'I'd failed both my wife and myself, and vowed to never let that happen again.'



There's a point halfway through this travelogue which really hits the reader in the gut. It comes when the writer returns to his hotel one night to find his wife highly distressed, and unusually quiet. Unbeknownst to him, she had been followed by men in a car, who then proceeded to hang around outside the couple's hotel room, calling for her to come out to whatever foul end they had up their sleeves. While all this wa

'I'd failed both my wife and myself, and vowed to never let that happen again.'



There's a point halfway through this travelogue which really hits the reader in the gut. It comes when the writer returns to his hotel one night to find his wife highly distressed, and unusually quiet. Unbeknownst to him, she had been followed by men in a car, who then proceeded to hang around outside the couple's hotel room, calling for her to come out to whatever foul end they had up their sleeves. While all this was happening, the writer had been out enjoying the nightlife of a new country, innocuously drinking in a bar with fellow travelers. He's of course overcome by tremendous guilt upon finding out, and it's put across with a brave and brute honesty that'll make you take stock a little. The reason it really hits hard though is because up until this point, Chris Tharp does what all great travel writers should - he stays out of it. He paints the scene, shows us the locals and the ex-pats, gives us a little history. He himself rarely strays into the picture, and when he does, it usually hits the funny bone with some sort of hilarious observation. When that moment in the hotel comes though, you'll be impressed by the sobering honesty of it. I couldn't have put it down on paper, not for anyone.



But it shouldn't have come as such a surprise, for The Worst Motorcycle in Laos never pulls any punches in its 400 page trek across the Asian continent. Some of the scenes I will never forget for their haunting depiction of life on the extreme end of the poverty scale. There are moments when you'll have to put the book down to think about what Tharp has just seen - a deformed child in a cart; a foul mouthed nine year old; the squalor of public defecation. This is important information, and it helps the book show a world that is changing, or very much needs to change.



The title should tell you this is writing by someone who skipped the planes, and traveled on the road, seeing life from ground level. It gave Tharp a chance to observe, and observe he does. He sees things which you and me would otherwise miss: the North Korean official on mysterious business in Laos; the travel agency advertising archaic fares; the invasion of a seaside village by rich Russians where once there were none.



He sees beauty too, with vivid descriptions of rural China in one of the book's finest chapters. It's fascinating enough to get a look into pre-Olympic China, but when we are later taken to the volatile Uyghur region of the country, it becomes a vital kind of reportage about somewhere that will most likely be whitewashed in the years to come. Another reason to read these very rough travels in Asia.