Sometimes I put shit on Lonely Planet.
November 22nd, 2008
On Thursday night I launched George Dunford’s ‘The Big Trip’. It was a fun night and I drank quite a bit of free beer. It’s a great book, but it’s handy that it’s something you read BEFORE you go away. It weighs a ton. One of the very useful bits in the book is a list of ‘10 ways to use your guidebook’, which includes ‘To prevent snoring’ (slip the book into the pillowcase to give your head extra elevation); ‘To escape with your life’ (when confronted by a punk with a knife slam the book into his face); ‘To block a mouse hole’ (so your girlfriend won’t lay awake all night – and you get can get some sleep); ‘As insulation’ (if you didn’t bring enough warm clothes you can layer pages inside your clothes) and: ‘To get girls’ (by using a guidebook as a prop you can play little-boy-lost in the middle of a city). Two of the other handy uses in the list I’ve actually utilised before. I used a big chunk of my Lonely Planet Ireland guide ‘As kindling’ one night in a very cold youth hostel in the moors of County Kerry. I was with a German couple (we were the only guests in the hostel) and it was so cold and wet outside that we couldn’t face going to get firewood. So, I simply tore a few pages out of my guidebook and smashed up a couple of chairs. It worked. We had the place all nice and toasty in a matter of minutes.
The other time was when my Lonely Planet Sri Lanka guide came in good use as ‘toilet paper’. I’d just eaten, what I thought, was a nice simple chicken curry at a restaurant with my Dad in Colombo and we were walking back to our hotel. We were halfway there when I turned to Dad and said, ‘I need a toilet.’ Two minutes later, now clutching my stomach, I said, ‘Quick, I need a toilet bad.’ One minute later it was ‘I need a toilet NOW!’ I rushed down a handy side-street, ducked behind an even more handy parked truck and, well, exploded. I gingerly waddled back to Dad on the main street and said, ‘Well, I’ve found a good use for Lonely Planet!’ I had torn out quite a few pages, too. Luckily we weren’t travelling to the south, north or west of Sri Lanka. And at least I didn’t have the problem mentioned in the list in ‘The Big Trip’: ’Make sure it’s the places you’ve been to or you’ll spend an unpleasant hour cleaning bits you still need’.
On November 23rd, 2008 Hackpacker said:
On November 24th, 2008 Beth said: