Jim Eagles: Be wary of lifestylers

Many of what pass for travel books these days are not really about travelling as such but about someone going to live in a foreign country and writing about their experiences.

Many of these books are not worth bothering about, basically involving an ignorant visitor getting a few cheap laughs at the way people in other countries do things differently.

Good grief, if they didn't do things differently there'd be no point going there.

Other books, while fine in themselves, are just rip-offs of a formula which may once have worked but is now decidedly stale.

If I have to read another book about some Pom going to live in a French village and raving on about the food I think I'll scream.

But some are actually good value for travel enthusiasts.

On the one hand, there are books like Penelope Green's When in Rome that could inspire you to go there yourself. It certainly offers lots of good ideas about how to discover the real Rome.

On the other hand, not many people are likely to go and live in a traditional Masai village, but Corinne Hofmann's The White Masai allows you to share the experience from the comfort of your armchair.

The White Masai
By Corinne Hofmann
Bliss Books $34.95

An attractive blond Swiss girl goes to the Kenyan coastal resort at Mombassa on a holiday with her boyfriend, sees a Masai warrior on the dock where their ferry is berthing, falls hopelessly in love in an instant and stays there to be with him.

They get married, move to his isolated village, and have a daughter.

Crazy, sure.

By the end of the book the cultural divide has indeed proved too great and she takes her daughter back to Switzerland (though a sequel apparently has the couple meeting up again). But what a great story.

Hofmann's tale of her four years living as a Masai is utterly fascinating, both as a personal account of a hopeless love affair and as a piece of acute observation of the workings of an alien - to her and her readers - society.

The cultural divide stretches in every direction.

Although Hofmann is besotted with her lanky warrior in his braided red hair and wearing masses of jewellery, she still expects a fairly Western sort of relationship - even taking a traditional white wedding dress to the marriage ceremony - and simply can't cope with the Masai way of doing things.

Lketinga, her Masai, is by the sound of it extremely fond of his white bride, but he lives in a world where the men look after the goats and cattle and the women produce children, don't get sick all the time from malaria and, well, stay at home and do everything else.

Barsaloi, his village, may be delighted to enjoy the benefits brought by an educated and relatively wealthy white woman, not least a vehicle and a local store, but the villagers aren't prepared to change their customary ways, which pretty much guarantees that both will come to grief.

You might imagine that Kenya would be pleased to acquire such a useful resident, but bureaucrats see her only as a potential source of bribes and do everything possible to handicap the relationship and her business ventures.

Surprisingly, the most understanding people in all this seem - at least from Hofmann's telling of it - to be her family in Switzerland, who respond to her extraordinary choice with love and support.

Nevertheless, the neighbours must have been agog at one of their own going off to live with a Masai. Certainly the rest of Europe has been, because the book has sold four million copies in the original German, and the English translation is also flying off the shelves.

That's hardly surprising. Whether you're an enthusiastic armchair traveller or a hardened globetrotter, this book offers a unique opportunity to view an ancient society, and one remarkably little changed by the bulldozing effects of globalisation.

When in Rome: Chasing la dolce vita
By Penelope Green
Hodder $39.99

This is a rather more achievable story on the same theme. Successful young Australian woman breaks up with her boyfriend, decides she doesn't really like her flash job in PR and decides it's time to fulfil her dream of living in Rome.

Despite the fact that she doesn't speak Italian, has no proper visa, knows no one in Italy apart from an uncle in San Gimignano, off she goes.

But she loves all of it - the difficulties with immigration bureaucrats, the marvellous food, the lowly waitressing jobs, the delightful people, the language problems and the all-pervading history, the feckless boyfriends and the romantic atmosphere.

Summing up after two years of living her Italian dream, she makes it clear that in many ways it is the problem half of the equation that stimulates her the most.

"I've never felt happier because I am so challenged. Each day brings a new reality to face and a new subject to wrap my head around linguistically and culturally ... I can't get enough of Rome."

That spirit - the spirit of vive la difference - is exactly the right one to take with you when you travel overseas. This amusing, thoughtful book is both a great insight life in Rome and a terrific inspiration to go there and see for yourself.

Land of a Thousand Eyes: The subtle pleasures of everyday life in Myanmar
By Peter Olszewski
Allen & Unwin $29.99

My wife and I reckon our visit to Myanmar (Burma) a few years ago is the most fascinating trip we've made. Australian gonzo journalist, Peter Olszewski, has had a rather more varied life than us - his CV includes leadership of the Australian Marijuana Party and editing Australian Playboy - but he obviously feels the same way.

He didn't just take a holiday in Myanmar, he spent a year there training young journalists.

Land of a Thousand Eyes - the title reflects that, as a rare foreigner, his every move was watched by astounded locals - is a marvellously entertaining but insightful look at the real Myanmar behind the propaganda of both the military regime and its opponents.

The atmosphere is summed up by one of Olszewski's marvellous anecdotes. Waiting for a flight he is taken aside and searched by a soldier, who confiscates his plastic lighter. A watching American woman asks if everything is okay.

" 'Yes, all he did was confiscate my lighter,' I reply, while putting a cigarette in my mouth and absentmindedly patting my pocket, looking for the lighter which had just been taken. The soldier appears by my side again, graciously lighting my cigarette with the confiscated lighter.

" 'How odd,' the woman comments. 'He takes your lighter and then he comes and lights your cigarette.'

" 'Welcome to Myanmar,' I say."

A book for armchair travellers, but which might inspire you to ignore demands for a travel boycott and see for yourself.

On Rue Tatin
Tarte Tatin
By Susan Loomis
Harper Perennial $24.99 each

Two books about an English woman who goes to live in a charming village in Normandy and learns about traditional French cuisine. Aaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh! To be fair, these are two of the better books of this genre, it's just that there are too many of them.