- China Motorcycle Ride Part Two - November 30, 2024
- China Motorcycle Ride - November 27, 2024
- The Moment Collectors Asia - November 23, 2024
20 Travellers’ Tales
I enjoyed the original The Moment Collectors book produced by Sam Manicom so when this sequel was announced I grabbed it and what perfect timing as I could read this on my way to China for my own latest ride in Asia.
I again enjoyed reading this collection of short stories however I found myself sometimes speed reading, to get to the next chapter as many of the stories are about riders roughing it and often in Central Asia which started to get slightly boring for me.
Personally I have zero interest in that sort of motorcycle travel. Sleeping rough, eating poorly, breakdowns, corrupt border officials, injuries, being underprepared for the weather and relying heavily on the generosity of people along the way to save them feature repetitively in every overlander motorcycle travel book and are all things I go to great lengths to avoid on my motorcycle trips.
I have very limited interest in overland travel – which perhaps is a shame. I have no ties and am financially independent. I could buy a BMW 1250GS and set off and never come back. Perhaps if I had a partner, a rider that shared the passion for motorcycle travel I might view it differently, many overlanders are couples, but they are all much younger and prepared to put up with lots of discomforts that I am long past in life.
But I digress, back to the book.
I did enjoy quite a few chapters but the book does focus on overlanders and features many chapters on central Asia and not many about South East Asia. Also the chapter that touched on Japan was pure misinformation written by someone who seems to have not ventured beyond a backpackers hostel in Kyoto.
Now if only there was a blogger who had ridden 110,000km around Japan … 😀
Some other great riding destinations in Asia were not even mentioned. Philippines, Malaysia, Borneo. Nothing about Indonesia other than Bali. Nothing from Sri Lanka, Taiwan or Thailand.
While the book was pleasant way to pass the time in planes and airports none of the stories really grabbed me or inspired me like some of the chapters in the Motorcycle Messengers books which are in my opinion much better, but I’m still going to recommend this because it is reasonably priced as a ebook and I am sure at least a few of the stories will be of interest to anyone who reads it.
Good review (I haven’t the book; saw a post about it this morning and was wondering if it was more about South Asia / ‘stans / north). In general, SE Asia is not as big a focus as one would expect amongst the RTWers (ooops, cat out of bag).
Hi Sean, yeah looking at the RTW riders routes it seems their not interested in the best road riding regions and have a different agenda.