Naked Tourist In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall

Sick of producing the picturesque bromides of the professional travel writer, Lawrence Osborne decided to explore the psychological underpinnings of tourism itself by taking a six-month journey down the so-called "Asian Highway"--a swath of Southeast Asia that, since the Victorian era, has seduced generations of tourists with its manufactured dreams of the exotic Orient. And like many a lost soul on this same route, he ends up in the harrowing forests of Papua, searching for a people who have never seen a tourist. What, Osborne asks, are millions of affluent itinerants from the West looking for as they wade through endless resorts, hotels, cosmetic-surgery packages, spas, spiritual retreats, sex clubs, and "back to nature" trips? What does tourism, the world's single largest business, have to sell? "The Naked Tourist "is a travelogue into that heart of darkness known as the Western mind.Osborne, Lawrence is the author of 'Naked Tourist In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall', published 2007 under ISBN 9780865477414 and ISBN 0865477418.