Gone Troppo - Hot Babes, Warm Weather, Cold Beer, Paradise!
by Stu Lloyd Monsoon, HK$124
Stu Lloyd's name will be familiar to fans of the Hardship Posting series. For neophytes, this comprised three volumes of anecdotes of the funny ha-ha (some very, some less so) and funny peculiar variety, that typically involved inebriated, priapic expatriates running aground or adrift or amok somewhere in Asia. The series sold like hotcakes, proving to some commentators that you can never underestimate the taste of the book-buying public.
So there should be few surprises in revealing that Gone Troppo reads like an extended tale from Hardship Posting. Lloyd uses the scientific method of throwing darts at a map of the world to decide which part of the tropics he'll visit, relying on his own talents to unearth something interesting wherever he lands. Fate lends a hand, picking his pocket in India, laying him low with dengue fever in Singapore, and nearly drowning him while out diving off Costa Rica. Each time, the literate larrikin bounces back, disgorging pithy epithets with sights firmly set on his next destination, or drink, whichever happens to be closer.
Lloyd is undoubtedly well read, and provides screeds of history and yarns to place his somewhat haphazard journeying in context. But apart from pitching up in, say, Koh Samui, getting drunk on a fairly regular basis and jocosely relating his experiences, Lloyd neglects to provide any great insights as he pinballs through Asia, southern Africa, South America and the Pacific. He states that he embarked on his task as he 'wanted to enjoy ice cold beer surrounded by bikini-clad maidens in fancy hotels in exotic, sunny climes at the publisher's expense'. Although this is meant as a throwaway, self-deprecating line, there's a residual feeling that this wasn't far short of the sum total of his ambitions.
There's no doubting Lloyd's talents as a humorist, and the former advertising copywriter displays a knack for snappy headlines. The Indian chapter is headed 'The Raj, The Taj, and a Whole Lot of Argy-Bhaji' and similar wordplay crops up with regularity.