Ever heard of Spalding Gray? For The Sydney Morning Herald he is "an unholy cross between James Joyce and Hunter S. Thompson", for The Minneapolis Star and Tribune "a new wave Mark Twain", and for me he is the guy whose Swimming to Cambodia and Impossible Vacation gave me some really good hours. Here are two excerpts:
Some say that the Thais are the nicest people that money can buy, because they like to have fun. They know how to have fun and, perhaps due to their very permissive strain of Buddhism, they don't have to suffer for it after they have it.
From: Swimming to Cambodia
I was awake the whole next night straining on Air India to see anything, any glimpse of the wildly imagined landscape below. Meg slept while I pressed my nose to the window and saw a portion of my face, reflected, which I first mistook for Turkey or Saudi Arabia ...
... Like the trip from the airport into Amsterdam, the ride into Delhi was confusing; but there was no time to reflect on it. We both held on for dear life as the cab careened through streets of chaos. I only had time for two thoughts: one, how Gandhi had ever imagined he could bring peace and order to such a place, and two, that I did not want to die here and that was what I felt was about to happen.
From: Impossible Vacation
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