True Stories and Other Rarities: Backpacking in Asia

Written by Mark Gowan

Narrated by Mark Gowan

When the lamp hit the wall we knew we needed a change. And change things we did. Very shortly afterwards we sold almost everything we owned, bought backpacks and boots and two one-way tickets to Bangkok Thailand. We didn't know when we were coming back or even where we would go but Bangkok was a start and we needed a new start. Living a quiet life in Denmark, we did what many people talked about doing. Our adventure was exciting and taught us that in order to know what you've got you sometimes have to give it up. One thing we were not willing to give up was our marriage and so off we went. Written during the trip True Stories and Other Rarities: Backpacking Through Asia takes the reader on our adventure like it really was, which was not always beautiful, not always fun, but always surprising and full characters. Traversing the streets of Bangkok on foot, meeting new friends in Vietnam, hiking Nepal, sleeping in caves, and trying to survive the streets of India. This is not your average adventure book, but our trip was not the average trip. We set off on one of our adventures with pie-in-sky ideas of how it was going to be. We were wrong. Note: a percentage of all proceeds from the sell of this book will go directly to Animal charities and sanctuaries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Gowan
• Release date: Nov 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781736351826

Mark Gowan

Mark began his career as a touring musician, meeting his wife in Up With People.  He went on to play music professionally for numerous bands for twelve years and then renovated houses in St. Louis Missouri before getting his Master of Philosophy and teaching community college in Littleton Colorado for nine years.  Yet again, a change was needed and so Mark and Helle packed up and moved to New Hampshire to start a farm.  Mark and Helle have been married for thirty-one years and currently live in the Dallas area where Mark writes, builds furniture, and records music to help raise money for animal sanctuaries.

Reviews for True Stories and Other Rarities

[Aun Sirinuch · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I just 30 mins into listening and already the word ‘horrible’ and ‘horribly’ was used to describe things in Bangkok, Thailand, for over twenty times. What horrible author this is, writing a travel literature in this way. The city and the country is loved by tons of tourists and keep attracting more and more tourists over the years. The author is the one not being able to enjoy things in a developing country, probably naively expecting things to be the same as at home, the US. My advice is ‘if you expect things to be the same as at home, stay there don’t travel, traveling is clearly not for you. Stay at home so you stop being horrible.’