Book Description

Michael Brein’s Travel Tales Monthly is a monthly bookazine release of simply incredible travel tales. Michael Brein, aka The Travel Psychologist, has made it his life’s passion to interview, now more than 1,750 world adventurers and travelers he has met throughout his world travels to more than 125 countries over the last four decades. “You wouldn’t believe the incredible stories people have told me about their travels,” says Michael when he talks about the nearly 10,000 travel tales he has amassed over the years in this way. Stories run the gamut of the good, the wonderful, and the magical, as well as, indeed, the bad, the horrible, and the truly horrific! These are — simply stated — great travel stories! Stories are told mainly in the present tense by interviewees, but, sadly, some are revealed about travelers who unfortunately did not live to tell their tales. These have often been related by weary, bleary-eyed travelers who felt that these tales should also be told. Into the pages of Travel Tales Monthly and then into the volumes of The Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series ebooks will go the formerly untold tales of close calls, dangers, and great escapes; the mystical, spiritual, and the paranormal; meeting people, making friends, and incredible hospitality; harassment by beggars, hustlers, and con artists of all kinds; formidable characters met and phenomenal experiences had; and much, much more — all in the form of about 200 ebooks covering all sorts of subjects, countries, and themes. The intent of Travel Tales Monthly is to present collections of travel tales each month, introducing you to the stories as they make their way into The Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series in the form of completed standalone ebooks in the series. The telling of travel stories by Michael Brein via his Travel Tales Monthly as well as his travel tales ebook series is travel storytelling par excellence, but with one significant difference: Michael Brein is the world’s first — and perhaps only — travel psychologist. Thus, he tells the travel stories with a particular, unique psychological bent — there’s a lot of travel psychology behind everyone’s sharing of their experiences. With deft and persistence, Michael hones in on and ferrets out the usually heretofore unexplored and untold truly psychological netherworld that lurks just below the surface of most people’s travel experiences, bringing them into full view. For instance, what led up to a good or wonderful travel experience? How can we experience more of same? What was behind the horrific life-threatening or pickpocketing experience that got you caught up in in that one horrendous moment? Let’s unravel bad experiences, piece by piece, to see how this might have been avoided in the first place. Let’s unfold wonderful travel experiences to see how these may be repeated. What are some of the philosophical and life-changing insights gained from mystical experiences in one’s travels? What’s it like to experience your roots? How does it feel to be the first white person that others have ever seen? How does it feel like to be touched by a stranger? What is real fear like? On and on, Michael Brein delves into travel experiences from the standpoint of what is interesting, what is to be learned, and what is to be gained? How can this be made to happen again? Or NOT at all? Michael Brein is sure that you will be mesmerized and captivated by the stories you read in his Travel Tales Monthly and in his Travel Psychologist Travel Tales Series. The December issue samples ‘drug tourism’ — the quest to achieve the sorts of brain-states that travelers avidly seek out for the purposes of recreating, vegetating, meditating, cogitating, experimenting, exploring, or seeking enlightenment and personal growth. Such tales as Snake Wine, The Full Moon Party, and Magical, Mystical Marrakesh illustrate how travelers wander the world to experiment or explore by ingesting, injecting, imbibing, chewing, eating, snorting, and smoking a variety of drugs, substances, plants, and even ‘medications,’ in order to morph from the normal, oft boring, mundane, ordinary, conscious waking-state into the brain-less or the super-conscious in the attempt to achieve various mental states of being that range somewhere betwixt and between the ‘mindless’ and the ‘mindful.’ It is one thing to dabble in a limited way with substances at home; it's another matter, altogether, to venture into a vast world of the exotic — a world that is a veritable ‘candy store’ of magical, mystical drugs and substances that are there for the taking. Some travelers are lured to the hypothetical mysterious so-called ‘blue’ pill or the ‘red’ pill. They can not only choose one of these pills to satisfy their exploring, their inquisitiveness, their mental journeys piled on top of their physical travel journeys — they can choose both, as well as a panoply of other substances. But what are the consequences of ‘doing’ drugs and substances in a foreign land? In one of our featured stories for this month, Snake Wine, our traveler toys dangerously with drinking, willy-nilly, a concoction of blood and venom of a deadly poisonous snake in a Taiwan night market. And even worse, and unbelievably, in The Full Moon Party, our storyteller describes how a couple of hippies get in over their heads by spiking the drinks of two Spanish policeman with LSD! How safe or sane is that? Next, several of our stories describe how travelers seek out the jungles of South America (and also South Africa) in order to drink a horrid, vile tasting concoction — called “ayahuasca, ” — perhaps throwing all caution to the wind and often throwing up violently in the process — and for what? — evidently to engage with some sorts of unknown forces, energies, spirits, or entities, even, that seem to take over and ‘intervene’ in their bodies, minds, and spirits, presumably on their behalf! Acting in ways often contrary to good common sense, we have in this month’s issue a number of travelers who dare to taunt fate via taking unknown drugs and substances, often in the face of possible dangerous and disastrous consequences due to the unknowns involved in doing so. All-in-all, you will also see some aspects of travel that you, yourself, may not ever have even considered before. And, once again, you will certainly experience vicariously those odd vagaries of travel-life that can await you and can suddenly appear just around the corner at about any turn along the way. Winding up this month's issue is Michael Wiese, our guest contributor, an acclaimed author, filmmaker, and world traveler, who describes his own bouts with the wild, wacky, and mysterious world of ‘Mother Ayahuasca.’