No Touch Monkey! and Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late

Ayun Halliday may not make for the most sensible travel companion, but she is certainly one of the zaniest, with a knack for inserting herself (and her unwitting cohorts) into bizarre situations around the globe. Curator of kitsch and unabashed aficionada of pop culture, Halliday offers bemused, self-deprecating narration of events from guerilla theater in Romania to drug-induced Apocalypse Now reenactments in Vietnam to a perhaps more surreal collagen-implant demonstration at a Paris fashion show emceed by Lauren Bacall. From taming the wild dog packs of Bali to requiring the services of a bonesetter in Sumatra, Ayun Halliday offers up the best of her itinerant foibles as examples of how not to travel abroad. For instance, on layover show more in Amsterdam, Halliday finds unlikely trouble in the red-light district—eliciting the ire of a tiny, violent madam,—and is forced to explain tampons, which she admits, “might have looked like white cotton bullets lined up in their box,†to soldiers in Kashmir—“They’re for ladies. Bleeding ladies.†A self-admittedly bumbling vacationer, Halliday shares—with razorsharp wit and to hilarious effect—the travel stories most are too self-conscious to tell. show less

I’m a cautious traveler but even so, things sometimes go wrong. I’m amazed Ayun Halliday is still alive. In her traveling career, she just roars into the unknown with no money, forethought, food, or common sense. From wandering through a midnight jungle searching for a wedding to instead being attacked by a pack of dogs, to buying mystery drugs from a sketchy salesman in Vietnam, to being assaulted by an angry madam for snapping pics of working girls in Amsterdam’s red light district, to dislocating her knee miles from help in Indonesia, she’s certainly had her share of misadventures. I can’t wing it. She’s braver than I am.

I bought this book at a little used bookstore on vacation in Illinois, because I have loved Halliday's writing on parenting and I have loved Seal Press. I was deeply disappointed.

This was a book full of privileged blundering into cultures around the world that lacked any kind of self-awareness. Yes, much of her behavior could easily be forgiven as the self-centered obliviousness of youth - had only there been any sort of acknowledgement that the author now realized how kind of fucked up some of these interactions were. But that's not the perspective of this book. Rather, the book if from the view of -- Look at all the wacky hijinks I got up to before I had kids and being a parent made all of this impossible!

It's not that she ever does show more anything awful, it's just that the tone of the whole thing was not really something I could relate to or enjoy much.

Super skippable. show less

I really enjoyed this book, and in fact have read it twice. I can relate to the authors experience and attitude. Her twisted and sometimes bizarre decision making process is much like my own, and so reading her stories is like reading a much hipper, more exciting, alternative history of my own life. She has led a very interesting life and I always enjoy her books (this is the second I have read). I hope she someday writes a story about traveling with Inky, as I'm sure that would be full of interesting stories as well. I recommend this book to anyone who likes the road less traveled. It's a fun read.

This is one of the best travel books I’ve read in my entire life (and I’ve read quite a few). Ayun is so funny and the way she tells her stories leaves you laughing long after you’ve put down the book.
Sorry, that last paragraph sounds really fake, but it’s true.
I picked up this book because of it’s great cover, and the fact that I was supposed to be going to Bali that summer, but because of American Airlines screwing us over, the whole summer was cancelled, and the book included a lot of mentions of Bali, and I thought I could trick my mind into believing I had gone there by reading tons of travel books. I started reading it at home, and found every chapter entertaining. Later, when I realized the trip to Bali was back on show more (no help to American Airlines, which is actually coming close to ruining this summer’s planned vacation to Italy…) I found it hard to keep some of the book unread for the plane ride.
After speeding through this book, I finished it one lazy day on a beach in Sanur, Bali with the sun setting before me. Every store was hilarious and I felt so fortunate to find a travel writer who wasn’t smug or totally lame in their “humorous” storytelling.
Once home, I searched for Ayun’s website, and found all the pictures she had written about in her book (including the infamous one taken in Amsterdam). I signed her guestbook, telling her that I loved her book. Much to my surprise, she e-mailed me back! She was the first author to ever acknowledge me and thank me for reading her book! I couldn’t believe it, and still think that it was so cool of her to do that.
If you’re tired of reading boring travel book after boring travel book, give this one a try. It’s great to hear an author talk about her travels from the time she was straight out of college, traveling with a bulging backpack, to when she’s with her husband, traveling with their baby.
And as someone’s who’s been to the Monkey Forest in Bali, the one that inspired the book’s title, I must say it’s true. Don’t touch the monkeys. They’ll jump on you and yell in your ear. show less

Originally from Indiana, Halliday is a hippie who has traveled to mostly exotic locations, often in the company of one boyfriend or another. She dislocates her knee in Suriname, lives in a dilapidated monastery in Vietnam, gets beaten by a hooker in Amsterdam's red light district and gets malaria in Africa. Halliday's life, at least these travels, is adventurous and nearly fearless. She goes to the most remote places and does dangerous things, which is how she ends up unable to walk and in terrible pain in a place that doesn't have a doctor, or takes drugs she bought from a child in Vietnam, then has a bad experience, something most of us would expect. The writing is fine and her stories are interesting, but her hippie-dippie decisions, show more like being such a world traveler but not knowing to pack something as simple as a protein bar or a bottle of water, are hard to understand. show less

An entertaining book, but if Stephen Colbert really laughed at every page as he says on his review... he is WAY too easily amused.

Don't get me wrong, I did laugh, but only a couple of times. I think I was more shocked that someone would continue to travel after placing herself (and her traveling companions) in danger time and time again. I would definitely put several of these tales in the "don't try this at home (or abroad)" category. I'm hoping this is just a collection of mis-adventures and that Ms. Halliday actually had some travel experiences that went well.

Her writing is witty and brings a bit of light to these tales, but not really what I was hoping for.