Book Review: “The One That Got Away” by Ken Haley
Wheeling West Indie
The independent traveller who refused to let Covid push him off the road
One naturally expects a travel book written in the last year to come out as something more exciting than a routine tale of airports, museums, and hotels progressing in a predictable order but oh my god, there are reasons why tourism took a nosedive during the pandemic and this book contains them all.
Allow me to introduce Ken Haley, a journalist and editor based in Melbourne. He has a lifetime in journalism spread across the globe, has earned awards for his work, and has visited more countries on earth than most of us knew existed.
I’ve been around the world nine times and a few halves but Ken has four times as many nations under his belt as I have and fully intends to collect the whole set and write more books about his travels before he is forced to hang up his passport. An event which came close to happening several times in this particular narrative, one way or another.
You’ll have to read the book to find out the details but I can say that Ken came within a heartbeat of not making it back home alive.
This is Ken’s third book of travels, continuing the “ever onwards” theme established by the first two.
The man, the machine
It is rare that I mention anyone whom I actually know in real life — without clouding their identity in some whimsical fashion — but I am proud to say that I have known Ken for many years, ever since the night when we shared a taxi to a cheap hotel in some distant city and discovered we were both Victorians with a love of travel (obviously), high standards in puns, and economising on travel expenses!
Ken has a large and well-deserved piece of my heart. He is one of the two most charming men I have ever met in my life — the other being a knight of an exclusive order whose name I shall not drop here, though I am attempting to get them together for a writing project which would surely be a fabulous best-seller — and he is capable of bewitching random strangers into doing extraordinary things.
Like carrying him and all his possessions up flights of stairs or across crumbling wooden footbridges. Ken, you see, has travelled to all these lands, not just in the time of a worldwide plague but in a wheelchair, a task of staggering difficulty and determination.
The one that got away
Ken is a man of logic and reason and order. Not quite to the extent of visiting every country on the planet in alphabetical order, but certainly to entering them one after the other on public transport via land borders, continent by continent.
In late February 2020, just as the world was beginning to realise it had a bit of a health problem and the travel industry slammed shut for eighteen months, Ken’s next round of travel and writing began. He aimed to tick every box in the Caribbean and Central America, and he had planned every flight, every train, every budget hotel in advance.
Being confined to a wheelchair it pays to get some solid research in as to what sort of suitable lodgings might be secured. Of course, one might pay the big bucks for the tourist hotels with their accessible ramps and working elevators and reliable internet, or one might make the same money go a bloody long way further with the help of Mr Google.
Having done all the work, made his bookings, and actually set off, the fact that the world’s nations were closing their borders and imposing ever tighter restrictions on entry did not deter Ken. Not at all.
At that point in the pandemic’s progress I had just returned from overseas — only New Zealand and I was nervous enough about that — and in the interim I’ve barely poked my nose outside my door and my next overseas travel isn’t happening for a year or so.
So I totally take my hat off to Ken. Mind you, a near death experience and a few close shaves is not my idea of a jolly jaunt.
It makes for a cracking good travel tale, though!
The very best travel books
If you want to write a good travel story, don’t write about how you paid your travel agent a hunk of money and you went from one hotel to the other in comfort and security, having the holiday of a lifetime.
I’ve read any number of travel blogs — like a thousand or so — where the bloggers hope to keep an audience by sharing their “Top Ten Best Things to Do in Paris” and so on, along with happy snaps of happy times. Everything is sunny, everything goes well, nobody in the carefully posed photographs looks like they want a few Euro pour le bébé.
My own travel tales describe wonderful places and great food, sure, but somehow I also manage some embarrassingly cringeable romantic adventures. For entertainment value. In hindsight.
Ken’s own love affair is with history, and Lord knows that the Americas have their highs and lows when it comes to past events. Be prepared for some interesting historical and cultural encounters in this book.
Every second page, it seems, there is a regretful note about museums and tourist highpoints being closed for the duration. The heavy guidebooks lugged halfway around the planet are lists of mostly unobtainable delights. Ken’s book is full of vignettes of a man in a wheelchair peering through dusty windows and rattling doorknobs in a hopeful manner.
Naturally the detailed itinerary of island-hopping through the Caribbean and onto Central America is an early victim. The disruption caused by Covid is a rumbling dark undertone through the book, every now and then erupting into chaos and uproar. Great reading but it must have been hard to cope with when your flight to the next destination is cancelled and the government changes the testing and quarantine requirements overnight.
How would you feel if you had arranged for fifteen days on an island crammed full of beauty and history and great food only to discover on arrival that you must spend fourteen days in quarantine — and you have an early flight out on the fifteenth day?
Luckily we readers are riding along in Ken’s backpack, not actually enduring the rigours of travel in a plague year, and enjoying his narration of the battles with bureaucrats, finding loopholes in hastily drafted regulations, charming the odd policeman and Governor-General, and wearing down travel agents into providing refunds for tickets sold with not the slightest chance of being honoured.
Then there are the physical dangers. Look at that picturesque wooden pier out to the ferry. Just how do you navigate yourself in a wheelchair — as well as a heavy suitcase full of vital supplies — onto that boat bobbing about on the swell at the far end?
This is where Ken’s considerable ability to charm strangers comes into play. He must literally put his life into the hands of others to surmount obstacles that we walkers simply step over without breaking stride.
The mugging
One incident stands out. Few of us have to cope with the worries of wheelchair tourism, let alone pandemic peregrinations.
The thought of being pickpocketed or robbed of wallet or passport is, however, something that every traveller worries about.
Ken describes the incident in the book and I’ve unearthed a video of a retelling of the story on the spot.
The publicity encouraged the return of the prodigal wallet, albeit in something less than a Good Samaritan manner. Perhaps the interesting takeaway from the incident is the unanswered question of why Ken has a drivers licence. He is, above all, a driven man. Perhaps it is for proof of age when ordering a beer at a bar, something we all face from time to time.
The official mugging
Of more concern is the approach taken by government agencies implementing quarantine measures. Surely the intention is to prevent arrivals from spreading contagion.
In one place, quarantine seemed to be something only lightly enforced and if there was a loophole or two to roll a wheelchair through, then a quick mind and a silver tongue could be applied to the task.
In other places, not so much. Stick your detainees in a swamp full of bloodsuckers and see how many come out after a week or two of indifferent treatment for a prince’s ransom.
Ken does his best to get a laugh or two out of the entertaining-in-hindsight business but for somebody basically chained down for the disease-ridden vermin to nibble on, the notional danger of Covid must have seemed less of a threat than the authorities contemplated.
The telling
It’s not just a catalogue of horrors interspersed with the occasional contemplative drink and glorious scenery that makes this book a travel story for the ages. It’s always nice to have something to read and say, “Well, I missed the bus and had to run to catch my flight and I pressed the button but nada and we had to live with the smell for the rest of the flight but nothing compared to what this bloke went through.”
Ken has a way of making a series of unfortunate tourist events lighter and brighter than they must have been at the time. It sounds awful but there were times when I had tears streaming down my face.
From laughter. There are some really good jokes in the book. It is perhaps best approached as an after-dinner talk. A few drinks on board, a couple of friends to prompt the narrator, sit back and listen to a story told well.
Like Homer’s Odyssey, there are some insights into human behaviour to be found. Some aspects of mankind are depressingly familiar around the world and across the ages.
And others, of fellowship, service to the weary traveller, a shared glance or a jolly evening are also something to expect from humanity.
Though we might be out of our comfort zone while on the road, forced to deal with unfamiliar public transport systems and incompetent officials, there are always fellow travellers to share the journey, and some of them will be shining gold amongst the dreary faces at an early morning bus terminal, or a welcome smile in a sea of suspicion.
Ken notes the smilers, takes their names and shares their good deeds.
The hospital
Things got rather icky at the end. The grand tour had to be abandoned before the itinerary approached the Spanish Main. Some things didn’t happen, others did, and there was a moment of touch and go in a strange and alien land.
I am glad that there were helping hands for Ken at that point.
Otherwise, I suppose, there would be no book to describe the odyssey and the return to Melbourne, if not Ithaca.
Considering the tales of Aussies stranded overseas for months on end, Ken was lucky to scramble home. The rigours of quarantine in an inner-city hotel weren’t quite so onerous as sitting in a swamp, and there were books to be read and reliable television to pass the time, and in due course the return to the humble home, the book-lined walls, the familiar computer and the reporting of the journey from hand-scrawled notes on tear-stained pages.
The book
And book there was. I’m glad to have a copy of one awesome travel story from a time that nobody was prepared for.
Honestly, who would have contemplated that the grand global enterprise of travel and tourism would have come to a stop by the side of the road, steam pouring from the ears of the driver, guys in uniform writing out tickets, pulling the keys from the ignition and shrugging their shoulders at the passengers?
Apart from one hardy fellow who picked himself up, rolled off down the potholed road by himself, and had the most marvellous adventure?
It is a book for the ages. Remember the pandemic. Remember when we were confined to quarters, taking a roll-call of the toilet paper, discovering how to turn the spare room into a zoom room, and gradually filling out our comfort clothes, there was one indomitable soul refusing to be sidetracked and squelched.
Ken insists that his travels are not over. He still has a continent or two to go.
But how the hell is he going to top this adventure?
I look forward to the next book, fighting off the zombie apocalypse in South America. It should be published in 2025 or so, under the title of Paddling with Piranhas, and available — heh heh — on Amazon.
While we are waiting, here’s a zoom book launch hosted by the wonderful Readings bookshop in Carlton, Melbourne. Ken apparently got cut off before he could identify the flag fluttering behind him — it is, as we all know, that of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — and it is a delightful souvenir of the journey.
The best souvenir of the adventure is Ken himself, smiling and laughing as he recounts the holiday from hell. My world may seem exciting to some, but it is plain vanilla to Ken’s tutti-frutti life with rainbow sprinkles and jelly beans.
Go to Readings — and many thanks to Christine Gordon who gave permission for me to put the zoom recording up on YouTube — buy the book, hunt down Ken’s other books, insist that your local library buy a copy of each, download them from Kindle, give copies to your friends and in every possible way ensure that Ken feels encouraged enough to return to the road and describe for us more of his rib-tickling encounters with disaster.
Britni
This story contains an Amazon affiliate link. If you buy from Jeff Bezos, he gives me a few cents in return. If you buy from an independent bookshop or publisher, I don’t get anything but it keeps Amazon from taking over everything. Go to Readings and buy a trolley load of books.
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