Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman's Travel Odyssey (Travelers' Tales Footsteps) [Paperback]

Laurie Gough (Author)

Book Description

Series: Travelers' Tales Footsteps | Publication Date: September 30, 2000

This feisty, sexy, energetic tale of a young woman's solo journey through Fiji, Bali, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Morocco offers the best of memoir and travel narrative combined. Gough chronicles her encounters with both humor and wisdom as she covers the globe on her own. "Passionate and poetic." - San Francisco Examiner

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Readers won't be bored drinking in the adventures of Laurie Gough. They may be alarmed, they may be annoyed, and they will probably be amazed as they read about the sojourns of this headstrong lone traveler who throws herself into foreign cultures with the subtlety and shyness of Courtney Love. But ennui probably will not factor in when one cracks open Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman's Travel Odyssey, an energetic travelogue set in locales such as Fiji, Bali, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Fez, and told in a loose, fluid style that is part personal journal, part after-dinner tale.

Gough, a teacher in her late 20s who hails from Canada, is so feisty and independent she makes Amelia Earhart look coddled and wimpy. She thinks nothing of trekking through a Fijian jungle at night, pooh-poohing warnings about the area's previous cannibalistic ways with an attitude of "you shouldn't knock eating people until you try it yourself." She doesn't hesitate to throw a hissy fit on an airborne Asian plane: when erroneously seated in the smoking section, she stomps up to, and reseats herself in, first class. She rips up credit card originals in Morocco when she realizes she's been swindled. In Hawaii--which she despises--she doesn't think twice about trespassing on Sylvester Stallone's property and taking a dip in his pool. She continually encounters what most people would consider dangers, including men who equate lone female travelers with wanton women, though she--usually--walks away unscathed.

Immersion is the key word in her far-flung journeys, many of which are to the South Pacific. "I don't travel to see the museums, galleries, and palaces of the glittering cities," she writes. "I travel to see the faces of the villagers in their markets ... or to hear what women say at bus stops. I watch to see how the moon rises over unfamiliar land.... I watch to see if my reflection has changed."

She drinks the hallucinogen kava, she befriends strangers waiting for the full moon to rise, she lives in hollowed-out trees, rides motorcycles with Hell's Angels wannabes, stays in the homes of people unknown to her. She hitchhikes, she breaks toes, is drugged by carpet sellers, is devoured by bedbugs, and becomes host to head lice.

There is a payoff for jumping into foreign cultures alone and avoiding all things that smack of tourism: Gough gets true glimpses into these exotic worlds and gleans cultural insights rare for someone who doesn't speak the local tongue. She attends funerals where the practice is to sniff the corpse. She sits around campfires with natives, singing along to beat-up ukuleles, telling travel tales, and gazing at piercingly bright constellations. She discovers pooftas--Fijian men raised in daughterless households as females. She learns that cannibalism was a way to humiliate families of the victim, and that cabbies in Malaysia might carry your luggage to the hotel room--and then hop in the bed. She embraces the novel and the mundane, such as drinking milk fresh from the coconut with a Fijian friend. "It slides down my throat like sweet wine," she notes, and then she learns how to dig into the fruit's flesh with a spoon fashioned from the husk. "This feast wouldn't be the same anywhere else. Only on a green island this saturated, in a forest where sweet decadence is deeply hidden, could this occur, this delicate ancient feast."

One doesn't necessarily walk away from this book wishing that they'd walked in Gough's shoes and experienced her journeys. But this book is colorful and inspiring, showing the richness of foreign travel when one takes the road untrodden by tourists, and proving that lone female journeyers--even those who are fearless occasionally to the point of foolishness--can return in one piece, along with stories sometimes as beguiling as Marco Polo's. --Melissa Rossi --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From the Publisher

SHORTLISTED FOR THE THOMAS COOK/DAILY TELEGRAPH TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE U.K. WINNER TO BE ANNOUNCED SEPT. 19TH, 2000

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Travelers' Tales (September 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885211546
• ISBN-13: 978-1885211545
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #707,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lauded by Time magazine as 'one of the new generation of intrepid young female travel writers,' Laurie Gough is author of the Kiss the Sunset Pig, and Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman's Travel Odyssey, shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, and silver medal winner of ForeWord Magazine's Travel Book of the Year in the US. Eighteen of her stories have been anthologized in various literary travel books, including Salon.Com's Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance; AWOL: Tales for Travel-Inspired Minds; Sand in My Bra: Funny Women Write From the Road; Hyenas Laughed at Me and Now I know Why: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure; and More Sand in My Bra. She has written for salon.com, The L.A. Times, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Vancouver Sun, Outpost, Canadian Geographic, The Daily Express, and In London, among others. She lives in Wakefield, Quebec with her husband and little boy and still travels every chance she gets.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars SHORTLISTED FOR THE THOMAS COOK TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR!, August 7, 2000

By 

Dale Carson (Boulder, Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kite Strings of the Southern Cross : A Woman's Travel Odyssey (Hardcover)

"Kite Strings of the Southern Cross" is the best travel book I've read in ten years. Some people think just because they've had interesting travels, they can write a book about them, but not only has Gough had incredibly life-changing, fascinating and hilarious travels, she is a superb writer as well. Now I see that her book is shortlisted for the prestigious Thomas Cook Travel Book of the Year in the UK. It deserves to win wholeheartedly. Kite Strings has no pretensions. It's one of those books that jogs you out of place: a self-willed young traveler voluntarily abroad in a sometimes hostile world, but one that still somehow manages to ask you to marry it every other month. The most beautiful girl in the world, she is raped by the very image of peace and shocking beauty she seeks at the very beginning and she doesn't stop: she has to see every last inch of the earth, she has to allow it to prove its magnificence and generosity. God, what a fantastic book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best travel book I've read in years, June 24, 1999

By 

Brad Newsham ([e-mail]) (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kite Strings of the Southern Cross : A Woman's Travel Odyssey (Hardcover)

I read all the travel books I can get my hands on, and over the last decade have reviewed many of them for the San Francisco Chronicle. Five days ago I finished Laurie Gough's "Kite Strings of the Southern Cross" and have been mulling it over (it rarely leaves my mind, actually), looking for a weakness. I have concluded that it doesn't have one -- it's pretty darned perfect.

In Fiji, on nights when her Fijian lover is not serenading her under the stars, on the beach, Ms. Gough swaps tales around the local backpackers' campfire -- and most of the best ones are her own. A superb storyteller with an easy writing style, Ms. Gough comes across as an intelligent and intrepid traveler and an endearing personality. She weighs in thoughtfully on all the philosophical and metaphysical questions the road raises, and blends cultural insight, travel lore, and personal introspection seamlessly, veering in mood from serious to lighthearted at exactly the right times.

Hers is simply the best travel book I've read since Jeff Greenwald's "The Size of The World" a few years back, the kind of book you want every traveler you know to read.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Laurie has guts!!, August 15, 2001

By 

B. Warrick "Flynnatic" (Marietta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kite Strings of the Southern Cross: A Woman's Travel Odyssey (Travelers' Tales Footsteps) (Paperback)

As a fellow independent woman traveler, I thoroughly enjoyed "Kite Strings of the Southern Cross" and would recommend it to anyone interested in South Pacific travel, women's travel, or independent travel in general.

Laurie Gough is a talented writer and storyteller who, through this book, captures the "feel" of Fiji for her readers. This book is not about giving us a "to do list" for Fiji...it is about capturing the essence of the islands and their people.

Further, it is also a much appreciated addition to the growing list of travel books by and about independent women travelers. So often, women stay at home and wait: wait to meet the right guy to travel with, wait until one of their girlfriends wants to go, wait until "the time is right" or they have enough money. Laurie, through this book, encourages women to just pick up and GO. And this is very important for many of us, because the adventure of discovering the courage and inner strength necessary to travel as a solo woman is one of the most important journeys of all!