Ayun Halliday may not make for the most sensible travel companion, but she is certainly one of the zaniest, with a knack for inserting herself (and her unwitting cohorts) into bizarre situations around the globe. Curator of kitsch and unabashed aficionada of pop culture, Halliday offers bemused, self-deprecating narration of events from guerrilla theater in Romania to drug-induced Apocalypse Now reenactments in Vietnam to a perhaps more surreal collagen-implant demonstration at a Paris fashion show emceed by Lauren Bacall. On layover in Amsterdam, Halliday finds unlikely trouble in the red-light district, eliciting the ire of a tiny, violent madam, and is forced to explain tampons to soldiers in Kashmir "they're for ladies. Bleeding ladies" that, she admits, "might have looked like white cotton bullets lined up in their box."
A self-admittedly bumbling vacationer, Halliday shares, with razor-sharp wit and to hilarious effect, the travel stories most are too self-conscious to tell.
