No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late

#156
Title: No Touch Monkey! And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late
Author: Ayun Halliday
Publisher: Mariner
Year: 2003
288 pages
As travel narratives go, this is an average example of the drug-seeking backpacker genre. Halliday is sometimes funny, but her tendency to elaborate on all the ways that she is an unpleasant travel companion override her attractiveness: She doesn't seem fun to share a room, bus, or foreign experience with. Much of the book is not about "lessons learned too late," but perhaps unintentionally about lessons never learned, particularly regarding recreational substances, cut-rate accommodations, and local water. In the last chapter she regrets not enjoying her travel more before she had a child. Had this been the book's starting point and organizing principle, it might have been more interesting, substantive, and memorable.