Travel Guide to the Real World

If you’ve ever been scammed by a foreign taxi driver, or bamboozled by the bureaucracy in a developing country, you’ll be able to relate to one or more stories relayed in Does Your Meter Work?! (Western Publishing, 191 pages, $17.95), Alberta native Jim Soliski’s first book.

A compilation of nearly a decade’s worth of travel adventure stories, Does Your Meter Work?! plunges readers into Cambodia, Nepal, India, Brazil, and Mexico, among other countries.

Many vignettes were written as Soliski travelled and his diary-style prose captures first impressions, not all rosy. This is not a “Gee, India’s swell! You must visit” kind of book, but one that’s not afraid to speak honestly about the culture shock, poverty and annoyances that make real travel eye-opening and hilarious.

Soliski, 43, travels “à la carte,” winging it from place to place and making sure he asks if a taxi’s meter works beforehand, instead of getting in and paying whatever the cab driver demands at the end of the ride.

Vicariously experience a day at the Philippine cockfights, whitewater rafts in Nepal, evade Mexican time-share sales shysters, and learn the perplexing train ticket system in India. At times, you’ll be glad you’re the armchair tourist instead of the road-weary traveller.
Pick up a copy at your local bookstore (best to phone first) or order online at www.doesyourmeterwork.com or www.amazon.com.

Lisa Kadane