What do you think?
Rate this book
Bad Karma : Confessions of a Reckless Traveller in South-East Asia
In this irreverent traveller's tale, two twenty twenty-something trouble magnets wreak havoc across South-east Asia as they struggle to escape the beaten path. From a bizarre encounter with a Xena-obsessed hotel clerk in Thailand to a stoned flight on a crumbling Russian plane in Laos, Tamara Sheward takes a wayward journey through the underbelly of South-east Asia so often ignored by traditional travel writers. Peppered with swindlers, drunkards and uber-hippies, Bad Karma puts backpacker culture through the wringer.
- GenresTravelNonfiction
Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
2 people are currently reading
34 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
September 22, 2009
So far I am a bit perturbed about this book, but I am going to force myself to read it. I love travel books about women who travel alone, so I picked up this book. Many of the things that the author writes about are irritating me to the point that I want to put the book down. First of all, I think that it is very irresponsible as a woman traveling alone to just spontaneously end up in a foreign city in Southeast Asia without any advanced preparation. I am all for spontaneous travel, but we have to be realistic when traveling alone as women. The author often speaks so far of Southeast Asia as if it is a disgusting place with a bunch of "town idiots". At one point her friend and her enter a train full of soldiers, drink beer and "entertain" the soldiers with yelling out sexual phrases from a guidebook. On another occasion, her friend curses out someone who didn't bring her water immediately, not even taking into consideration that they are in a foreign country and the person might not speak English. It irritates me to the n-th degree when privileged travelers go to other country and impose their culture and language on others-this is exactly so far what I am thinking about the author. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and hope that she has some sort of awakening about herself and traveling.
Update: I couldn't take it anymore, so I just stopped reading. I'm very disappointed because as a female solo traveler, I am really craving female travel books.
Update: I couldn't take it anymore, so I just stopped reading. I'm very disappointed because as a female solo traveler, I am really craving female travel books.
April 29, 2015
This is a crazy book. Non-fiction, written by an Australian (there is a LOT of Australian slang in this – be prepared to have to look up words) who goes traveling to Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand...with her best friend. They are very rude and obnoxious. They smoke and make fun of everybody, especially fellow backpackers (farang – foreigners) whom they hate. But if you want a clear, straight, no sugar added view of traveling through these countries – the author gives you the dirty and bleak version. A fun read, but it sure makes you not want to travel to those countries ever. Her trip did NOT sound like fun – at least to me.
February 17, 2019
Life’s full of mysteries; like why anyone was surprised that politicians fiddled their expenses or how Michael Winner has had so many glamorous girlfriends. But my big mystery today is how did Tamara Sheward ever con a publisher into accepting her manuscript?
I love travel but I have mixed feelings about travel writing. It’s a bit like football – you can love watching it but you wouldn’t want to read about it. Travel writing ranges from the intellectual and sanctimonious to the trite and plain silly; Bad Karma is firmly in the latter camp.
The premise of the book is simple. Australians Tamara and Elissa attempt to get off the backpacker trail and ‘do’ Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. All in three weeks! So you won’t need me to tell you that they didn’t exactly go for total cultural immersion – it’s more a case of collecting stamps and visas in their passports. Elissa ought to know better – she’d been teaching English in Japan so you might suppose she’d have a bit of sensitivity to different cultures because cultures don’t get much more different than in Japan. However, as we’ll later learn, she has all the charm and charisma you’d expect from a compatriot of Sir Les Patterson and a vocabulary to match.
Tamara comes from Cairns – a hub of the southern hemisphere backpacker trail so she has good reason to dislike backpackers. She’s also done a few stints working in London and all the normal European and US backpacking destinations. The book opens with her spouting about how she’s come to hate backpackers and how she wants to go somewhere she won’t encounter drunken Australians pissed up on cheap bear screaming ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie – oy oy oy’ at the tops of their voices. She’s sick of “pseudo-spiritual” Yanks, “vocabulary mauling” Kiwis and “Canadians and their bloody flags”. Oh and she doesn’t like the French – but that’s not unusual.
Apparently after returning from her last journey she’d spent her evenings poring over maps and guidebooks – though later chapters would suggest there’s a lot of poetic license in that claim.
One night in a bar she comes across Wazza, a very drunk Australian who lives in Cambodia and has succumbed to his feelings of home-sickness and popped back to good-old Aus. He tells Tamara – through a slur of beer fumes – that if she wants a place with hardly any foreigners she should try South East Asia. And Tamara, being as shallow as she is, needs no better advice than that of a drunk in a bar.
And so the girls are off to give S.E. Asia their best shot. Tamara admits she thought the Khmer Rouge was a cosmetic and Laos was something you got in your hair at school but you might suppose she’d have read a guidebook or two before setting off. Even a teensy bit of homework would have been a good idea. You could call them ‘innocents abroad’ but I think I’d substitute ‘ignorants’ for innocents. The title refers to them as ‘reckless’ travellers but the actual travels are a mix of stupid (going to places with nothing to see) and predictable (going to places every other backpacker already visited).
Tamara meets up with El at Bangkok airport and straight away they head off to find a cheap dive on the Khaosan Road. This is the point at which I started to doubt the sincerity of the ‘I want to see the real SE Asia and keep away from backpackers’ premise. If there is any place on earth where you are less likely to avoid backpackers than Khaosan Rd then I’ll eat a wombat. But let’s give them some credit – they only spend one day in Bangkok, griping about drivers ripping them off (do ALL Australians do that when they are travelling or only the ones I’ve met?) and failing to find most of the things they vaguely set out to look at. Their tirade against local food – pig head on a stick anyone? – starts in Bangkok and pretty much carries on throughout the book. What a good thing that these days you can get Pringles just about anywhere.
After a day in Bangkok, they head north on the train where they fall in with a bunch of soldiers in the bar-car and drink far too much before being sent off to bed by a ‘Train Nazi’. I’m sure that drinking too much and giggling at what silly words the Thais use is funny for a while but if I’d been one of the soldiers, I’d have been tempted to push them off the train. Their first stop up north is a disaster – if only they’d read the guidebook instead of just looking at the name of the town and thinking ‘hmm, sounds interesting’. They find themselves in a town that doesn’t like foreigners. The Lonely Planet enlightens them that the town was used as an American Airbase during the Vietnam War so the anti-farang (foreigner) policy is quite understandable. Oh if only they’d actually bothered to read the blurb before they got off the train.
And so it goes on – lurching from one badly chosen town to the next, they blunder through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and eventually touchdown in Cambodia although the brief stop in Cambodia seems to be solely to get a stamp in their passports. Their ability to miss out on anything worth seeing on the grounds that to do so might be too ‘predictable’ is irritating and pathetic. If I read a travel book I want to know about what they saw, why they went there, whether it’s worth a visit – not where I have the best chance of ‘scoring’ a few foils of out-of-date Valium.
Drinking themselves into oblivion, swearing aggressively at locals and breaking taboos, these are two of the most inept and unpleasant backpackers you could come across. The irony is that Sheward really doesn’t seem to see that she and El are the very backpackers she professes to dislike.
Sheward’s book is full of mickey-taking about other travellers. The overly sincere spiritual types doing their yoga and rebalancing their chakras come in for plenty of gyp as do any other travellers who drink too much (definition of too much = even more than Tamara and El) and look set on having too good a time. Quite how Tamara and El find any moral high-ground from which to look down on this latter group was a mystery to me. They track down so much illicit Valium that it’s a wonder they could remember enough to write a book about it afterwards. (An aside – if you want to look like a really ‘cool’ druggy traveller, is Valium really an appropriate drug of choice?)
Passing through some of the most beautiful countries in the world, they almost completely fail to actually go and see anything. They bumble from one ill-chosen backpacker venue to the next reaching their nadir in Na Thrang – the only place I visited in Vietnam and vowed to never go back to. And yet for them it was one of the few times they made a proper decision on a destination. So why do they choose it? In the Apocalypse Now bar in Hue (most big Vietnamese cities seem to have a bar by that name – suggesting a much more forgiving attitude to the past then could be expected) the girls hear about a near-legendary lady by the name of Mama Hanh. Mama Hanh organises booze and drug parties off her boat – maybe a bit of snorkelling thrown in. Would you take a detour for something like that? Not me – I’d go the extra few hundred miles for a jaw-dropping temple, a stunning mountain or a world-class museum but I’d not go an inch out of my way to get bladdered with a bunch of silly backpackers. And yet Sheward writes as if it’s all just so clever and so funny that you or I would actually want to read about it. It’s like the annoying lad in your office who’s just come back from holiday and wants to regale you with too much detail about his 18-30 in Ibiza. You just don’t want to know.
More by accident than design they do actually do a little bit of sightseeing in Saigon – but only then because they are trying to keep away from the hoteliers whose family they gravely insulted by misbehaving at a solemn dinner for their ancestors. They find themselves on a bus full of American Vietnam War veterans on a trip to a Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels. At the tunnels the angry US Vets take umbrage with the local version of how things played out back in the ‘American War’ and refuse to visit the museum or go down the tunnels. The girls are packed off to join a group of respectable family tourists who don’t appreciate the f-ing and blinding when Tamara gets stuck in a tunnel.
If the principle of Karma is that good deeds in this life are rewarded in the next then I strongly suspect that Tamara and El will be coming round again as cockroaches next time. Probably cockroaches in a dodgy window-less room on the Khaosan Road. Now that’s what I’d call divine justice.
Verdict – save your money. You weren’t learn anything worth knowing about South East Asia from this book but you might learn more than you want to about silly Aussie backpackers.
I love travel but I have mixed feelings about travel writing. It’s a bit like football – you can love watching it but you wouldn’t want to read about it. Travel writing ranges from the intellectual and sanctimonious to the trite and plain silly; Bad Karma is firmly in the latter camp.
The premise of the book is simple. Australians Tamara and Elissa attempt to get off the backpacker trail and ‘do’ Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. All in three weeks! So you won’t need me to tell you that they didn’t exactly go for total cultural immersion – it’s more a case of collecting stamps and visas in their passports. Elissa ought to know better – she’d been teaching English in Japan so you might suppose she’d have a bit of sensitivity to different cultures because cultures don’t get much more different than in Japan. However, as we’ll later learn, she has all the charm and charisma you’d expect from a compatriot of Sir Les Patterson and a vocabulary to match.
Tamara comes from Cairns – a hub of the southern hemisphere backpacker trail so she has good reason to dislike backpackers. She’s also done a few stints working in London and all the normal European and US backpacking destinations. The book opens with her spouting about how she’s come to hate backpackers and how she wants to go somewhere she won’t encounter drunken Australians pissed up on cheap bear screaming ‘Aussie Aussie Aussie – oy oy oy’ at the tops of their voices. She’s sick of “pseudo-spiritual” Yanks, “vocabulary mauling” Kiwis and “Canadians and their bloody flags”. Oh and she doesn’t like the French – but that’s not unusual.
Apparently after returning from her last journey she’d spent her evenings poring over maps and guidebooks – though later chapters would suggest there’s a lot of poetic license in that claim.
One night in a bar she comes across Wazza, a very drunk Australian who lives in Cambodia and has succumbed to his feelings of home-sickness and popped back to good-old Aus. He tells Tamara – through a slur of beer fumes – that if she wants a place with hardly any foreigners she should try South East Asia. And Tamara, being as shallow as she is, needs no better advice than that of a drunk in a bar.
And so the girls are off to give S.E. Asia their best shot. Tamara admits she thought the Khmer Rouge was a cosmetic and Laos was something you got in your hair at school but you might suppose she’d have read a guidebook or two before setting off. Even a teensy bit of homework would have been a good idea. You could call them ‘innocents abroad’ but I think I’d substitute ‘ignorants’ for innocents. The title refers to them as ‘reckless’ travellers but the actual travels are a mix of stupid (going to places with nothing to see) and predictable (going to places every other backpacker already visited).
Tamara meets up with El at Bangkok airport and straight away they head off to find a cheap dive on the Khaosan Road. This is the point at which I started to doubt the sincerity of the ‘I want to see the real SE Asia and keep away from backpackers’ premise. If there is any place on earth where you are less likely to avoid backpackers than Khaosan Rd then I’ll eat a wombat. But let’s give them some credit – they only spend one day in Bangkok, griping about drivers ripping them off (do ALL Australians do that when they are travelling or only the ones I’ve met?) and failing to find most of the things they vaguely set out to look at. Their tirade against local food – pig head on a stick anyone? – starts in Bangkok and pretty much carries on throughout the book. What a good thing that these days you can get Pringles just about anywhere.
After a day in Bangkok, they head north on the train where they fall in with a bunch of soldiers in the bar-car and drink far too much before being sent off to bed by a ‘Train Nazi’. I’m sure that drinking too much and giggling at what silly words the Thais use is funny for a while but if I’d been one of the soldiers, I’d have been tempted to push them off the train. Their first stop up north is a disaster – if only they’d read the guidebook instead of just looking at the name of the town and thinking ‘hmm, sounds interesting’. They find themselves in a town that doesn’t like foreigners. The Lonely Planet enlightens them that the town was used as an American Airbase during the Vietnam War so the anti-farang (foreigner) policy is quite understandable. Oh if only they’d actually bothered to read the blurb before they got off the train.
And so it goes on – lurching from one badly chosen town to the next, they blunder through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and eventually touchdown in Cambodia although the brief stop in Cambodia seems to be solely to get a stamp in their passports. Their ability to miss out on anything worth seeing on the grounds that to do so might be too ‘predictable’ is irritating and pathetic. If I read a travel book I want to know about what they saw, why they went there, whether it’s worth a visit – not where I have the best chance of ‘scoring’ a few foils of out-of-date Valium.
Drinking themselves into oblivion, swearing aggressively at locals and breaking taboos, these are two of the most inept and unpleasant backpackers you could come across. The irony is that Sheward really doesn’t seem to see that she and El are the very backpackers she professes to dislike.
Sheward’s book is full of mickey-taking about other travellers. The overly sincere spiritual types doing their yoga and rebalancing their chakras come in for plenty of gyp as do any other travellers who drink too much (definition of too much = even more than Tamara and El) and look set on having too good a time. Quite how Tamara and El find any moral high-ground from which to look down on this latter group was a mystery to me. They track down so much illicit Valium that it’s a wonder they could remember enough to write a book about it afterwards. (An aside – if you want to look like a really ‘cool’ druggy traveller, is Valium really an appropriate drug of choice?)
Passing through some of the most beautiful countries in the world, they almost completely fail to actually go and see anything. They bumble from one ill-chosen backpacker venue to the next reaching their nadir in Na Thrang – the only place I visited in Vietnam and vowed to never go back to. And yet for them it was one of the few times they made a proper decision on a destination. So why do they choose it? In the Apocalypse Now bar in Hue (most big Vietnamese cities seem to have a bar by that name – suggesting a much more forgiving attitude to the past then could be expected) the girls hear about a near-legendary lady by the name of Mama Hanh. Mama Hanh organises booze and drug parties off her boat – maybe a bit of snorkelling thrown in. Would you take a detour for something like that? Not me – I’d go the extra few hundred miles for a jaw-dropping temple, a stunning mountain or a world-class museum but I’d not go an inch out of my way to get bladdered with a bunch of silly backpackers. And yet Sheward writes as if it’s all just so clever and so funny that you or I would actually want to read about it. It’s like the annoying lad in your office who’s just come back from holiday and wants to regale you with too much detail about his 18-30 in Ibiza. You just don’t want to know.
More by accident than design they do actually do a little bit of sightseeing in Saigon – but only then because they are trying to keep away from the hoteliers whose family they gravely insulted by misbehaving at a solemn dinner for their ancestors. They find themselves on a bus full of American Vietnam War veterans on a trip to a Cao Dai temple and the Cu Chi Tunnels. At the tunnels the angry US Vets take umbrage with the local version of how things played out back in the ‘American War’ and refuse to visit the museum or go down the tunnels. The girls are packed off to join a group of respectable family tourists who don’t appreciate the f-ing and blinding when Tamara gets stuck in a tunnel.
If the principle of Karma is that good deeds in this life are rewarded in the next then I strongly suspect that Tamara and El will be coming round again as cockroaches next time. Probably cockroaches in a dodgy window-less room on the Khaosan Road. Now that’s what I’d call divine justice.
Verdict – save your money. You weren’t learn anything worth knowing about South East Asia from this book but you might learn more than you want to about silly Aussie backpackers.
June 23, 2010
I forgot this at the laundromat today, which was fine, because I was about 50 pages in and was going to have to stop reading it anyway. I have had bad trips, as well. I've been in bad places. I've had bad food. I've met stupid people. This happens when you travel, I understand. But I felt Sheward was doing nothing in the pages I read but ridicule the people of Thailand, its food, its culture, everything. She made fun of everybody she met in a mean way, not a funny way. It just wasn't something I was enjoying reading. Not to mention--not well-written.
Read
September 20, 2013Yep. Done. I lasted a good 100 pages. Sick of reading spiteful comments about people of a different culture, mixed in with embarrassing, abusive tourist behaviour. (Ie. behaving like twats). Really uncalled for to scream and swear at a waitress for not understanding, when it's you who don't speak the language. And don't even get me started on going to the pharmacy to get drugged up and smoking in non smoking hotels. Could these ladies act any more like pond scum? Probably, but I'm not enjoying their company enough to read on.
February 4, 2009
I can't get through this book. I love to read travel books but this one is whiny and boring. The author has fun traveling with her friend but they make no attempt to actually get to know the place and people they are visiting.
October 23, 2013
This book was pretty bad..I just got back from Southeast Asia and if I had read this book beforehand I might have changed my mind. Its nothing like this there! I would hope that anyone traveling there would not behave in the way these characters did. Its an embarrassment
November 6, 2007
Funny, well-written tale of two Aussies touring Southeast Asia, although the emphasis on drinking got a bit much at times.
June 12, 2025
This book is written by a journalist.
I think this is a good journal of her travels.
It is honest and with self-irony.
I like it a lot.
I imagine she does as well.
Iver
Norway
I think this is a good journal of her travels.
It is honest and with self-irony.
I like it a lot.
I imagine she does as well.
Iver
Norway
September 25, 2007
Bad Karma: Confessions of a Reckless Traveler in Southeast Asia by Tamara Sheward / 303pps / Academy Chicago Publishers / 978-0-89733-565-2 / $17.95
After overhearing a fellow Aussie talk of his travels in Asia, Tamara decides it’s off the backpacker path enough for her and calls up her “bestie” pal, El, to join her. Tamara is between jobs and El is off for the summer from her teaching job. This is not their first go at sightseeing.
On a train out of Bangkok, they pull out a phrase book and start trying some of the ridiculous sayings given for examples, which gets a bunch of initially aloof traveling soldiers and police chortling away and buying them rounds of beer. These gals are accomplished imbibers, so the evening goes off like a charm.. almost. This will not be the first place they will be escorted out of.
During their haphazard wanderings, they are flashed by monks in Udon Than, put in mortal danger in a plane ride (reminisce of that taken in the movie Fandango), observe such palatable indulgences as “Chicken innards on a stick” (yum) and are plagued by a continuously present new-ager named Pancho who they take immense pleasure in abusing by any means possible.
They meet two fellas who invite them along on their visit to the Pak Ou Caves, a Laotian place of worship, filled with statues of Buddha's, where Tamara, chronic goof ball that she is, makes of her too many snafus. The foursome later partake in a local disco, where the live band “mutilated every musical note in the known range” with the “added horror of a cacophonous feedback”. Their feeble attempt at mockery left them mocked and again, asked to leave.
On to Vietnam on a bus loaded with drunken Vietnamese and Laotians. From there, they hitch a ride with a booze-runner to Khe Sanh Hue, where drinking with two locals, they hear of the notorious Mama Hanh’s boat ride - “an afternoon of all the dope you can smoke and piss you can swill while floating around in a tropical lagoon.” Of course these dope-smoking, valium-popping, beer shooters have to go. Tamara’s aloofness gets her challenged by “crazy” Mama Hanh, who “sparked join after joint and poured countless bottles of wine down her gob.” (Did Shel Silverstein model his “Pearl” of “The Great Smoke Off” after Mama?) Add another hangover to their cache of memories.
Next is Saigon where they stay at a local’s guest house and Tamara almost immediately gets the host family “cursed” during a ceremonial dinner. They sneak out early in the morning to avoid their shame and catch an unplanned bus ride to a mishmash temple with Victor Hugo as one of their saints. They miss hearing the “Do’s & Don’ts” lecture and, of course, Tamara adds another insult to her list and gets shoved out of the temple by one of the priests she innocently followed into a male only section. They then go to the Cu Chi Tunnel with a busload of Viet Nam vets and apprehension. Needless to say, this is not one of their most “pleasurable” excursions. The vets get hostile after viewing a documentary video with a Vietnamese slant. Tamara tries to lighten things by volunteering in an audience participation to emphasis the difference in sizes from Vietnamese to American in one of the sniper holes. Tall, lanky and claustrophobic, when she get wedged in, it takes some audience participation to get her back out.
Their final trip is to Cambodia, home of “the lame, the insane and the starving,” where they hope to hook up with the Aussie who put forth their journey’s notion. When they finally find him, after several more perils, he agrees to put Tamara up. El has to return to her teaching job which leaves Tamara alone...except for that ever present new-ager Pancho, who is now her new bunk mate. Funny how that karma works, isn’t it?This is a hilarious, nonstop read that almost.. almost, makes me want to pack a bag and hit the road.
After overhearing a fellow Aussie talk of his travels in Asia, Tamara decides it’s off the backpacker path enough for her and calls up her “bestie” pal, El, to join her. Tamara is between jobs and El is off for the summer from her teaching job. This is not their first go at sightseeing.
On a train out of Bangkok, they pull out a phrase book and start trying some of the ridiculous sayings given for examples, which gets a bunch of initially aloof traveling soldiers and police chortling away and buying them rounds of beer. These gals are accomplished imbibers, so the evening goes off like a charm.. almost. This will not be the first place they will be escorted out of.
During their haphazard wanderings, they are flashed by monks in Udon Than, put in mortal danger in a plane ride (reminisce of that taken in the movie Fandango), observe such palatable indulgences as “Chicken innards on a stick” (yum) and are plagued by a continuously present new-ager named Pancho who they take immense pleasure in abusing by any means possible.
They meet two fellas who invite them along on their visit to the Pak Ou Caves, a Laotian place of worship, filled with statues of Buddha's, where Tamara, chronic goof ball that she is, makes of her too many snafus. The foursome later partake in a local disco, where the live band “mutilated every musical note in the known range” with the “added horror of a cacophonous feedback”. Their feeble attempt at mockery left them mocked and again, asked to leave.
On to Vietnam on a bus loaded with drunken Vietnamese and Laotians. From there, they hitch a ride with a booze-runner to Khe Sanh Hue, where drinking with two locals, they hear of the notorious Mama Hanh’s boat ride - “an afternoon of all the dope you can smoke and piss you can swill while floating around in a tropical lagoon.” Of course these dope-smoking, valium-popping, beer shooters have to go. Tamara’s aloofness gets her challenged by “crazy” Mama Hanh, who “sparked join after joint and poured countless bottles of wine down her gob.” (Did Shel Silverstein model his “Pearl” of “The Great Smoke Off” after Mama?) Add another hangover to their cache of memories.
Next is Saigon where they stay at a local’s guest house and Tamara almost immediately gets the host family “cursed” during a ceremonial dinner. They sneak out early in the morning to avoid their shame and catch an unplanned bus ride to a mishmash temple with Victor Hugo as one of their saints. They miss hearing the “Do’s & Don’ts” lecture and, of course, Tamara adds another insult to her list and gets shoved out of the temple by one of the priests she innocently followed into a male only section. They then go to the Cu Chi Tunnel with a busload of Viet Nam vets and apprehension. Needless to say, this is not one of their most “pleasurable” excursions. The vets get hostile after viewing a documentary video with a Vietnamese slant. Tamara tries to lighten things by volunteering in an audience participation to emphasis the difference in sizes from Vietnamese to American in one of the sniper holes. Tall, lanky and claustrophobic, when she get wedged in, it takes some audience participation to get her back out.
Their final trip is to Cambodia, home of “the lame, the insane and the starving,” where they hope to hook up with the Aussie who put forth their journey’s notion. When they finally find him, after several more perils, he agrees to put Tamara up. El has to return to her teaching job which leaves Tamara alone...except for that ever present new-ager Pancho, who is now her new bunk mate. Funny how that karma works, isn’t it?This is a hilarious, nonstop read that almost.. almost, makes me want to pack a bag and hit the road.
February 28, 2017
I finished it
August 1, 2011
another book read in preparation for my upcoming south east asia trip. in this one, Tamara and her mate El travel through south east asia looking for places and experiences not filled with backpacking farang (foreigners). In their pursuit of the original experience they get involved instead, in the most perculiar experiences. From smuggling booze to gettign wedged in a tunnel in vietnam, these girls really do have some wonderful stories to tell after the fact.
I enjoy the silliness of the book and understood a lot of what Sheward was trying to experience. I did cringe sometimes at their apparent complete lack of appreciation of the culture they were in; occasionally i could imagine them as these brash, over sunburnt, plump, loud Australians behaving wholly inappropriately and not really caring - just the people i thought they were trying to avoid on this back of beyond trip.
But that notwithstanding, this was a fun travel book which fed fuel to my excitement for my own trip.
I enjoy the silliness of the book and understood a lot of what Sheward was trying to experience. I did cringe sometimes at their apparent complete lack of appreciation of the culture they were in; occasionally i could imagine them as these brash, over sunburnt, plump, loud Australians behaving wholly inappropriately and not really caring - just the people i thought they were trying to avoid on this back of beyond trip.
But that notwithstanding, this was a fun travel book which fed fuel to my excitement for my own trip.
May 22, 2015
Like many of the readers (or attempts at being readers) of this book, I was unsettled and disturbed by the attitude of the two women travelers and their treatment of the people in the countries in which they journeyed. I had started out reading the book with high hopes for a unique vantage point but was soon experiencing severe discomfort. Although the author is talented with her use of humor, her sarcasm was often TOO exaggerated and what with the non stop drinking and rudeness I found the whole book to be unpalatable and a waste of time. Living in Southeast Asia myself (and loving it) maybe I'm a bit sensitive. But then again, maybe not.
Would not recommend
Would not recommend
April 4, 2010
found this at Half-Price Books, and thought it would be an interesting read since I just got back from Cambodia... HILARIOUS... definitley not your typical fluffy smooth sailing resort type of travelling - which it is not intended to be. i love how they were trying to run away from the hippies, and western travellers. haha. my only complaint is a bit too much whining... who can whine when they have a whole month to travel? UGH... just jealous.
December 5, 2012
As someone who is a fairly avid traveller and one who likes to try to identify with other cultures in the places they travel to, Bad Karma showed me a different way to travel. A combination of egocentricity and lack of humility (and maybe a map) is all you need according to these two travelers. And though this book may be the only way I experience this type of traveling, I will say it was a pretty fun ride (as long as I didn’t have to feel the consequences).
November 27, 2012
This was a great summer read, full of wacky, at times crude, humor and amusingly crazy shenanigans. The two girls are entertaining as hapless travelers, and I love the premise of two friends just packing up and heading out, with only a map to lead their way. This isn't your usual "Eat, Pray, Love" travelogue, but it's definitely an adventure!
March 3, 2013
Enjoyed reading this for the most part but I didn't like the narrator's view on people so some things that were supposed to come off as funny were extremely offensive. However, that is somewhat alluded to in the title so perhaps that makes up for it. Learned a lot about southeast Asia I didn't know at least.
March 4, 2016
Honestly, this was an ok read. The stories are fun and the antics are amusing, but nothing that really blew my hair back. Additionally, having been to SE Asia I can tell that much of the material here is a bit dated and things are less rough and tumble there. There are some charms to it, but I wouldn't seek it out.
May 9, 2015
I picked this up to prep for a trip in June. A fan of humorous travel lit since reading Lost on Planet China, this book didn't disappoint. While a bit outdated by now, the absolutely ridiculous adventures described never failed to crack me up.
November 29, 2015
I read this book as i was travelling through south east asia so it was cool when she was talking about places id been etc but she is so cynical about everything! Cheer the fuck up
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews