A Frog in My Backpack - Stories from a World Adventure

Southeast Asia is a world filled with mystery and intrigue, and one that doesn't give up its secrets easily—as the author and his wife soon found out! Walking To Singapore is an often hilarious, but always informative look at the daily lives and disparate cultures of the region, and provides insight into the history of the region, the best (and most bizarre) foods, even religious temple etiquette. The book celebrates the beauty of Southeast Asia: swimming with sea turtles in Malaysia, seeing the sunrise from the rim of a smoking volcano, the Grand Palace in Bangkok, and watching wild orangutans waking at sunrise in Borneo. The author's adventures also take them to some of the most magnificent historical and archaeological wonders of the world such as Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Burma's city of 4,000 temples at Bagan, and the magnificent Buddhist and Hindu monuments of Borobudor in Indonesia. Helpful as a guide to budget travel in Southeast Asia—for about 10 per day!—Walking To Singapore also recounts some of the difficulties and downright danger that await—from an all night journey along the Road to Mandalay in Burma, to leeches in Sumatra, to grenade attacks in Phnom Penh!

A Blind Date With the World gives the reader a seat in the ox-cart with the team that eventually won a grueling 40,000 miles-in-seventeen-days-through-ten-countries travel adventure. Chalmers offers up a steady barrage of colorful, intriguing and provocative insights into our Global Village as he and his partner-in-crime race through sacred holy grounds, track down orangutans and employ every conceivable method of public transportation.

Billed as the HumanRace,what was thought to be relaxing champagne and caviar sojourn around the world turned into “the scavenger hunt from hell!” The race had its rabid competitors from around the world chasing down aphrodisiacs in Asia, escaping train fires in Egypt and skulking around graveyards at midnight in France, for fame and fortune awaiting them in New York City. Chalmers and Valvur eventually won the race, but not without barely surviving the ordeal and transforming themselves into global cultural terrorists.

Expressive, heart-thumping, compelling and totally irreverent, A Blind Date With the World offers a unique and colorful looks at “Homo touristicus” running amok in the world at the height of the Greed is Good Go Go years. A must read for any real adventurer or armchair traveler.

Remember when you were a kid and you got your first bicycle? After a few weeks of mastering the dynamics of balancing, steering, and pedaling, all at the same time hopefully, your father released his protective, steadying grip on the seat and you went wobbling off on your own. It was probably your very first taste of independence and freedom and you knew you liked that feeling very much. Few things in life have ever compared to that first solo ride.

Almost 40 years after my first solo bike ride, I was able to recapture the excitement and passion of that momentous occasion when I pedaled out of Anchorage, Alaska bound for Tierra del Fuego-the very tip of South America. No matter that it was 17,500 miles distant and would take 3½ years to get there I vowed I would achieve that goal if it took the rest of my life.

TWO PLANE TICKETS, NO PLAN, ONE DREAM