Rating: 
Summary: funny women traveling
Review: The title piece in this pocket-sized anthology of humorous travel pieces by women features Christine Nielsen stressing over costumes for a week at Burning Man, a festival "based on creative self-expression." Originating in San Francisco, the event has grown so big it's now held in the Nevada desert where showering is just a means to cake up with a thicker layer of dust and a major highlight is the topless bicycle parade of 4,000 women. I identified more with the sidebar piece by Jennifer L. Leo, describing her coma-stress response to a hearty call for Naked Basketball.Other pieces focus on more mundane female conundrums like underwear with tired elastic (yikes!) menstrual surprises (even worse!), sanitary facilities, euphemisms in foreign languages, attempting to pass unnoticed in a chador in Kuwait, finding a book in a French airport with a teenager in tow, dealing with the runs, bad hair days in Hong Kong. Ellen Degeneres does a piece on fear of flying and Adair Lara packs for the fantasy person she expects to become halfway around the world. There are men, like Germaine W. Shames' eloquent Mexican lover, though not so many as you might expect in an anthology by women. There may be more pieces on squeezing excess flesh into bathing suits. Mostly these are good-natured women finding the funny side of mishaps in places as far flung as the red-light district in Bangkok and the 50-pound sack race in small-town Nevada. There are plenty of laughs and - a side benefit - some handy warnings on what not to do when traveling.
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