No Touch Monkey!: And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781580056014)

Zine queen Ayun Halliday confesses the best-and worst-of her globetrotting misadventures. "I laughed hard on nearly every page of this shockingly intimate memoir and deeply funny book." -- Stephen Colbert

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 guerrilla 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. On layover 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 to soldiers in Kashmir -- "they're for ladies. Bleeding ladies" -- that, she admits, "might have looked like white cotton bullets lined up in their box."

A self-admittedly bumbling vacationer, Halliday shares -- with razor-sharp wit and to hilarious effect -- the travel stories most are too self-conscious to tell.

Includes line drawings, generously provided by the author.

Author: Ayun Halliday
ISBN-10: 1580056016
ISBN-13: 9781580056014
Publisher: Seal Press (CA)
Language: English
Published: 08/25/2015
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Foreword 11/26/2015