The 100 Best Worldwide Vacations to Enrich Your Life by Pam Grout book review

Title:

The 100 best worldwide vacations to enrich your life
(National Geographic, 2008) ISBN 978-1426202797 1-426202792

Theme:

Pam Grout expands her list of learning vacations and experiential travel in this sequel to The 100 best vacations to enrich your life. She describes eclectic holiday activities like pottery making in Ban Chan, Laos, quilt making in Prince Edward Island, writers workshops in Paris, wood turning and carving in North Carolina, samba schools in Rio de Janeiro, learning herbology in Ashhurst, New Zealand and Tasmania, Australia, maintaining trails on Kilimanjaro, helping scientists research bottlenose dolphins, conducting biodiversity surveys, helping villagers start a cottage industry in El Salvador, learning business tips from the Chinese, training to be a geisha and beer making in Germany.

Sample Items:

Ever wonder what it would be like to experience a camel trek across the Sahara Desert? Pam Grout describes the KE Adventure Travel Libyan Acacus Mountain trip with Tuareg nomads, which begins in Tripoli, Libya.

The 100 best worldwide vacations to enrich your life discusses how to charter a yacht in Greece and cruise to some of the 2,000 Greek islands. The travel book explains the differences between the Saronic, Cyclades, Dodecanese and Ionian Islands. It gives readers contact information for Globe Merchant Yacht Charters, a U.S.-based broker, and provides a range of prices for chartered boats such as the S/Y Stressbuster.

Do you want to learn the secrets of Kung Fu? Pam Grout explains how to obtain Zen Buddhist martial arts training at Shaolin Temple in Songshan, China, where David Carradine, Bruce Lee and Jet Li studied.

Notable Elements:

Sidebars contain fascinating details about destinations and activities. For example, the Panama Canal requires 52 million gallons from Gatun Lake for every large ship that transits the Panama Canal and the Bocas del Toro (an archipelago of 68 islands, off northwestern Panama), supports four endangered sea turtle species (hawksbill, green, leatherback and loggerhead).

Another example describes attaya tea ceremonies in Senegal. The brewing and drinking of gunpowder tea (rolled into hard pellets) takes several hours.

Other sidebars provide tips. For example, in Laos, the book lists things to see and do in Luang Prabang (monastery of Wat Xieng Thong and the gold Pra Ban Buddha in the Royal Palace).

Tone / Style:

The 100 best worldwide vacations to enrich your life describes trips that are off-the-beaten-track and not found on the shelves of travel agents. Ranging from volunteer holidays (working at a chimpanzee sanctuary in Girona, Spain) to adventure vacations (bicycling across Cuba), they motivate readers to take meaningful trips rather than resort package holidays.

Each vacation idea includes a travel quote, a description of the vacation experience or activity, information about the organizer of the trip and a sidebar with interesting facts (e.g., the world's best places to go fly fishing).