The Reluctant Traveler: How to Explore the World Without Learning Anything about Yourself Or Other Cultures

Book excerpt: You know the type of book. Some insufferable backpacker leaves behind his perfectly good life in the U.S. for a hot, disease-infested hellhole to eat grub worms, catch giardia and build mud huts with the locals - then has the nerve to claim the experience was enlightening! This is not that type of book. This is travel from a whole new perspective - that of the worst traveler in the world, Dan Fazio. He hasn't written another "Eat, Pray, Love" - it's actually more like "Panic, Sweat, Curse." Fazio's idea of international travel involves relaxing in a Mediterranean villa and stuffing himself with various cured meats. Unfortunately, his wife was drawn to the whole grub worms and giardia thing, and she managed to drag him along on a grueling 10-month death march through Europe, Southeast Asia, South America and Mexico. Shattering romantic travel illusions about swimming in waterfalls or picking olives on a pastoral Tuscan ranch, Fazio reads a bit like Chuck Klosterman if he were being carted around the globe in Bill Bryson's backpack - and reveals that the average traveler spends most of his time puking, being puked on, about to die in a fiery bus crash - or all of the above simultaneously.