No Touch Monkey!: And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late (Adventura Books Series) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Things really went to shit in the Munich train station men's room..." (more)
Key Phrases: bone setter, Paris Lip, Hua Hin, Lonely Planet (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"No Touch Monkey" is shocking and scatological and straight-out hilarious... a delightful hybrid of Hemingway, David Sedaris and Helen Fielding. -- Kate Zambreno, New City

Not just a sweet read, but an object lesson in what to do when, as they say, "shit happens." -- Marion Winik, Austin Chronicle

a well-remembered riot -- Wendy Ward, Baltimore City Paper

an almost shamefully entertaining travelogue of backpacking mishaps, ill-placed trust, and gastric distress. -- Andi Zeisler, Bitch Magazine

Product Description

Ayun Halliday may not make for the most sensible travel companion, but she is certainly one of the zaniest, with a knack for inserting herself (and her unwitting cohorts) into bizarre situations around the globe. Curator of kitsch and unabashed aficionada of pop culture, Halliday offers bemused, self-deprecating narration of events from guerilla theater in Romania to drug-induced Apocalypse Now reenactments in Vietnam to a perhaps more surreal collagen-implant demonstration at a Paris fashion show emceed by Lauren Bacall. From taming the wild dog packs of Bali to requiring the services of a bonesetter in Sumatra, Ayun Halliday offers up the best of her itinerant foibles as examples of how not to travel abroad. For instance, on layover in Amsterdam, Halliday finds unlikely trouble in the red-light district—eliciting the ire of a tiny, violent madam,—and is forced to explain tampons, which she admits, "might have looked like white cotton bullets lined up in their box," to soldiers in Kashmir—"They’re for ladies. Bleeding ladies." A self-admittedly bumbling vacationer, Halliday shares—with razorsharp wit and to hilarious effect—the travel stories most are too self-conscious to tell.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 273 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press (October 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580050972
• ISBN-13: 978-1580050975
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #508,978 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nosh, Plea, Lust, December 24, 2008

By	Olivia Giovetti (New York, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ayun Halliday isn't for everyone--if you're looking for an Under the Tuscan Sun/Eat Pray Love/Year in Provence type of travelogue-cum-memoir, you probably will be let down. If you're looking for something romantically unromantic that tells stories that you yourself wouldn't have the chutzpah to repeat (and, admit it, we've all been in a No Touch Monkey situation) and that leaves you looking up cheap flights on Orbitz afterward, you'll find a gem in NTM.

Contrary to some other hypotheses postulated here, Halliday is not a trust fund baby or a gadabout living on Mommy and Daddy's money--something that you'll find if you actually read the book. Like many of us who squirrel away birthday money, pittance salaries from temp jobs, and the odd survey or side gig in order to get a train pass or RyanAir ticket, Ayun's moments of sugar packet desserts, train-station bathroom showers, and sleeping in leaf piles are not the makings of a trip funded on a bottomless ATM. Nor do we want those trips to be; there wouldn't be much worth relating if everything was smooth sailing (see: the Titanic, Donner Party, Exodus, etc.).

Mundane? It's a subjective word. I completely respect the opinion that one may consider the more exciting story to be seeing the Taj Mahal than reclaiming a shoe from a primate creature. However I've read about the seven wonders of the world. Exponentially so. I'd rather hear the small stories that get passed around at the bar, because those are stories that most people probably won't re-live themselves. Are there more ways to tell the story? Sure. Are they just as good? Absolutely. Are they better? No, just different. Similarly, I didn't get the complaint/whine factor that other reviewers have mentioned. I got a wry, quirky recount of events that are at turns bizarre, uncomfortable, but ultimately wondrous. Geoff Dyer by way of David Rakoff or Sarah Vowell.

I was so thankful to have found this book; a great train or plane read that left me both wanting to fast forward to the last pages and wanting the book to continue past the last page. Like most vagabondish trips, it's not perfect, but I wouldn't have wanted it to be any different.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quirky, original, and really, really funny, December 9, 2007

By	Rebecca Coleman "author of DESPERADO CITY" (Maryland) - See all my reviews

I've read many, many books of travel essays-- and am always a fan of humorous ones-- but Ayun Halliday's book is my favorite, by far. "No Touch Monkey" is a riot from page one, and I had such a hard time putting it down that-- I swear this is true-- I kept reading it while I was in labor with my fourth child. (Yes, an epidural helped with that). She is so funny and at the same time so vulnerable-- never afraid to delve into her own bad hygiene, grievous errors in judgment, or embarrassing situations if it's likely to give the reader a good belly laugh. It takes courage to write that way. There is an innocence and sense of adventure to her viewpoint that makes her writing original and a pleasure to read. I look forward to much more from her-- traveling with her children, perhaps? Uh-oh!

20 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great title, lukewarm essays, September 3, 2005

By	S. C. Watson (NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I bought No Touch Monkey based on title alone. So funny, it perfectly describes situations I've seen while traveling. That said, I found the writing to be less funny than the title. Not bad by any means, just not gut-splitting or snicker inducing. I had the same response from two of my traveling friends who'd read it. They smiled, but no laughs.

Ayun Halliday's self-deprecating and sarcastic writing is likeable. But the pattern in each chapter quickly becomes apparent: she and her companions make incredibly naive and/or dangerous choices in oddball foreign places and bumble through the results. Halliday's younger self is often whiny or dislikeable, which is to the author's credit and done in a self-mocking manner, but even this becomes tiring when combined with the predictability of the essays. Sadly, the "No Touch Monkey" chapter that I'd been anticipating was a bit of a let-down. Maybe the brilliant title dooms the book. Compared, the writing lags. Which is a dead shame, because Halliday is a genuinely funny lady. Her column in Bust magazine is a spirited and slightly twisted take on motherhood and she also maintains an excellently quirky website.