Shooting the Boh: A Woman's Voyage Down the Wildest River in Borneo (Paperback)

~ (Author) "I first heard about the Boh River from Richard Bangs, president of Sobek..." (more)
Key Phrases: deng deng, foot rot, sweat bees, Long Lebusan, Boh River, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Some women seek adventure to test their mettle, suck down jolts of adrenaline, and prove they haven't grown old and indolent. In Shooting the Boh, journalist Tracy Johnston identifies other motivations for joining a group scheduled to raft down a previously uncharted section of the Boh river in Borneo. "I am by nature a passive person who likes excitement; a person with no magnificent obsessions who loves to participate in them," she says. And, too, if she agreed to write an article about it, the trip was free.

So began an arduous, ill-conceived journey that started with her losing a duffle bag of top-notch river gear and swiftly ran up against treacherous rapids, foot rot, hot flashes, Tarzan-like leeches, clouds of sweat bees, and other nerve-racking flora and fauna. While traversing a section of steamy rain forest, Johnston says, "a quarter of the things I touched had thorns or sharp spines and the rest were covered with ants." She replays the highs and lows of the trip in Technicolor, summing up her fellow travelers and their wild ride in fluid, punchy prose. --Francesca Coltrera

From Publishers Weekly

This story of a journalist joining an expedition down the Boh River starts out as standard adventure travel fare, but the difference rapidly becomes apparent: this journalist is over 40, her luggage is lost on the flight over and cannot be recovered in time, and the expedition has been planned by a company that takes irresponsibility to a new level. Only when they are already on the river do the participants realize how difficult and dangerous their time together will be. All of them must deal with "insect stress" caused by bees that feast on human sweat, foot fungus, raging rapids, and perhaps an evil river spirit. On top of that, Johnston begins to have menopausal hot flashes and questions whether it is time to give up the thrill of risky journeys. Her descriptions of both natural phenomena and local customs are lyrical: she compares salespeople in an outdoor market to "baby birds, mouths open, arms aflutter." In writing about the seemingly cursed journey, Johnston keeps her chin up and sticks to what she calls "the adventure code of travel: go with the unexpected and make do with what you get." This engrossing and surprisingly upbeat tale accomplishes much more than that. First serial to Cosmopolitan; QPB selection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st edition (September 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679740104
• ISBN-13: 978-0679740100
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #132,226 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars She goes there so you don't have to, May 14, 2000

By	Douglas A. Wade (San Leandro, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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I had intended to read a chapter or two of this book and ended up reading it in one sitting. It really was an interesting trip, and the descriptions of life in the rain forest are just amazing. The author slips in a fair amount of history of the earlier explorers and travel writers in the area but mostly manages to interleave things enough to keep the pace up.

I almost didn't buy the book after reading some of the earlier reviews so I think I'd better address some of their points. There are maybe two pages about the hot flashes (out of 256) and a few mentions -- basically along the line of mentioning her spider bites, bee bites, foot rot, hot flashes, bad back, etc. It's really no big deal, and this is coming from a 30 year old "basic guy".

I do think a responsible tour company would have stopped her from going on the trip after the airline lost her luggage instead of assuming she could borrow everything, but then again I think a responsible tour company would have brought a radio (duh) and had some plans as to what would have happened if, say, somebody had broken a leg. This trip could have turned into a real disaster. And while the author was often wasting resources, so was the whole group. They really didn't realize what a mess they were in until they were in deep over their heads.

The whole interaction between the tour company (operating without a clue) the guides (competent but following the company line because they need the money) and the tourists (didn't ask the right questions before leaving or during the trip) is pretty fascinating. It's a real argument for independent travel. . . but not to the rain forest!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Compelling but too self-absorbed, December 20, 2004

By	Michael Shapiro (Sebastopol, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have to give Johnston credit for being able to record and recount this arduous trip with such clarity. When one is exhausted, hounded by sweat-sucking bees, fearing that she may not survive, it takes a lot of persistence to keep a thorough journal. She's done this and written competently about the adventure, but this book ultimately is a let-down. Here's why:

Johnston is too self-absorbed and often expects others to take care of her needs. Her luggage is lost and even after another member of the trip lends her a sleeping bag, she's miffed that no one would loan her an air mattress. She feels that because she has a back problem every one should accommodate her needs. It's classic lack of self-responsibility - you often see this on river trips and other risky expeditions. Just as Jon Krakauer discovers on his "assault" on Everest in "Into Thin Air," people on guided trips expect all their needs to be met. Rather than thinking what she could do, despite her physical limits, to help the group, she castigates the others for not helping her enough.

As a raft guide, journalist, and author ("A Sense of Place"), I'm aware of the challenges Johnston faced, but I wish she'd painted a better picture of the other people on the trip. We hear about the guides' daring rescues and Sylvie's preening, but we don't get more than a two-dimensional view of the other guests on the trip.

And I notice that though Johnston often talks about the jungle spirits, she doesn't revere the life of the jungle. She goes out of her way to toss a centipede in the river, smear a leach to death even though it wasn't on her, and chortles over drowned bees. Of course I can understand this reaction to pests but it shows a lack of reverence for the place.

A couple of quibbles: she often uses "oar" as a verb, as in the guide was "oaring" the boat. You don't oar a boat - you row it. And the cover isn't a real image - it's two pictures, one of a longboat superimposed on the rapids. I don't blame Johnston for the cover - doubtless she had little or nothing to do with it - but it seems somehow symbolic of the book's lack of authenticity.

Despite all these faults, once I started reading I wanted to keep going to the end.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Shooting the Shallows, May 2, 2002

By	Amy Hanson (Tacoma, WA United States) - See all my reviews

A band of adventure lovers tries to be the first to raft down the Boh River in Borneo. You'd think it would be a ripping good adventure story: they're out in the middle of nowhere with no rescue radios to call for help, on an uncharted river without good maps, riding in rafts that flip over when they hit the rocks wrong. They barely miss going over a waterfall, the three-day trip is on day nine, they're running out of food, and foot rot is making it really tough to walk.

But incredibly, the author downplays all these dangers and instead gives us a book-length musing on her fading youth and beauty.

She's endlessly fascinated with co-tourist Sylvie, a twenty-something fashion model whose reason for being on the trip is never adequately explained. She carefully documents Sylvie's laughing comments in French, the way she sleeps, her videotaped snapshots of the beautiful people on the trip, and her every mini-bikini and clean, dry shirt. With Sylvie around, says the author, "I could see that men were ignoring me and I didn't like it."

She gives us every nuance of Sylvie's jungle romance with Mike the hunky boatman, from his initial attentions to their every disappearance later on. The pair could have been used to good advantage, giving the author a chance to reflect on her own marriage to a man who doesn't accompany her on adventures. Kelly Winters is frank about her personal life in WALKING HOME, because her personal life has everything to do with why she's on the trip.

But not Johnston. Not even the onset of hot flashes crack her. Proof that her childbearing days are over (even if she does survive the trip) provoke no thoughts on the choices she's made. We are given no information as to whether she has kids or not, or whether her career has worked out the way she'd expected. Menopause hits and she never once thinks about what might have been. She never once wonders if she's made the right choices.

Indeed, her major annoyance is not her hot flashes (or the bees, leeches, or poisonous snakes) but the fact that Sylvie is consistently failing to loan her an air mattress. Of all the nerve, can you believe it? An air mattress, the one thing she cannot live without.

And why doesn't Johnston have an air mattress? Well, her luggage never made it to Jakarta. She went out shopping for replacement supplies, but was apparently too jetlagged to remember anything that she'd spent months acquiring back at home. She only manages to buy tennis shoes ("too large"), a flashlight ("too powerful"), a towel ("the size of a doily"), a pair of shorts, and unsatisfactory flowered bedsheets.

But sirrah! The intrepid adventurer doesn't turn back, she goes anyway...and spends the entire trip begging foot powder and flashlight batteries from everyone there, even the river guides who need them. She makes no attempt to adequately explain her problem to anyone, and when they react badly, she wants us to pity her.

Oh, and she'd injured her back a month before the trip and can't do any heavy lifting.

She was no more revealing about anyone else on the trip, either. Not once is anyone shown to be, for example, *afraid*. No one is described in any revealing detail. Her big revelation has nothing to do with death or life, but rather that Sylvie's constant body checking for blemishes, and her huge wardrobe packed in double plastic bags is a good set of living skills for the rain forest.

Meanwhile, all the real dangers are waved away; they're the guides' problem. It's all too clear that this tourist has paid her money and will sit in the raft and be one with the rain forest and write in her journal until it's time to beg for stuff.

An unsatisfactory adventure all around.