- 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 flicking over the pages quickly to get to the next chapter as many of the stories are about riders roughing it in Central Asia which started to get slightly boring.
Personally I have little interest in what overland riders seem to like doing. Sleeping rough, eating poorly, breakdowns, being underprepared for the weather, never having a GPS and relying heavily on the generosity of people along the way features in every overlander motorcycle travel story.
I am sort of the opposite to the no plan overlanders. I research the best roads, scenic places, plan my fuel stops and focus on places with good motorcycling rather than places that sound exotic. But I digress.
The book has far less about SE Asia than Central Asia. Some great riding destinations were not mentioned including Philippines, Malaysia, Borneo. Nothing about Indonesia other than Bali. Nothing from Sri Lanka, Taiwan or Thailand.
The chapter that mentions Japan is just some guy bashing the country and hating the food who never ventures far beyond a backpackers hostel in Kyoto.
Now if only there was a blogger who had ridden 110,000km around Japan and all those other countries ha-ha … 🙄
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.