From Bangkok to Bogotá, a hilarious behind-the-brochures tour of picture-perfect locales, dangerous destinations, and overrated hellholes from a guy who knows the truth about travel.

Travel writer, editor, and photographer Chuck Thompson has spent more than a decade traipsing through thirty-five (and counting) countries across the globe, and he's had enough. Enough of the half-truths demanded by magazine editors, enough of the endlessly recycled clichés regarded as good travel writing, and enough of the ugly secrets fiercely guarded by the travel industry. But mostly, he's had enough of returning home from assignments and leaving the most interesting stories and the most provocative insights on the editing-room floor. From getting swindled in Thailand to running afoul of customs inspectors in Belarus, from defusing hostile Swedish rockers backstage in Germany to a closed-door meeting with travel execs telling him why he's about to be fired once again, Thompson&'s no-holds-barred style is refreshing, invigorating, and all those other adjectives travel writers use to describe spa vacations where the main attraction is a daily colonic.

Smile When You're Lying takes readers on an irresistible series of adventures in Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and beyond; details the effects of globalization on the casual traveler and ponders the future of travel as we know it; and offers up a treasure trove of travel-industry secrets collected throughout a decidedly speckled career.

"Travel writers lie, argues Thompson, and their editors not only know and excuse it, but demand it. As laid out in this vivid and ribald memoir by veteran travel writer Thompson — a former editor of Maxim and Travelocity.com's short-lived print magazine — the industry is packed to the rafters with hacks churning out the same reheated swill for thinly disguised advertorial copy in glossy magazines. Sick of 'leaving the most interesting material on the cutting-room floor,' Thompson slashes through the clichs of the travel industry's snake-oil salesmen with unmitigated glee. The Caribbean is 'a miasmic hellscape.' The supposed narcoterrorist danger zone, Colombia, is a wonderful place with wonderful people ('But who buys magazines to read that?'). And the widely respected Lonely Planet guidebooks have ruined more travel destinations than have the tourists its writers sermonize against. If all Thompson was aiming for had been caustic observations about the industry he knows from the inside out, the book would have been an amusing but limited experience. But Thompson weaves his take on the travel racket and the damage it does into an engagingly personal narrative about his own nomadic life, tossing out raucous anecdotes about teaching ESL in a remote Japanese town or snorting cocaine with fellow staffers in the Alaska House of Representatives." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"For the author of a book billed as a 'confession,' Chuck Thompson appears to have little to confess. He's a talented, funny magazine writer whose work has appeared in some quality publications: Esquire, the Atlantic and National Geographic Adventure, among others. He's the author of two well-reviewed travel guidebooks on World War II historic sites. He figures he's written, edited or taken pictures... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) for at least 2,000 travel stories.

Sure, he's cranked out some travel hackwork on the industry dole — the 250-word four-star restaurant blurb here, the disingenuous embrace of Caribbeana there. But in a field largely populated by docile writers who produce workaday piffle in exchange for free trips, Thompson is hardly a sinner. Still, he confesses: 'After more than a decade in the business, I've grown tired of coming home from the intoxicating hell of the road and leaving the most interesting material on the cutting-room floor.' With this book he gathers the good stuff in a dustpan.

Until recently, Thompson worked as an editor for the randy lad rag Maxim. You can tell. The world according to Thompson is sodden with booze, reeling with depravity and scented with the musk of danger. There's the time he was marooned on a Thai island after a trio of prim schoolgirls stole all his money, only to be 'rescued' by a woman of, let's say, extraordinary sexual appetite. There's the nighttime jungle encounter with a gang of Filipino country boys who seem intent on arranging a 'date' between their leader and Thompson at the point of a machete. There's the time Thompson's rock band, Surf Trio, performed a surreal concert in a nearly deserted former Stasi prison in what had been East Germany.

The stories provide amusing reading, if you're the sort who buys Maxim for the articles. But Thompson layers in digressions and even entire chapters about the sins of the travel industry. He pounds this straw man like a pinata. Luxury hotels offer no authenticity! Cruise ships despoil the very destinations they market! Lonely Planet guidebooks lead you to little cafes full of other people reading Lonely Planet guidebooks! The Caribbean is a manufactured paradise in the midst of Third World poverty! Of course, these 'insights' are utterly obvious to anybody who has accumulated enough frequent-flier miles for a round trip to Toronto.

Probably the most interesting view into the machinations of the travel hype machine comes from Thompson's recounting of his (very brief) tenure as editor-in-chief of the (short-lived) Travelocity magazine, a brand extension of the online travel booking service. As an accomplished travel writer with a contrarian edge, he was recruited because the folks at Travelocity believed they wanted a different kind of travel publication, one 'for people who didn't like travel magazines.'

You know where this story is headed immediately, but the denouement makes for fascinating reading, in a plane-crash sort of way. He offers a rare victim's-eye view into the world of travel marketing and the nervous, unmoored corporate weenies who populate it. There are panicky changes of strategy, curiously self-interested editorial orders from the CEO, over-responses to casual criticisms, and a string of Thompson's own lousy decisions. The end comes when he is fired, by phone, one fine April evening. As he licks his wounds, Thompson reflects on a warning given him by another journalist trying to do honest work from inside an industry sales machine: 'Whenever someone said they wanted a radically new product, what they actually meant was that they wanted an unconditionally conservative product that looked exactly like everything else on the market, with the notable exception that it made a ton more money.'

The Travelocity parable notwithstanding, the book is maddeningly uneven, a mix of snarky Real Travel Stories and forced revelations about the soulless corporate travel beast. One suspects Thompson really wanted to write a book of his best unwritten road tales, but to sell it he needed to tack on the insider's-view angle. So did he compromise his original vision to make a sale in the crass world of travel-related commerce? Maybe he does have something to confess after all."

Reviewed by Craig Stoltz, a former editor of The Washington Post Travel section, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"Although readers may not always agree with Thompson's conclusions...they will recognize an authentic voice on the subject of travel when they encounter it." Booklist

"[A] savagely funny act of revenge for years spent servicing the travel fantasies of gullible readers." New York Times

"It's not all rants and war stories....Thompson distills his experience...into cogent rules for better traveling." Oregonian

"Consistently irreverent, Thompson is wickedly entertaining, especially when he slices through the feel-good cliches and Calgon-take-me-away vernacular he believes have poisoned travel literature almost beyond repair." San Francisco Chronicle

Travel writer, editor, and photographer Thompson offers a hilarious behind-the-brochures tour of picture-perfect locales, dangerous destinations, and overrated hellholes.

The very first editor in chief of Travelocity magazine, Chuck Thompson's work has appeared in Maxim, The Atlantic, Esquire, National Geographic Adventure, and Escape, among many others. He has played in a variety of bands, and worked as an ESL instructor, DJ, and assistant sergeant of arms in the Alaska House of Representatives.