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    Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer
    Unavailable
    Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer
    Unavailable
    Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer
    Ebook316 pages5 hours

    Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer

    By Chuck Thompson

    3/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From Bangkok to Bogotá, a hilarious behind-the-brochures tour of picture-perfect locales, dangerous destinations, and overrated hellholes from a guy who knows the truth about travel

    Travel writer, editor, and photographer Chuck Thompson has spent more than a decade traipsing through thirty-five (and counting) countries across the globe, and he's had enough. Enough of the half-truths demanded by magazine editors, enough of the endlessly recycled clichés regarded as good travel writing, and enough of the ugly secrets fiercely guarded by the travel industry. But mostly, he's had enough of returning home from assignments and leaving the most interesting stories and the most provocative insights on the editing-room floor. From getting swindled in Thailand to running afoul of customs inspectors in Belarus, from defusing hostile Swedish rockers backstage in Germany to a closed-door meeting with travel execs telling him why he's about to be fired once again, Thompson's no-holds-barred style is refreshing, invigorating, and all those other adjectives travel writers use to describe spa vacations where the main attraction is a daily colonic.

    Smile When You're Lying takes readers on an irresistible series of adventures in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and beyond; details the effects of globalization on the casual traveler and ponders the future of travel as we know it; and offers up a treasure trove of travel-industry secrets collected throughout a decidedly speckled career.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 27, 2007
    ISBN9781429924870
    Unavailable
    Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer
    Author

    Chuck Thompson

    Chuck Thompson is the author of the widely reviewed political screed Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession, as well as the comic memoirs Smile When You’re Lying and To Hellholes and Back. His writing has appeared in Outside, Politico, Esquire, Men’s Journal, The New Republic, and many other publications.

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    Reviews for Smile When You're Lying

    3/5

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    • 4/5
      This book was given to me by a friend and I immediately took a liking to it. Some people have stated that they didn't like his "bitterness" but I think it's needed. He uses it in a humourous observant way to describe how travel writers are paid to become advertisements for the travel jobs they are sent to. Thompson has written a book to debunk the myths of travel articles - especially when they state "off the beaten track". He goes on to describe the third-world countries for what they are, not the mix of old world and new world and, how western civilization has infiltrated the east which isn't necessarily a good thing.I think this is a great book for any travel lover. It's definitely entertaining and it will make you think twice when you're booking your next vacation.
    • 2/5
      The parts in which he provides behind-the-scenes type info on the travel industry are interesting. His own travel stories on Alaska, Japan, etc. were so boring that I had to force myself to not skip through them. At the end, his travel stories weren't anymore meaningful or less gimmicky than those travel accounts that he skewers.
    • 4/5
      More memoir than travel writing, it is an engagingly written and more balanced view of the industry and theplaces recounted than the writer's politics would indicate. Worth getting past as it is a good read with worthy observations.
    • 3/5
      The industry that writes and markets travel literature needed a solid thump on the head, and Thompson delivers it. More than anything, I appreciate that someone was willing to speak out against the too convenient perfect moments, the false reasons for visits, and the ridiculously over-used cliches. Thompson tells some real stories. More importantly, he's willing to be the grumpy traveler we all have to be now and then, when flights are delayed and service stinks. His real life stories are enjoyable and the seem very real, such that after reading this, you won't ever read Hemispheres or Travel & Leisure quite the same way.
    • 1/5
      This isn't the one by the former Lonely Planet guidebook writer. Not much here. Surprising that it got published given the state of book publishing nowadays. Nothing at all re impact of the internet (re ad loss) on travel magazines or how guidebooks have been outsmarted by TravelAdvisor et al.Does the world need more anecdotes about Thai prostitutes? Yeah, I guess American Airlines inflight editors were just a bunch of fuddy duddies. And the Travelocity publishers too. It doesn't seem to occur to Thompson that women buy travel magazines too, so what works on the cover of Maxim might not be the best strategy for ... well, did he work for anything more than short-lived Travelocity and an airline magazine?Thompson doesn't seem to have been to many countries and doesn't have much to say about those he has (Japan, Thailand, Philippines and the Caribbean). There's also a weird chapter about how/why estadounidenses don't go to Latin America. Can we have some figures here? Leave aside for the moment how long high school and college kids have been going to Quito or Casablanca or BA for language study and how everyone else has been going to Guatemala, what about the whole retirement/second home exodus? It might have started in Costa Rica and Mexico, but it hasn't stopped in Nicaragua. And then when everyone and their grandmother is hanging out at About.com's Spanish forums or buying Rosetta Stone courses, they must have plans besides visiting Spain.
    • 4/5
      I got the advance reader's copy of this -- it's a fairly entertaining, occasionally hilarious travelogue. Some of the stories are pure gold. Unfortunately, much of the book is weighed down by Thompson's bitterness. He spends far too much time lamenting how the travel industry is keeping him down, time which would be better spent on more entertaining stories. Some sections seem utterly pointless. The best chapter, the one that stood out the most in my mind, was the one on the Philippines.
    • 4/5
      The shade of Hunter S. Thompson, the great Gonzo journalist, hangs heavily over these tangentially-connected tales of travel and travel journalism, but an author can do worse than tread in the good Doctor's footprints. As a catalogue of travel disasters and outrageous happenings, it's a fun book, but I enjoyed his dissection of travel journalism the most. Did you ever wonder why all of it sounds exactly the same? Did you ever wonder why all of these places are "paradises" which are "an enchanting blend of ancient and modern" and "boast" "delicious" "fun-filled" and "romantic" activities? I don't suppose the answers will be a huge surprise to anyone, but Thompson is entertaining on the subject. I thought he had a good insight into resort travel and poverty; there's something very uncomfortable about visiting a "paradise" where most of the population is living beneath the poverty line. In the words of the Sex Pistols, "a cheap holiday in other people's misery." This isn't to say that poor countries shouldn't encourage tourism, or that westerners shouldn't visit - just that walled compounds filled with booze, pools, and obsequious service (which is profitable only because local wages are vanishingly low) are dishonest and morally uncomfortable. The majority of the book is a profane, obscene, funny tour over the face of the planet, and is well worth a read.
    • 3/5
      MehJust OKVetran travel writer Chuck Thompson shares his exploits he could not tell in his writing - what went WRONG, what he didn't like, how awful Americans muck up everything --no, make that just tourists everwhere.No pearls of wisdow found, however, he is bright, witty, and has a nice writing style.
    • 4/5
      Former Maxim features editor and all-around bon vivant Chuck Thompson peels back the faux-bamboo veneer of the travel business in a scathing, often hysterically funny exposé.Thompson bemoans the lack of any kind of ”authentic” point of view in contemporary travel writing while explaining exactly why such a voracious growth industry likes it that way. With some clever travel tips, handy editing advice, and a career’s worth of self-effacing travel disasters to draw from, he serves up some tasty travel tidbits (number one on Thompson’s list of things a writer should never do: describe anything other than food in culinary terms).As a former magazine designer, my favorite part of the book is Thompson’s whole-hearted yet utterly doomed attempt to manage a start-up magazine for Travelocity. The sense of dread when consultants show up two weeks before the first issue is due on press is palpable—and spot on. Consultants are like bubonic rats and only bring grim death to any workplace.Unlike Holidays in Hell, wherein misanthrope P.J. O’Rourke simply reinforces American xenophobic attitudes toward the Third World, Thompson actually dispels many preconceived notions toward places we never go, and portrays the usual hot spots as the crapholes they usually are.Thompson and I see eye-to-eye on the questionable appeal of the Caribbean, Graceland, and Las Vegas. I also agree that Eric Clapton, while technically not a vacation destination is somewhat overrated. And thanks to Thompson’s detailed romp through Bangkok’s red-light district, I will never look at Ulysses S. Grant’s signature the same way again.
    • 2/5
      It's hard to get into this cranky travel book written by a man who, while claiming to hate cliched travel writing, spends an entire chapter on revelations including that there are whores in Bangkok and they're not all pretty.