Scratching the Surface

by Jeff Greenwald

Jeff Greenwald’s four previous books, including his best-selling Shopping for Buddhas and The Size of the World, have taken thousands of readers on journeys ranging from the ruins of Angkor to the bazaars of Iran—journeys at once sublime and provocative, spiritual and absurd. Whether ascending a miraculous escalator in a Kathmandu shopping mall or sinking, amidst tattooed yakuza, into a Japanese electric bath, Greenwald finds beauty in the details—and knits them into his vivid, quirky narratives. Here is the best of Jeff Greenwald’s short travel writing, hand-picked from two decades of open-eyed dispatches. Spanning oceans, continents, and the quantum leap from the Smith-Corona to the Cybercafé, these stories provide an illuminating, often hilarious view of our changing world, as seen through the eyes of America’s favorite cult travel writer.

Genres: Travel

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2002

About the author

Jeff Greenwald has published six books, including Shopping for Buddhas (just out in 25th Anniversary edition) , The Size of the World (for which he created the first Internet travel blog) and Snake Lake. His tales and essays appear in many print and online publications. Jeff’s first voyage abroad, at 17, ended in utter disaster, and a host of subsequent mishaps have provided rich fodder for his storytelling career. His critically acclaimed one-man show, “Strange Travel Suggestions,” premiered in San Francisco in 2003. Jeff is also the Executive Director of Ethical Traveler (www.ethicaltraveler.org), a non-profit dedicated to human rights and environmental protection.

Reviews

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had not known about Jeff Greenwald prior to getting hold of this book by accident. This book is a selection of his short travel-writing essays over two decades. Most of the essays are about his journeys in Asia - from Thailand, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Iran etc and a few from Mexico and his home San Francisco. They were visits done in the 1980s and 1990s, prior to 9/11.

The essays which appealed to me were some of the following:
The essay 'Union of the Sun and the Moon' where Greenwald goes to the historic Iranian cities of Esfahan and Shiraz to observe the rare total solar eclipse in 1999. He finds Iran as one of the most hospitable countries on earth and the people welcoming Americans on the Eclipse expedition warmly. He predicts in 1999 there that in five years' time, Iran will be part of the mainstream in the world community. One doesn't know if it would have happened had 9/11 not occurred.
In Bhutan, he finds one asian nation where conservation and cultural integrity remaining more important than profit. Still, Bhutan allows high-end organized, controlled tourism for people with money.
His meeting with 'Buzz' Aldrin on the 30th anniversary of the Moon landing was a mesmerizing experience for him and he says he was 'drawn into his orbit'. I wish he didn't use such a cliched expression!
About the laid-back Laotians, he quotes the French phrase '..the Vietnamese plant rice, the Cambodians watch it grow and the Laotians listen to it grow'.
Among the stories from Nepal, I liked the one about young Jitu, a self-taught young naturalist and animal-tracker. Jitu takes him on an exciting outing into the Chitwan National Park to watch a tiger at its kill at very close range.
The essay on the traditional Hindu cremation of the dead in Bali being turned into a tourist event was shocking and bizarre to read. The one real adventure story in the collection was a boat trip he takes from Dubai to Karachi with no radio, no flares, no signals and fuel only for 100 hours. The journey takes more than 100 hours and they were running out of fresh water as well. It was hilarious to read that the Pakistani boatman was asking half-naked seamen on fishing stiff for directions to Karachi out in the open sea!
Greenwald spends some time in a refugee camp in Thailand for Khmers fleeing Pol Pot. In trying circumstances, he finds the Khmers still with hope, tremendous dignity, vast equanimity and an acceptance of the present moment which he feels is completely unparalleled in western behavior.
On Kathmandu, he writes perceptively, '..you go through your life here, dodging cows, smiling at the monks with their new quartz watches, stopping at the stores to buy the latest Elvis Costello cassette, and you forget how thinly the veneer of western influence is pasted over what basically is a very superstitious and pagan society...'
He describes the ancient Hindu-Buddhist-Jain Ellora caves in western India poetically as '..it was an ancient harbinger of Michaelangelo's contention that the sculptures are already in the quarries - awaiting release from the stone'.

The narratives are not in the same class as that of Paul Theroux or Naipaul. They are not that absorbing to read in one or two sittings. Still, anyone interested in travel would find the exotic nature of his experiences quite fascinating.