{"id":151,"date":"2005-08-16T12:31:08","date_gmt":"2005-08-16T02:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thunderguy.com\/bennett\/?p=151"},"modified":"2005-08-16T12:36:29","modified_gmt":"2005-08-16T02:36:29","slug":"lonely-planet-guide-to-experimental-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/2005\/08\/16\/lonely-planet-guide-to-experimental-travel\/","title":{"rendered":"Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lonely<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

If you’re bored with the usual sightseeing holiday — hunting down famous places and buildings and checking them off your “must-see” list — then you could try mixing it up a little. Jump on a local train and stay on it until the end of the line. Find a wandering dog and follow it. Buy an 18th-century guidebook and use it to plan your itinerary. There are a lot of ways to make travel surprising again, and a lot of them are gathered in The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel<\/a>. This is my kind of travel book.<\/p>\n

My own forays into experimental travel have been comparatively minor. While living in Australia I have had a vague plan to travel to all the Big Things built as tourist attractions — the Big Potato, the Big Banana, the Big Prawn, the Big Peanut. There are a lot here, but I’ve still never gotten to the most famous of them all: the Big Pineapple up in Queensland. Anyway, my tase for Big Tourism waned after visiting the ultimate Big Thing in Japan. There’s a hillside which has the Japanese character for “Big” written on it in enormous strokes — the “Big Big”. Once you’ve seen the Big Big, all the other Bigs seem anticlimactic.<\/p>\n

I also recall trying to create a travelogue for my feet — holidaying and coming back with a lot of scenic snapshots of my feet in various exotic locales. This was inspired by a few inadvertent foot photos, the result of my photographic incompetence. The Foot Travelogue is reminiscent of the classic “Garden Gnome Tourist” stunt, made famous by the French film Amelie<\/a> and recently the subject of a bizarre and amusing auction<\/a>. But the convenience of carrying around your own feet instead of a garden gnome cannot be overstated.<\/p>\n

If you think travel should be unpredictable and stimulating, maybe this unique travel guide is for you. Next time you see somebody wearing a horse’s head and trying to hitchhike to Tibet, don’t ask what drugs they’re taking — ask what book they’re reading.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re bored with the usual sightseeing holiday — hunting down famous places and buildings and checking them off your “must-see” list — then you could try mixing it up a little. Jump on a local train and stay on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[4,6],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-books","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderguy.com\/bennett\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}