Strange Tales of World Travel - * bizarre * mysterious * horrible * hilarious *

These just might be the strangest stories you've ever read.

List of contents

Foreword by Don George 1. Shark Repellent, Bora Bora
2. Cobra Bird, Sahara Desert
3. Contagions, Botswana
4. Honey of Man, Oman
5. Beware of Road Surprises, Emirate of Sharjah
6. Feeding Frenzy, Galápagos Islands
7. No Snake Dies Before Midnight, Kangaroo Island
8. The Emperor Has No Underwear, United Arab Emirates
9. Road Warrior, Nigeria
10. Agent Ghost, Somewhere in Africa
11. Here, Little Birdie, Kenya
12. The Human Pet, Qatar
13. That¿s Not a Rubber Ducky, Equatorial Guinea
14. Great White Shark Buffet, Southern Ocean
15. UFOs, South America and Caribbean Sea
16. Shere Khan, India
17. The Fourth Girlfriend, Lithuania
18. The Dying Giraffe, South Africa
19. Smooth Air Decree, Oman
20. Evicted, Angola
21. The Floating Islands, Peru
22. The First Hmong Lawyer in Laos, Laos
23. A Pug in Peril, Saudi Arabia
24. The Accidental Masseur, Madagascar
25. Hello, Mr. Bin Laden, Pakistan
26. Prehistoric Forest, Seychelles Islands
27. Too Close for Comfort, Rwanda
28. Lord of the Flies, British Virgin Islands
29. Digging Your Own Grave, Mauritania
30. Bush Meat, Cameroon
31. The Cat in the Hat, Kangaroo Island
32. Dr. Ebola, Central Africa
33. One Person¿s Pet Is Another¿s...Dinner, Ecuador
34. Be Careful What You Admire, Emirate of Abu Dhabi
35. The Red Carpet Isn¿t for Me, Gabon
36. The Askari, Tanzania
37. The Polar Bear, Arctic Ocean
38. Tsetse Fly Food, Serengeti Plains
39. The Concierge, South Australia
40. Valley of Mole Rats, The Rift Valley
41. The Real Equator, Ecuador
42. The Land of Hospitality, Japan
43. The Home of Vodun, Togo
44. The Hidden People, Iceland
45. Sea of Scooters, Vietnam
46. Road Kill Art, Australia
47. Don¿t Mess with the Cape Buffalo, Malawi
48. The Tanzanite Miner, Mount Kilimanjaro
49. The Elephant Graveyard, Ngorongoro Crater
50. Mayan God, Guatemala Acknowledgments
About the Authors

About the author

Gina and Scott Gaille are passionate world travelers whose thirst for international experience began in their childhoods in small-town America. Gina grew up in central Michigan, and Scott in south Texas. While their classmates wanted to be actors, athletes, or rock stars, Scott and Gina both dreamed of exploring the world. Ginäs favorite TV show was Hart to Hart, whose globetrotting detectives¿played by Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers¿journeyed to China, Australia, South America, Europe, and the Caribbean. Scott spent Sunday evenings glued to Mutual of Omahäs Wild Kingdom, whose safari-jacketed host, Marlin Perkins, introduced him to exotic landscapes and their peoples. It was Gina and Scott¿s shared passion for experiential travel that brought them together as a couple.

As an international energy expert, Scott frequently travels around the world as a consultant and speaks on issues affecting the energy industry at corporations, campuses, and conferences. He is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School and an Adjunct Professor of Management at Rice University¿s Graduate School of Business. He is the author of three energy textbooks and the Gaille Energy Blog.

Summary

These just might be the strangest stories you've ever read.

Foreword

FOREWORD Our Infinitely Surprising World By Don George “What’s the strangest thing you have ever experienced or seen?” This simple question beats at the heart of this extraordinary collection. For more than two decades, Scott Gaille’s work as an international corporate lawyer has taken him to the farthest corners of the globe. Rather than fly home as soon as business is done, he has used these assignments to explore local countries and cultures, frequently accompanied by his wife and partner in wanderlust, Gina. Through these explorations, they have met an astonishing variety of people. Fueled by a deep curiosity about human nature and an appetite for adventure, they have asked these people that simple question: “What’s the strangest thing you have ever experienced or seen?” Then they have listened—and amazing tales have unfolded. This book collects 50 of those tales. The storytellers range richly in geography and social stratum: from a Mauritanian diplomat and an Omani government minister to an Irish farmer and a Tanzanian miner, a British secret service agent to a masseur in Madagascar to a Galápagos wildlife naturalist. They include an Australian road kill artist, an American oil executive, a South African big game guide, the first Hmong lawyer in Laos, the English “fourth girlfriend” of a Russian tycoon, and dozens more. As this marvelously motley cast of storytellers suggests, Strange Tales of World Travel presents a world you will not find in glossy magazine articles, breathless blogs, or self-adulatory Instagrams. Instead, it’s a world of adventures gone awry with gorillas, Cape buffalos, tiger snakes, and other wildlife, of rare Vodun and Mayan rituals, of intimate glimpses of unimaginable wealth and unquestionable power, of close encounters with the wilder edges of human culture, including Ebola, shrunken heads, and ancient shamanistic rites. The result is a collection that is, as the book’s subtitle suggests, bizarre, mysterious, horrible, and hilarious—like travel, and life, itself.

~ ~ ~
When Gina and Scott approached me about working with them to assemble a collection of their travel tales, my initial reaction was extreme hesitation. Over 40 years as a travel writer and editor, I’ve met dozens of people who have wandered fervently to far-flung places, penned detailed journals, dispatched epic emails, and become convinced that their accounts were destined to become bestsellers. Great travel writing, of course, requires more than outlandish adventures in exotic places, and I was worried that Gina and Scott might turn out to be two more members of this tribe of travelers whose worldly passions far surpass their wordly talents. Then they sent me a sampling of their tales—and I was hooked. From their first story, a sea-guide’s account of a seemingly hapless (but ultimately charmed) tourist’s encounter with a predatory shark, the Gailles’ tales charted a territory that was delightfully different from the travel stories I was used to reading. Their accounts didn’t focus so much on what they had done as on the people they had met, and on those people’s most unforgettable stories. By turning their spotlight on others, the Gailles illuminated a wide and wondrous world that was new to me—and in so doing, they renewed my sense of just how rich and varied our planet is. As I worked with Gina and Scott, I felt like I was journeying deeper and deeper into an enchanted landscape. I met characters I could vividly imagine but had never met, listened to stories that I had never heard and that blazed new mind-trails for me. Now, rereading the completed collection, I realize that while the Gailles may not be professional travel writers, their stories embody three of the greatest lessons I have learned from a lifetime of travel writing. The first is that after all the monuments, markets, and museums, our most memorable travel experiences almost always involve the people we meet. The second is that everyone has a story, and often the people we least suspect have the most fascinating stories. The third is that if we approach people with respect and appreciation, they will warmly welcome us into their lives, with respect and appreciation too. A fourth corollary truth that this book abundantly proves is that if we ask the right questions, in the right spirit, the world will grace us with tales that we could not have imagined in our wildest dreams. That’s finally why I love this book. In the age of the selfie and the social mediafication of the planet, it is profoundly refreshing to be reminded that our world is infinitely full of surprises, if only we open ourselves to them, and that the ultimate reward of travel is connection—and the resulting richer appreciation of the human map of the world.

~ ~ ~
Don George has been called “a legendary travel writer and editor” by National Geographic. He is the author of The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don Georg” and Lonely Planet’s How to Be a Travel Writer. He has been Global Travel Editor at Lonely Planet and Travel Editor for Salon.com and the San Francisco Examiner/Chronicle. He is currently Editor at Large for National Geographic Traveler. Don has edited twelve award-winning travel anthologies, including The Kindness of Strangers, An Innocent Abroad, and Travelers’ Tales Japan.

Additional text

“This book contains some of the most astonishing tales I’ve ever encountered. One after another. They make for obsessive reading.” —Tim Cahill, author of Jaguars Ripped My Flesh
“The entire point of travel is to encounter the unimaginable. Gina and Scott Gaille have collected some of the most remarkable tales to ever see the light of day. A hoot to read.” —J. Maarten Troost, author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals
“A fabulous new book! Two- or three-page stories, each one brings you to a different part of the world.” —Frommer’s Travel Show
“Strange Tales of World Travel presents a world you will not find in glossy magazine articles, breathless blogs, or self-adulatory Instagrams ... it’s a world of adventures gone awry, ... of intimate glimpses of unimaginable wealth and unquestionable power, of close encounters with the wilder edges of human culture .... The result is a collection that is, as the book’s subtitle suggests, bizarre, mysterious, horrible, and hilarious—like travel, and life itself.” —From the Foreword by Don George, author of Lonely Planet’s How to Be a Travel Writer
“Damn! I thought my book had the strangest bunch of true travel tales under the sun, but the Gailles’ collection leaves me in the dust. Maybe even obliterated in a Sahara sandstorm.” —Albert Podell, New York Times best-selling author of Around the World in 50 Years
Bronze Winner in Travel Essay category - 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPYs)
Honorable Mention in Travel Book category - 2019 North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA) Awards
Finalist in Travel category - 2019 Foreword Magazine INDIES Book Awards

Product details

• Authors: Gina Gaille, Scott Gaille
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: from age 14
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2019
• EAN: 9781609521714
• ISBN: 978-1-60952-171-4
• Illustrations: Farb., s/w. Fotos, Abb.
• Subjects: Travel > Travelogues, traveller's tales; TRAVEL / General, TRAVEL / Special Interest / Adventure, TRAVEL / Special Interest / General, TRAVEL / Special Interest / Haunted & Unexplained