verified Purchase
Read two stories and thought "these people are really stupid" and threw the book away
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