Abandoned Ship - Book Review

I recently finished the book Abandoned Ship: An intimate account of the Costa Concordia shipwreck by Benji Smith.  The book is the author's first hand account of the sinking of the Costa Concordia.

He starts out at the beginning, how he and his fiance, Emily, came to book this cruise as their honeymoon vacation.  He tells a little bit about his family and life before the cruise, it helps set the stage for the experience. His story ends with his writing of the book and includes everything in between. 

Their experience was in some ways probably pretty typical, and in other ways unique.  No, they were not on one of the first lifeboats.  They were on the rope bridge down the hull of the ship waiting to be rescued.

The book is authentic, told from the first person and expressing as much of the emotion from the time of the incident as possible.  For some, it might seem overly critical, or as though their was an agenda in writing the book, beyond telling the story. However, when you survive a ship wreck I think you're entitled to have an agenda against those who wrong you, if you so choose.  You're also entitled to fixate on whatever details help get you through that time.

I enjoy how he gives credit to everyone, not matter their role.  So whether all they did was keep someone else from panicing or if they arranged the rope bridge and saved hundreds of lives, he gives them credit for the work they did. Everyone has a role, and no judgement on what role was more important.  But, if they didn't contribute anything, he called them out. 

The story Benji tells is a good one for travelers and for Emergency Managers.  It's a cautionary tale about the difficulties you'll face during a major emergency, even when there are people who should be helping you. It will remind you to have copies of your passport and credit cards.  It will remind you to be empathetic and compassionate to those in need.

Women on the Road - Book Review

I've gotten a little bit behind on some of my reading and after a few months of distraction I finally sat down to review the book Woman on the Road. 

The book is a guide for female baby-boomers looking to travel the world, with an emphasis on solo.  While I'm a few years younger then a baby-boomer, I still enjoyed this book and thought it would be a great value for travelers of all ages.  

While the book does lean towards supporting longer term traveler, the information in it is easily applicable to one or two week vacations too. 

They cover all the topics you'll face and in great detail in just 200 pages:

Saving money for your trip, choosing accomidations, travel options, packing, choosing destinations (including what time of year you'll be traveling), dealing with hagglers and beggars, volunteering, reaclimating to home and everything in between. 

What's even better they not only cover all of these topics in depth, they offer a wide range of considerations.  You're budget is tight, then couchsurfing might be better.  Heck, even if you have a bigger budget you might want to go to more expensive destinations and still couchsurf. 

Perhaps you want to integrate some cultural experiences into your trip, try a cooking class or language class.

At the end they conclude with checklists (based on time before trip starts), itineraries of varying lengths and what I think is the coolest element that you don't usually see in books like this.  Brief interviews with woman who actually did this.  How they traveled, what issues they had, budget, and safety.  I think this final section sets this book apart from others by adding a human element that makes a trip seem more tangable. 

Ebook Review: Art of Solo Travel: A Girls Guide

I recently got an opportunity to read an advance portion of the ebook Art of Solo Travel, and since then have read the whole book. While this is touted as a Girl's guide, I found that the "girl" part was a small part of the book and it has a lot of information about general travel.

I found the book to be a quick, easy and informative read.

The good:
The most info I've seen about Couchsurfing.
It's encouraging.
Good information on dealing with your family.


The bad:
Not as much information specific to women.
Could have more information about other forms of lodging.
Thought the section on saving money and budgeting was a little thin.
It's a little light on recommending safety tips - such as read up on self defense. I've taken self defense classes in the past and even doing it it hard, reading about it isn't going to do much for you.

Overall it is a good book. I've read some similar stuff before which I found a little more information rich then this book. However, this book is more up to date and is handy in an ebook format. For those of you experience travelers, you can probably skip this book. But for a novice or someone who needs some encouragement you'll find great value in this book.

If you're interested in supporting my blog while purchasing the book, please use this link.

Wanderlust and Lipstick - Book Review

I just finished reading Wanderlust and Lipstick by Beth Whitman. It's a book/guide for women traveling alone. The book is pretty good and an easy read. Beth gives encouragement to women to travel outside the normal spots and to fight the excuses not to travel. The book simply covers just about every aspect of travel, guiding women to and through travel.

The most informative chapter, in my opinion, is the one about staying healthy. Everyone worries about pick pockets, how to get to the hotel, but unless people have medical problems they usually assume they will be healthy on vacation, which isn't always the case. This book makes you realize that things can happen and makes some suggestions to help yourself in case you do get sick.

What I didn't like about the book? It was basic at times.

An experienced traveler could skip this book, but its a great resource for more novice travelers or those looking for encouragement.

Book Review: A Brilliant Teacher

I've finally finished reading the book A Brilliant Teacher: Lessons Learned From One Family's Journey Around the World by Steve Rhine &Toby Abraham-Rhine. The Rhine family - Mom, Dad and 3 kids took 8 months off and traveled the world - Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Europe, Africa and South America. There are 3 different things I want to talk about - their trip, the book and how it affected them.

I was sometimes frustrated by their trip, because they were doing things cheaply (they did go into debt for this trip) they sometimes wasted a lot of time. While I like to save money myself I do prescribe to the idea that time is money so to see them skip a tour and do things themselves, which sometimes ended in not seeing what they wanted to see, was frustrating to me. Then other times they would skip the tour and do to a comedy of errors would end up spending just as much money and more time and see less. I also can't imagine staying in some of the accommodations they stayed in, I give them credit for that. While I'm ok with hostels and basic accommodations I'm not sure I can do bugs and dirty places. Do you need to sleep with bugs to know how the locals live? Maybe.

The book was at times very interesting and at other times slow and not as in-depth as I would have liked. I just didn't always click with them in a way that drew me in. At times it seemed to be a bit more about the adventure then about the experience. But I often have this problem with travel books, they talk so much about the experience but not the impact, I rarely connect with the author as much as I would have liked. This is where the Epilogue comes in, it was the reward for reading the book. The other gem of the book is little sidebar types of things scatter throughout the book on different topics - Philosophy's, Extrovertism, Progress, Harmony, Intimacy. These often bridged the gap that I was stuck at.

While the impact of the trip is seen in the sidebars the Epilogue tells the tale. I'm not sure how the Epilogue would read though without reading the rest of the book. Here they talk about their re-entry to American life. A couple years ago I listened to a podcast about couple who had taken a year off and traveled and lived in Europe, at the end they talked about their re-entry and there were some commonalities, though I think expressed differently. The idea of these big stores where you can get any of 8,000 types of a single item was a change. Also the American idea of consumption and consuming whatever you want - it could be cars, big houses, food or any of a number of things. After a trip like this there is a profound impact in how you look at America and Americans. The Rhines spent a good about of time in 3rd world countries and have learned a bit about the difference between wants and needs. When they wrote the book, a year after the trip, they wondered if their children had gotten a lot out of it. They traveled in 2001. I heard Rick Steves interview them recently and their children did seem to get something out of it, their oldest daughter certainly did and struck me as being a better person for it.

It's not the best book I've read, but far from the worst either. A Brilliant Teacher certainly has a place in travel books. Anyone who is considering traveling around the world, with or without children would benefit from this. Or just families considering travel with children could certainly learn from this. There are lessons to be learned on traveling, on experiencing the world and the resilience of children. They really are harder to screw up then one would think.

Bad Lands by Tony Wheeler - A book review

Bad Lands: A tourist on the Axis of Evil.

About a year ago I read this book and really enjoyed it. Tony Wheeler discusses his travels through some of the countries known as "the axis of evil." Afghanistan, Albania, Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia. I'll admit there weren't too many surprises for me when I read the book since I had heard an interview with Tony Wheeler before reading the book. But still I was surprised that he wasn't too impressed with Cuba, seemed to love Iran, and I'm not sure if he was as unimpressed as I was with Saudi Arabia.

What I liked about the book was that it wasn't too heavy. A book about these countries you might expect to be heavy with drama and politics, but it was really about the experience of being there. It's an unconventional look at these countries, nothing you'll see on your network news.

So, what was wrong with Cuba? The fact that a tourist could buy anything they wanted, but a Cuban can't. He didn't like the double standard that was imposed by the government. The good about Iran - the people, they're very warm and hospitable. Iranian's are nothing like you would think based on what you see in the news, but the do have a dramatically different public life then their private life. What's up with Saudi Arabia, an ally of the United States? I can't visit until I'm married or an old maid (a 45 year old single female for the Saudi's.) Well I could go, except that I don't think my father would go with me and he was my only other in. After reading this book I was more interested in visiting North Korea then Saudi Arabia, maybe I wouldn't be allowed to take pictures at leisure, but at least I was welcome to go out in public.