The Reluctant Traveler: How to explore the world without learning anything about yourself or other cultures

You know the type of book. Some insufferable backpacker leaves behind his perfectly good life in the U.S. for a hot, disease-infested hellhole to eat grub worms, catch giardia and build mud huts with the locals - then has the nerve to claim the experience was enlightening! This is not that type of book. This is travel from a whole new perspective - that of the worst traveler in the world, Dan Fazio. He hasn't written another "Eat, Pray, Love" - it's actually more like "Panic, Sweat, Curse." Fazio's idea of international travel involves relaxing in a Mediterranean villa and stuffing himself with various cured meats. Unfortunately, his wife was drawn to the whole grub worms and giardia thing, and she managed to drag him along on a grueling 10-month death march through Europe, Southeast Asia, South America and Mexico. Shattering romantic travel illusions about swimming in waterfalls or picking olives on a pastoral Tuscan ranch, Fazio reads a bit like Chuck Klosterman if he were being carted around the globe in Bill Bryson's backpack - and reveals that the average traveler spends most of his time puking, being puked on, about to die in a fiery bus crash - or all of the above simultaneously.