Adam Fletcher's Journey to the World's Strangest Places: From Chernobyl to North Korea and Beyond

Bill F: I was hoping for a variation on the excellent travel books by Bill Bryson but really this doesn't compete. The storyline has potential but every situation is dragged out to fill far too many pages - it becomes a little tiresome and harder work than it should be. I will not be buying the sequel.

United Kingdom on Oct 21, 2022

PJ: Interesting and entertaining , an insight to places in the world you might be happy to omit from the bucket list as the author travels to some of the most unusual places .
At times I found myself wondering just what possessed him, others I that I envied his adventurous spirit , others that I completely understood his partners frustration .... but the result of his quest is this great collection of stories from around the globe which allows the reader to experience the culture, the people the strange, weird and wacky the make up this fabulous world of ours all from our armchair.
I will look forward to future adventures !

United Kingdom on Mar 25, 2022

Booklover: I loved this book! It had me laughing so many times. Stuck on a bus in China during a blizzard, a trip in Tel Aviv, being a tourist in North Korea: amazing vacation trips that I felt like I was a part of but in the comfort of my home. Some of these travels that I as an American feel I cannot do. The author Adam is from UK and lives in Berlin. I love his style of writing. Only boring chapter was Liberal and so I mostly skimmed through it.

United States on Nov 25, 2021

Lisa Jackson: ... because you will drive them crazy by insisting on reading out the 'best bits', of which there are many, in fact probably one on every one of the 319 pages. Also don't read this book if you have a job - every time I finished a chapter I'd read the tempting headline of the next chapter ('China: It's ugly in here. And murdery.'), sigh, and then read 'just one more'. I simply couldn't put it down and felt a real sense of loss when I finished it (thank goodness there was a sequel). I bought this book as I've been to, or intend going to, all of the places Adam went to, and it didn't disappoint. I loved the way Adam and the long-suffering Annett squabble during their travels (my lips are sealed as to why) and thoroughly enjoyed the way he summed up each country. I won't do what I did to my long-suffering husband and repeat all the metaphors and descriptions that were so perfect I just had to share them, but you'll discover them, like juicy cherries in a fruitcake, in every chapter. Thanks Adam for taking me on your travels - I'm glad you came back!

United Kingdom on Jun 08, 2020

Kindle Customer: Sometimes you have to take a chance, sometimes it's a trip, sometimes it's a book. I took a chance on a book of a writer with echoes of myself taking a chance on a trip, I won't spoil what comes next for him, but for me it was well worth the chance.

Adams writes with a disarming, casual voice that feels straight from the heart, in a way that's much warmer and funnier than Karl Pilkington and closer to the wide-eyed wonder of Danny Wallace. He's not quite writing as engagingly as I find Wallace yet but frankly that's splitting hairs.

I've seen some of the places he talks about and don't always agree with his feelings, but his voice is so authentic I am just happy to let him get on with it.

It's not a great travel book for detail, but an excellent one for feeling and that will very likely bring his next book onto my (virtual) bookshelf soon enough.

Thanks for fun read - I've been stuck in my apartment riding out the Corona virus scare and this let my mind wander at a time when my body couldn't. That alone was worth it.

United Kingdom on Feb 22, 2020

Paul Gale: What a great book. I loved the journey and story telling, more than just a destination but a search to find out more about oneself and make sense of the world in general. Is this something we all do? Well maybe those of us who experience wanderlust. Adam really created an environment that you could envisage in your mind and the characters as well.

I read Adam's second book first so reading this book put all the pieces together somewhat, but I agree you can read these books independently of each other.

My only other comment is that Annette sounds great for 1, letting you be free to travel and 2, coming with you to some of these destinations. Lastly photos would have really added to the books.

Keep writing Adam.

United States on Nov 01, 2019

Global Prof: This is one of the most hilarious books I've read in a long time. Think Dave Barry meets Rick Steves. With some great life lessons thrown in for good measure.

Fletcher is a balding Brit in his 30's who lives in Berlin. A self-described couch potato, he decides to get out of his rut and travel to places that will take him out of his comfort zone. Such as Istanbul during riots, Moldova, a Hare Krishna camp in Argentina, a 48-hour "overnight" bus ride in China during holiday season, Hebron, etc. His prose made me laugh out loud, over and over again (samples below). I felt like underlining the whole book.

But it's really the self-knowledge that Fletcher gains that makes this more than an entertaining read. He concludes that being bored with one's own (first-world) culture is a luxury. Most people in countries that malfunction are struggling just to survive. He doesn't really try to analyze why countries malfunction; rather, he observes with a careful eye and lets us draw our own conclusions. "I'd lost sight of he extraordinary privilege inherent within boredom. Most people in the world don't get to decide whether or not to engage in politics. Don't feel so safe and...

United States on May 14, 2019

Ron K: Don’t Go There by Adam Fletcher is described as “From Chernobyl to North Korea-- One Man’s Quest to Lose Himself and Find Everyone Else in the World’s Strangest Places.” The subtitle probably suffers from a politically correct faux pas; in chapter one Adam is losing himself in Turkey but companion Annett is with him. It is not “one man’s” quest until Adam manages to piss Annett off. However, it is a travel novel and for the constant traveler such as myself, this book is automatically interesting. Reading this will introduce potential travelers to practices that might be a culture shock to the unprepared. For instance, in Chapter One Annett and Adam are in Turkey where during anti-government demonstrations they observe much of the population protesting in the streets by banging on kitchen pots and pans. Fletcher describes this as a time-honored tradition going back to 1923 during the time of Kemal Atatürk.

The pair has an adventure on a bus in China that takes place over more than forty hours. That is forty hours on a bus that is not moving. Drivers are waiting for authorities to lift a barricade. There are lessons for the reader. When traveling in the...

United States on Mar 27, 2018

Jan: This is a genuinely loud out loud funny book. But beyond the jokes it also makes you think about the weirder parts of our big human experiment. For example, I had no idea a bunch of libertarians were trying to create their own country on the Donau (Liberland), that North Korea has twenty thousand statues of their "Dear Leaders", or that it was Belarus that suffered most from the Chernobyl disaster.

The author has a talent for phrasing simple, ordinary moments in a refreshing way. A few random examples:

"Two boys appeared, like rabbits pulled from the situation’s hat. I have no idea where they came from. Possibly a pothole."

"I didn’t want to tell Annett about my “protesters are always right” theory because she’d been known to argue using facts, while I came from more of an anecdotal background."

"My brain scurried around unlocking the vaults of my memory, searching through all the things I’d ever done wrong, presumably, so it could confess to these upfront before the waterboarding really got going."

Every page has a gem like these. It was a joy to read, especially the Israel chapter, where the author's airport ordeal actually made me...

Germany on Feb 06, 2018