Besides shortening the title I’m going to find it interesting writing about this book with my G Rating. Here is some of the description from the back of the book.

Paul Carter has been shot at, hijacked and held hostage.

He’s almost died of dysentery in Asia and toothache in Russia, watched a Texan lose his mind in the jungles of Asia, lost a lot of money backing a mouse against a scorpion in a fight…and been served cocktails by an orang-utan on an ocean freighter. And that’s just his day job.

Taking postings in some of the world’s wildest and most remote regions, not to mention some of the roughest oil rigs on the planet, Paul has worked, gotten into trouble and been given serious talkings to in locations as far-flung as the North Sea, Middle East, Borneo and Tunisia, as exotic as Sumatra, Vietnam and Thailand, and as flat out dangerous as Columbia, Nigeria and Russia, with some of the maddest, baddest and strangest people you could ever hope not to meet.

I found this book a delight and a challenge. Delightful as it gave me a thorough idea of a totally different world to mine and a challenge as the spelling and grammar was not all it could be. They skimped on the proofreading with this book, either that or Carter insisted on writing it his way, I don’t know. On the other hand, some of the misspellings make it really colourful and lend an accent to the text. If you have a strong stomach and want to know more details about what it’s like to work on the oil rigs then this is a good start.

The story about his toothache had me squirming, as did his bout of dystentery, I think he made the right decision taking the plane at that point but judging by how much of the flight he spent on the toilet I’m really not quite sure.

In one brief scene in the Philipines we get to see the ferocity of a hurricane as Carter’s colleague opens the door to look outside at it. It took three of them to close the door.

Carter had an interesting time with a French colleague and they played practical jokes on each other. One of them had Carter and his other crewmates standing waist deep in water for 10 minutes, they were not best pleased so Carter then got the French man back, who retaliated and so on it goes. I don’t know when it stopped.

There are so many illustrations of the most dangerous places on earth. One airport he’s told he has to use a phrase and get the correct phrase in return, if he doesn’t then it means his driver has been killed and he needs to get out of there pronto. It was very cloak and dagger.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and as I said before if you have a strong stomach and enjoy your memoirs a little ‘out there’ then this is the book for you. It’s Australian with the Australian way of speaking but it’s set all over the world, I cannot begin to list the countries the author mentions but I suspect he’s been around the world many, many times. I’d love to have his frequent flyer points.