25. J. Maarten Troost - Getting Stoned with the Savages

"Using a format similar to that of his previous work, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Troost creates another comical and touching travel memoir. Troost and his wife, Sylvia, move from busy Washington, D.C., to Vanuatu, a nation made up of 83 islands in the South Pacific. As Sylvia works for a regional nonprofit, Troost immerses himself in the islands' culture, an odd mix of the islanders' thousand-year-old "kastoms" along with imperialist British and French influences. This really means that Troost gets to live in a nice house while he gets drunk on kava; dodges "a long inferno of magma and a cascade of lava bombs" at the "world's most accessible volcano"; and checks out the "calcified" leftovers from one of Vanuatu's not-so-ancient traditions, cannibalism. At the end of the book, the couple move to Fiji so that Sylvia will have state-of-the-art medical care when she gives birth to their first baby. While modern-day Fiji provides little fodder for Troost's comic sensibilities, the birth of his son enables him to share some deeper thoughts and decide it is "time to stop looking for paradise." A funny travelogue with a sentimental heart, Troost's latest work genuinely captures the search for paradise as well as the need for home." - Publisher's Weekly

Ironically, I only bought this book because Borders had a "buy one get one 1/2 price" sale and I took a chance on this one. I'm glad I did.

I really like travel literature. It gives me an insight into what other lands and cultures are like. This one is not your traditional travel literature. Troost is a little on the liberal side and looks into cultural traditions not found typically in this type of book. For one thing, the guy loved kava, which is an intoxicating drink, and was extremely fascinated in why people would eat other people.

Fantastic read and I strongly recommend it.