The Adventures of Mr. Brightside is a humorous travel memoir with a twist. Instead of traveling the world for a year on a backpackers budget, working man's budget, or a luxury budget, Ryan Jacobson did all three.
Each country he visited he would spend four days on an extremely low budget, staying at hostels, campgrounds, or on crowded Indian busses, and would survive on local street food.
The next four days, he would stay in the same country, but travel on a moderate budget, eating at moderate restaurants, staying at decent hotels and spending some money on local entertainment.
The final four days in a country he would travel on a luxury budget; living like royalty. No money was spared on resorts, the best fine-dining experiences, or excursions and adventures.
Each chapter of his debut travel memoir tells a humorous tale of what he experienced in twelve countries, at each budget level.
So what is the best way to travel? Is it mingling with locals on a low budget, being pampered like a prince on a luxury budget? Or could it possibly be somewhere right in between?
You be the judge after hearing all about The Adventures of Mr. Brightside.
The Adventures of Mr. Brightside is a humorous travel memoir with a twist. Instead of traveling the world for a year on a backpackers budget, working man's budget, or a luxury budget, Ryan Jacobson did all three.
Each country he visited he would spend four days on an extremely low budget, staying at hostels, campgrounds, or on crowded Indian busses, and would survive on local street food.
The next four days, he would stay in the same country, but travel on a moderate budget, eating at moderate restaurants, staying at decent hotels and spending some money on local entertainment.
The final four days in a country he would travel on a luxury budget; living like royalty. No money was spared on resorts, the best fine-dining experiences, or excursions and adventures.
Each chapter of his debut travel memoir tells a humorous tale of what he experienced in twelve countries, at each budget level.
So what is the best way to travel? Is it mingling with locals on a low budget, being pampered like a prince on a luxury budget? Or could it possibly be somewhere right in between?
You be the judge after hearing all about The Adventures of Mr. Brightside.
It was my own fault. If I had not insisted on buying the strangers next to me on my flight to the Azores a beer upon arrival, I would not have been in this situation. I would have made it to the camp at 7:00 p.m., the time they were expecting me, and were waiting patiently for my arrival in order to give me the customary welcome tour of the phenomenal Banana Eco Camp on the Azorean island of Terceira.
I should have been resting comfortably in my cozy little teepee log cabin, and reflecting peacefully on the first day of my adventure around the world. Maybe I would have shared my first meal with my camp neighbors, or perhaps opened a bottle of wine with the owners as a celebratory offering because they were my first of many stops around the world. And I almost certainly would have joined in for a few sing-along campfire songs, while asking everyone in sight with a guitar if they knew how to play âMr. Brightsideâ by The Killers. Because if there is one thing in this world that I am good at, it is singing âMr. Brightsideâ by The Killers, but I digress.
But I wasnât sitting around a campfire, or settling into my new teepee cabin for the next four nights. I was at an airport bar, basically holding two strangers captive and forcing them to commemorate the fact that they were my first âfriendsâ that I made on the year-long Venture Twelve project.
So, needless to say, I was late. Multiple hours late.
As soon as the taxi drove down the long, narrow, and dark dirt road heading towards the closed gates of the camp, I knew that I had made a big mistake. After pounding on the gates for what seemed like hours (remember the celebratory airport beers that I HAD to have), an off duty employee opens the gate only to find a disheveled, buzzed American with enough luggage to fill an 18 wheeler.
âHi, I am Ryan⌠the writer from America. I am staying here,â is close enough to the words that I probably uttered.
âYouâre very late,â replied the worker, who I more than likely unceremoniously awoke with my banging on the gate (along with the rest of the campers, who are clearly way more responsible than me, and were tucked neatly into their beds way before my grand entrance.)
âI would give you the tour now, but it will be best if we hold off until tomorrow, you know, so you can actually see what I am showing you, and so we will not wake any of the campers that you havenât already startled half to death,â said the very friendly, yet stern older gentleman.
âThatâs totally fine,â I said, as I was in no condition to be led on a tour after an international flight and multiple beers anyway.
âOh, and youâre going to have to sleep in a tent tonight, because the owners already went home, and you were not here in order for them to give you the key to your teepee cabin.â
âSure, no problem at all!â I managed to exclaim in my most overly-dramatic positive tone, almost as if I was a pep rally cheerleader. But inside I was desperately trying to hide the panic in my voice that I was going to have to attempt to assemble a tent while heavily buzzed, all on my own at nearly midnight, in a banana plant jungle.
I am a lot of things, but a manly man is not one of them. If you want to laugh your ass off for hours on end, ask me to assemble a tent by myself⌠or start a fire⌠or change the oil in my car⌠or kill a spider⌠or know what the hell a wrench is.
So you can imagine my relief when the poor man that was sleeping just minutes prior, and now was forced to converse with some strange beer-drinking, American man, tells me there is an extra tent they set up for me way over in the banana fields and I can sleep there for the night. Tomorrow morning when I get up I can move into my new fancy teepee cabin.
More like when I get up tomorrow LATE afternoon, I said under my breath, because of my uncanny ability of sleeping in.
So there I am, too lazy to unpack and lying fully clothed in a tent. I am in the middle of a banana jungle, in the middle of an Azorean island, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I know exactly zero people on the island except for a man that very likely hates me. My two âbest airplane friendsâ that I insisted on making, were only there for a few hour layover before heading off to Lisbon.
I have no sleeping bag, no pillow, and all my electronic devices are dead. Itâs day one and I already misplaced the $75 headlamp that I deemed a vital purchase before the trip, so I couldnât even read a book. But I did have some entertainment because the constant battle of killing mosquitoes before they bit me kept me plenty entertained for a few hours as my head slid deeper and deeper into a ditch at the end of the tent. Despite all this, I managed to doze off to sleep for a few minutes before being stirred awake by the sound of rain. I awoke even further once the rain started dripping into the tent. Then dripping all over my face, all over my clothes, and all over my luggage. Basically all over my life.
And to think, just 12 hours earlier I was in my home, with everyone I love. My family and friends not only had a killer going away party for me, but they also hired a party bus to take me on the hour and a half journey to Logan Airport in Boston, MA to get my venture started the right way.
Never have I regretted anything more in my life than in this moment. Why did I leave my perfect life back home? I left a great job, amazing friends, a loving, supportive family, and perhaps most importantly, a very comfortable bed, to travel around the world ALL BY MYSELF.
Between physically slapping myself to avoid getting a mosquito-borne illness on day one and mentally beating the crap out of myself for up and leaving the life I loved at home, I am not ashamed to admit that I shed a few tears that first night in the Azores; the first night of my venture around the world.
I made myself a promise that night⌠that this would be the only night I would allow myself to feel this way. This is the saddest, most doubtful, most pessimistic, and most scared I will be all year.
Tomorrow I will wake up and I will be a new man. Tomorrow I will wake up and be ready to see the world. Tomorrow I will get up and explore. Tomorrow I will apologize to my neighbors for walking them up at midnight with my yells of âHey! I am Ryan, can someone open the gate.â Tomorrow I will wake up and become the travel writer that I have always wanted to be. Tomorrow I will wake up and my life will change forever.
Just not until like at least noon. I really, really am not a morning person.
If you are expecting Ryan Jacobsonâs book to be an authoritative travel guide, you will be sorely disappointed.
However, if you want a travelogue that is upbeat, witty and full of stories from various parts of the world, detailing the escapades of a thirty-something man with a penchant for exploring, ending up swindled, embarrassed, or injured, then this is very much the book for you.
This book made me laugh out loud at times. Jacobsonâs style is honest and forthright and the way that he describes what happens to him is full of anecdotes and humour.
There are a variety of people introduced in this book, some of them those he encounters along the way like fellow travellers, taxi drivers or hat sellers as a selection, and some of them being his friends who have chosen to join him on his adventures.
There is some tourist advice in here, which you glean mainly from reading about what Jacobson does and vowing that you will never, ever put yourself in that situation; he is widely travelled so the places that I have discovered from reading this book are as varied as small villages in Albania to the orange sand dunes of the Sahara to the humid depths of the jungle in Sri Lanka.
The idea of the three tier travel experience was one I quite liked although none of them seem to win out as the preferred option as Jacobson seems to be a man who loves to travel and as long as there are people, the chance to have an alcoholic beverage and nothing too challenging with which to contend, then life on the perpetual global road is good. If you are expecting analysis of which level of travel experience is better, these chapters are about what happens to him, not an evaluation. Sometimes, it felt a little repetitive, maybe because of the way the book is structured.
One thing that I would advise is that, for me, the book would have been easier to read had its format been tighter and in that I mean physically, on the page as it would have given it a more professional look. It may have been a stylistic choice by the author due to the nature of it being a journal written on the move perhaps. Some typos, spelling mistakes and inconsistencies also distracted me but not enough to inhibit my read.