Not So Funny When It Happened: The Best of Travel Humor and Misadventure

J. P. Donleavy, Nicholas Delbanco, and Dave Barry are among the 36 writers represented in this collection of droll travel tales. A baboon joins one travel writer in Zimbabwe for breakfast and refuses to leave. A French language class in Paris redefines the foundation of Christianity with a discussion of the Easter bunny. Another writer, warned not to tell the Vietnamese that he is divorced, invents intricate stories to explain his ex-wife's "accidental death." A fourth writer reflects on the subject of bad haircuts around the world, and another one tells of getting to the airport an hour early and then almost missing the plane. These stories are humorous, indeed. In a few cases the reader may have gone through a similar agonizing experience--one that was not the least bit funny at the time, but comical to look back on.