Travelling the world on the budget plan of backpacks and hostels and long dusty bus rides brings you a non-Club Med view of life that travel agents and Lonely Planet guidebooks don't necessarily want you to see. A view that casts the middle class values and concerns of the travelers in a glaring light.
This gritty world is presented through the eyes of a number of characters - young, middle aged, single, married, divorced. They travel to the Dominican Republic, the Czech Republic, Peru, India, China, Kuala Lumpur. But they have these things in common - they are white Canadians, and they are not travelling first class.
As the too-real realities of the Third World unfold, however, an odd thing happens. The way of life of so many people bereft of material comforts, by our standards, becomes the "real world." They struggle daily to survive in a world that exists to serve others, and leaves them out. Their lives are poor and simple - and unambiguous. Real. In the title story, a traveler, sickened by the opulent, artificial life of her middle class Canadian home, arranges to get back into her backpack and into the Third World, the real world, as soon as possible.