Kidnapped in the most expensive taxi in Mexico.
Living like Frank Sinatra with a UTI in Palm Springs.
Avoiding exploding rubbish bins in new Tokyo.
Sleeping with man-eating spiders in Guatemala.
A GUIDE FOR TRAVELLING RECKLESSLY, LIVING STUPIDLY
For better or (usually) worse, major life decisions start as a scribble on the back of a dive bar napkin for Paul Manser – a writer whose existence is mostly made up of stupid choices and wildly ambitious travel insurance claims.
FROM THE AUTHOR
Life Plans on Dive Bar Napkins is a book of experiences I always wanted to get into print, but worried that some tut-tutting travel editor would strip of all the best dick jokes. You could say that the book is an unnecessary act of self-indulgence by an egotist who shirks life’s responsibilities, drinks too much and thinks too little. And you’d probably be right.
I wrote this book for the people who want to experience something different, who drink because they enjoy it, and whose life plans begin as incoherent scrawls on the back of a dive bar napkin.
Life Plans on Dive Bar Napkins is published in hardcover by Hardie Grant BOOKS and is available through all major book sellers and online here
From “How to Cook a Human”
“The Wi-Fi connection drops out. Again. I would walk downstairs to complain if I wasn’t so worried about the skinny, expressionless receptionist. He seems like the kind of guy who visits a morgue afterhours to peel apart chilled corpses and sew the skin together into human pyjamas, which he later sells online with the tagline: ‘The Epidermis You Want to Be In.’”
From “Nightmare at 37,000 Feet”
“I like my travels to unfurl unplanned. I want to step out of an airport’s arrival terminal without anywhere to stay and have my nose brutally assaulted by the smell of burning petrol. I want the obnoxious urban drone of car horns, people shouting and the sounds of occasional near-death to rupture my eardrums through an open taxi window.
I would not be surprised to one day wake up in Lima without any memory, handcuffed to an angry guinea pig in what an overzealous real estate agent would loosely describe as a ‘charming fixer-upper’ but a crime reporter would later call a ‘crack-den house of horror.”
From “The Pig Pen”
“She looks horrified. The deep, Southern European tan drains from her face. It was as if she had found me crouching behind a door holding a bloodied meat cleaver and a dating guide written by Charles Manson. She shrieks, ‘You’re not wearing any underwear… Are you”
From “The Bomb Shelter”
“The Swiss have reputation as some of the most sensible, if not boring, people in Europe. To find out they were in fact mass-explosive-toting conspiracy theorists, preparing for the world’s end with underground bunkers like a giant suicide cult, is almost a pleasant surprise.”
