Books

We started the South America leg of the trip (in Nov 2009) with carrying two books — an old Rough Guide to Southeast Asia and a Spanish textbook/dictionary for Estonian-speakers.

In the countries where we have traveled so far there have hardly been any (English) bookstores (Thailand is different though, as are Australia and New Zealand, but there we didn't stay long). Several hostels have fortunately offered book exchange, where one can drop his/her used travel guide and replace it for a guide used by some other traveler. Apart from travel books also mainstream paperback novels are available.

We have been exchanging a lot but even though the exchange rate has been one-to-one somehow the pile of books has grown over the months. Today it looked like this:

The reason is that we have also acquired several books without exchanging.

  1. Portuguese phrase book (bought in London)
  2. Shout! The true story of the Beatles (exchanged in Faaa, signed by a person who met the Beatles before they became famous)
  3. How language works (bought in Cairns for 10 AUD)
  4. Structures (bought in Chiang Mai, used)
  5. The Rough Guide to Southeast Asia (Sept. 2002, bought in 2005)
  6. Lonely Planet Cambodia (picked up in Sihanoukville, photocopy version)
  7. Lonely Planet Laos (exchanged in Phnom Penh for a fake LP Vietnam which we exchanged in Luang Prabang for the book All things wise and wonderful that we bought in Chiang Mai)
  8. The man who knew infinity. A life of the genius Ramanujan (bought in Chiang Mai for 280 THB)
  9. Ancient Angkor (bought from a child at Angkor Wat for 5 USD, looks original)
  10. The Rough Guide to Brazil (bought in London)
  11. Frommer's Chile and Easter Island (exchanged in Cuenca)
  12. Lonely Planet Südamerika für wenig Geld (picked up in Manaus)
  13. Lonely Planet India (picked up in Hanoi)
  14. Dan Brown. The Lost Symbol (picked up in Siem Reap)

Although some of these books have gained sentimental value and useful writings inside (e.g. hotel prices have been updated in the travel guides) over the months they do add considerable weight to our luggage (for which we would probably have to pay extra in our next flight). So we decided to get rid of most of them.

The Banglamphu district in Bangkok is largely a backpacker area with many used bookstores around. From the 10 books that we decided to sell we succeeded with 8 earning 475 THB (= 16 USD). This is equivalent to two dinners in a decent Banglamphu restaurant (or 6 600ml-beers and 10 hot-dogs from a 7-eleven). We asked at 6 bookstores and succeeded in making a deal with three of them:

Two books we decided to send home as part of a 8kg package:

Lonely Planet Cambodia we exchanged for Satanic Verses at our guesthouse. Both are Southeast Asian photocopies, not original versions.

So, four books remain:

Kaarel. 2010-08-13/14