Self-confessed fibber Thomas Kohnstamm is taking heat.
LP writer Thomas Kohnstamm…in hell.
EDITOR’S UPDATE:
New information on this issue has clarified Thomas’ confessions and it’s now clear that the mainstream media sources on which Eva based her post were straight-up wrong.
We’ve decided to leave Eva’s article up, but please be sure to read her follow-up comment and BNT contributing editor Tim Patterson’s take on the whole hullabaloo.
Here’s the original article:
I’ve always been a big fan of Lonely Planet’s guidebooks.
I love their sassy, youthful tone, their emphasis on low-impact and alternative travel options, their rejection of freebies from bigwig hotel chains, and the way their authors manage to find vegetarian-friendly budget options worldwide.
So imagine my surprise when I made the rounds of my usual travel blogs this morning, and came across this item on Gadling: “Lonely Planet writer admits he never visited country he wrote about.”
It seems long-time LP writer Thomas Kohnstamm has outed himself as a fraud, telling News Ltd. that not only has he plagiarized or fabricated large portions of his 12+ Lonely Planet guidebooks, but he even failed entirely to visit one of the countries he wrote about.
“They didn’t pay me enough to go (to) Columbia,” he is quoted as saying. “I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating – an intern in the Colombian Consulate.”
My first thought (after a few four-letter words with alternating question and exclamation marks after them) was: Why? Why, if you’d gotten away with something so outrageous, would you own up to it voluntarily?
A quick Google search on Kohnstamm answered my question. His first travel narrative, “Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism”, is due out next week.
Kohnstamm, it seems, is a believer in that old chestnut about there being no such thing as “bad” publicity. He is taking a calculated risk that the scandal surrounding his admissions, instead of leaving him blacklisted for life, will carry his book right onto the bestseller lists.
Sadly, he’s probably right.
The Plagiarism Double-Standard
The reality is that travel writing isn’t considered “real journalism” by the powers that be, and Kohnstamm knows it.
Think back. It hasn’t been that long since another major plagiarism scandal rocked American journalism. Remember Jayson Blair?
Blair was a young reporter who resigned from the New York Times in May 2003, after it was found that an astonishing 36 of his national news articles for the paper – including high-profile items on the Beltway sniper, Jessica Lynch, and wounded American soldiers in Iraq – had been fabricated or plagiarized from other authors.
After he was drummed out, the Times executive editor and managing editors followed, paying the price for their failure to catch Blair sooner.
Though he published a tell-all memoir in 2004 (even accusing the Times of racism) to my knowledge Jayson Blair has never worked in newspaper again.
So, will the same fate befall Thomas Kohnstamm?
I’d be surprised if Lonely Planet offers him a contract again anytime soon. But what about everyone else? Kohnstamm has also written travel articles for the likes of the Denver Post, the Miami Herald, Forbes, the San Francisco Chronicle, Travel + Leisure, Time Out New York, and the Los Angeles Times.
Did he fabricate any of those pieces? Will anyone check? Most importantly, will anyone care?
The reality is that travel writing isn’t considered “real journalism” by the powers that be, and Kohnstamm knows it. So what ended Jayson Blair’s career could instead see Thomas Kohnstamm laughing all the way to the bank.
A Million Little Lies
Laughing all the way to the bank…and then his chair.
What about the book? Early reviews describe it as a funny and hard-hitting read that chronicles Kohnstamm’s boozing and womanizing in Brazil, while also exposing the ugly underbelly of the guidebook writing world.
But am I going to be the only one reading it with a whole shaker worth of salt? The man is a self-admitted plagiarizer and fraud. Isn’t it a safe assumption that some of his “wacky misadventures” and encounters with beautiful Brazilenas are figments of his imagination?
Again, that all-important question: Will anyone care?
Travel writing in newspaper form may not be considered hard journalism, but on the other side of things, travel writing in book form has always been closely related to memoir. And it’s clear that readers care about the honesty of their memoirists, as James Frey learned in 2006.
After the folks at The Smoking Gun cut his memoir of drug addiction, A Million Little Pieces, into, well, a million little pieces, Frey was dumped by his publisher and, most famously, confronted by Oprah Winfrey on national TV. Still, he’s an author on the rebound, with a new book – carefully labeled a “novel” rather than a “memoir” – due out this summer.
Will Kohnstamm’s admissions mean his book gets a careful going-over from The Smoking Gun, or even from a lone critic with time on his hands? Probably not.
It was the scale of Frey’s “embellishments”, and the emotional connection millions of readers had made with the subject matter of his book that led to the backlash. No one is going to feel hurt or betrayed if it turns out that Kohnstamm has tossed back a few fictional shots of rum, or “embellished” the size of some hot Brazilian chick’s tatas.
Things Get Personal
So if newspaper editors don’t care, and readers don’t care, you might be asking yourself: Why am I so worked up about this?
Let’s go back to those first thoughts of mine, when I came across that original Gadling post. After the four-letter words, the exclamation marks, and the “Why? WHY?” came this:
“Hey asshole! If you didn’t think the Colombia gig paid well enough to make it worthy of your time, why not pass on the assignment and let some poor struggling writer sitting in her tiny apartment waiting for a break take it on?”
Kohnstamm has done several things at once here:
- seriously undermined the credibility of an enormous publishing house that – in my opinion, anyway – does some pretty good work in the world
- re-proven in the minds of many editors that travel writers as a group are not to be taken seriously – and hey, guess what, it doesn’t benefit any of us in the long run to be considered a bunch of plagiarizing hacks
- taken opportunities away from other young writers who might have actually been willing to do the job they were paid for
- and done it all deliberately, in the name of his own self-enrichment. Nice guy, right?
What We Can Do
You might be thinking: Eva, aren’t you just playing his game by writing him up like this?
You might be thinking: Eva, aren’t you just playing his game by writing him up like this?
Well, yes and no. I won’t be buying his book, and I hope you won’t either. Read it in one of those comfy chairs at Borders if you must, but please, for the love of journalistic ethics, don’t spend a cent on it.
Furthermore, if you’d like to politely suggest to Kohnstamm’s book publisher that you don’t think much of them employing a lying, plagiarizing, self-congratulatory hack, you can email his publicist at jsones@randomhouse.com.
You can also contact Kohnstamm directly via his website.
I’ll also be keeping an eye on the response to the book as it comes out, and if I see many reviews running without a mention of Kohnstamm’s status as a guidebook con-man, I’d be happy to post the relevant editors’ email addresses in the comments section below this post for follow-up.
C’mon, Brave New Travelers. Let’s prove there IS such a thing as “bad” publicity!
If you’re not seething yet, try Aaron Hotfelder’s 5 Reasons To Be Outraged By The Lonely Planet Fraud.
For a more intellectual and far-ranging take on travel writing, memoir, and “truth”, check out Tom Bissell’s excellent World Hum essay, Truth in Oxiana.
Is Kohnstamm’s carefully timed confession a harmless publicity stunt or a shameful outrage? Please leave a comment below!
Read the editor’s follow-up to this post:
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82 Comments... join the discussion!
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…yeeep! I mean, “fatwa.” Thankfully, Fatah hasn’t weighed in yet…
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Has anyone checked on Ian? Does he need oxygen? I for one am exhausted. Siesta time….do they take those in Columbia? I think the ghost of Hunter took my copy of that country’s LP guide.
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Rachel wrote: “So Eva, let me just verify a primary source to be sure i understand this correctly. You decide you’re going to take a bunch of jugular pot shots at someone whose writing you’ve never read for possibly being remiss in checking the factual sources of his 20-word objective writeups of hotels and restaurants, right? ”
No. Not for being remiss in checking the factual sources of his write-ups. I took pot shots at him for apparently not doing the work at all (the Colombia trip claims) and stealing from other writers (the plagiarism claims). There is a difference between shoddy fact-checking and plagiarism/fabrication. As those claims have been called into question, I have updated where possible, with links, here in the comments. I’ve also been in touch personally with Kohnstamm today (in a non-snarky way, even!) and am planning a follow-up.
I stand by my statement that I don’t think it’s fair to expect me to pick holes in a Reuters wire story that even CNN bought into. Believe everything I read? I don’t. And I didn’t even have to go to J-school to learn that. But yes, I believed this story… I don’t think that should call my entire body of work (not to mention my capabilities as a professional historical researcher) into question as you have done here. I’m not going to apologize for coming down hard on someone who I had (what I thought was) good reason to believe had fabricated and plagiarized 12+ titles.
I hope you’ll respond again to say you’ve read this. I see you haven’t left an email or a website, but I’d like to make sure I set your mind at ease about my reliability.
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Easy, Jacob. People get people pregnant accidentally without being dirtbags. He never said anything about being an absentee dadlord and loving it, just being an absentee writer. And Max G. was just mediocre in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s a line of Dennis Miller’s that comes to mind – “He committed the most unpardonable sin in America: he was bad on TV.”
If TK got hammered by the media unjustly, I’ll take back every harsh word I said, and be glad to do it. In my “Who the Scatology Cares About Your Writing” piece, my whole riff was about protecting the meek and giving credit where due. TK’s entitled to that. But if this is just jerking with people to get attention, there are more constructive ways of doing that. Like, you know, bikini contests, or dressing like a gorilla in a pink tutu by the freeway, or breaking the secret code hidden in every 5th word. That sort of thing. The least he could do is show up for the promoting part…
The big question is “if.” Per Thomas: “World Hum, The New York Times, The Guardian and other reputable news sources are now getting beyond the hype and writing more balanced stories about this unfortunate dust up.”
I’ve seen WorldHum’s article, but nothing else. I’ve got an honest, unbiased question here: where’s the rest? Why hasn’t the NY Observer printed a retraction? What’s the Aussie paper TK refers to? If there’s another side to this in more “reputable news sources,” where are they?
I’m not being thick, I’m serious. I’d really like to read more about TK than I have, but I keep seeing the same twirl of the moustache. When these corrected articles come out, someone please leave a mention here. I want to believe in the goodness of man. Please, help me believe.
(BTW Eva, I the f*ck care about your writing. Can’t we all just the f*ck get along?)
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“Easy, Jacob. People get people pregnant accidentally without being dirtbags.”
This is true-I’ll lay off until I see jacket for the “new” novel. For the record, though, I’m not referring to the illegitimacy as being bad–merely its exploitation. I am inferring, perhaps unfairly, that this isn’t going to be a heartwarming tale about the trials and tribulations of child-rearing vis-a-vis Bill Cosby’s “Fatherhood” or even Jenny McCarthy’s “Belly Laughs”.
However, given the current media “accidents”…I’ll just shut up. This guy has wasted too much of my time (and he didn’t even intend to do so).
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1) I don’t think bloggers should be held to the same standards as journalists. Eva was simply reacting to a breaking news story based on what she believed were his firsthand accounts of the situation.
2) Hunter Thompson did the same stuff, like covering the 1972 Super Bowl from his hotel room, and he’s an icon.
3) I hope everyone learned a lesson from this. Especially those who (allegedly) sent death threats.
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Great Article Eva. The beauty of blogging is that you can react instantly to a breaking story. I think the article was fair. And why would anyone be ‘completely shocked’ by the story? They employ a lot of people to write these books. There has to be a couple of bad apples. But it doesn’t matter because I stopped using their books along time ago. The internet is the best way to get that information and a much easier than carrying around one of those books.
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What ‘reputation’ does Lonely Planet have to lose? This is hardly the first time this has happened, and plagiarism and taking short-cuts on research is commonplace in guide book writing. It’s only a few years since the last flurry of ‘Shock! Horror! Probe! Guidebooks aren’t well researched!’ stories. Whoever thinks they are, and Lonely Planet’s in particular although it’s far from alone in its problems, simply hasn’t been paying attention to what they’ve been reading. Kohnstamm’s revelations are about as surprising as the news that the sun rose this morning. For the views of a victim of five different guide book publishers, see http://peternh.blogspot.com
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Thanks to everyone for weighing in on the controversy here at BNT. (I believe 62 comments may in fact, be a record). Since Eva has been in touch with Thomas, we’ll be posting a follow-up article, as well as an editor’s note on the whole scandal.
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Unfortunately this is nothing new.
In my travels, I have run into more than a few “Let’s Go” Harvard kids that never visit a quarter of what they write about. They lift passages from a healthy mix of Lonely Planet, DK, Frommers, etc.
At least the Let’s Go kids didn’t use the “no money” excuse. They were very straight forward in saying that they would rather just party in the beach towns than go inland and hang with the guerrillas.
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Hi again all, and thanks for your comments and interest in this post. I’ve been amazed by the response. However, it’s now clear that the initial news stories I based this on were deeply flawed – exactly how or why that came to be I still don’t know, and may never know. (Ironic, isn’t it, that a post about how travel writers aren’t held to the same standards as “hard” journalists has been turned on its head by flaws in mainstream media wire copy?) I’m going to be writing this off as a tough-love learning experience in the importance of reading everything, no matter how reputable the source, with a highly critical eye. It can also serve as a reminder that the anonymity of the web should not be an excuse to say things you wouldn’t say in person.
Though I now regret some parts of my piece, I still think there’s room for an interesting discussion about the (artificial?) distinctions drawn between “journalism” vs. “memoir” vs. “travel writing” and the various ethical standards applied to each. I hope we can continue that discussion here at BNT in future!
And now, to quote fellow travel blogger Aaron over at Gadling, “I’d like to, if it’s okay with everyone else, pronounce this “scandal-but-not-really-but-maybe-it-is” officially dead and buried. Rest in peace.”
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This is getting interesting! I shall get some beers, and sit back and enjoy. This is better than TV!
Eva, I cannot wait to see how all this is going to pan out. Good on you for coming clean on this, and I can only wish to get this kind of response, ever!
TK, I am still investigating, will give you an informed opinion as soon as I have one…
Ironic, that “real” journos were very quick to shoot us down, where it was their over-enthusiastic-sensationalism that got us here in this position in the first place…↵ -
“Ironic, that “real†journos were very quick to shoot us down, where it was their over-enthusiastic-sensationalism that got us here in this position in the first place…”
Right on there, Cedric. Right. It’s not the journalists, it’s bloggers who are sloppy. Got it. Eva, shame on you for not checking their sources for them.
“Hey… psst! Want some candy? Don’t be shy! It’s candy! Mmm, yummy! Don’t you want some candy, too?’
“…er, okay…”
SLAP! “NO! Wrong! You took the candy! Bad bad bad bad…!”
If there IS a moral to tsk tsk over, it’s about taking responsibility for what you do (or don’t do). Eva, at least you – and we – bother to follow up on this. I’m pretty sure I can stomach crow better than being indifferent about it all.
There are more articles now about Thomas’ side. Amazingly, the April 9 article that apparently (I could be wrong) broke the story at the NY Observer… is suddenly missing. Every so often you can still find references to the “delinquent LP writer,” but those are disappearing pretty quick, too. Gee, pretending it never happened sure is a lot easier than printing retractions!
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Given all the brouhaha over the past week about Thomas Kohnstamm, it is odd to me that so few people have taken his side. Have we lost our collective sense of humour? Is the appeal of unchecked litigiousness so sexy that we can only see scandal, plagiarism and disloyalty where there is also clearly hilarity, fun and a self-deprecating poke at the lives we lead?
I for one think it´s a hoot that, finally, someone has written, sometimes literally, about the ups and downs of his trade. I´m not talking about his Lonely Planet guidebooks, even though the ´plagiarism´ and ´fraud´ lines the papers picked up on by Sunday night have since been shown to be simply good old yellow journalism.
Fly-on-the-wall documentaries are guzzled like fuel from our television sets, with exposes on everything from airline staff to hoteliers. We are used to being dished the truth from previously trusted figures such as Prime Ministers. I must have missed the announcement that the travel writer is a sacred cow, not to be tarred with the tacky brush of reality.
Perhaps the bigger issue than us losing our sense of fun, as highlighted by Lonely Planet, is the extent to which modern day travellers rely wholeheartedly on information within their guidebooks. There is a book out there for everyone, whether you´re on a budget, loaded with cash or laden with kids. And these things sell. If you want a guidebook on Paris you have 2024 to choose from on Amazon.
What this says to me is that our reliance on being guided is enormous. Too much so. Before the big boom in adventure travel in the eighties, the intrepid headed out into the unknown, often on a one way ticket only. Pre-Tony Wheeler´s seminal guidebook for backpackers “Asia on a Shoestringâ€, news of blinding white beaches and the tastiest pad Thai in Thailand traveled solely from mouth to mouth. Travelling was not cushioned by the certainty of knowing the exact coordinates of a three star hotel (whose fax and telephone numbers were at the ready to pre-book). Facts checked, rechecked and over-checked to death by the publishers and travel writers.
In some way it is indicative of this overdeveloped culture of safety and ducking of responsibility we have managed to forge. If we can hold the guide book responsible for helping us to safety while on the road then we also have someone to blame when things go wrong.
´Things going wrong´ provides a doorway into some of our very best travel experiences. Not knowing forces travellers into discussions with locals on where to stay, what to eat and how to dress. Remember those days? Interacting with locals? Rather than following the rabbit-run through countries with the other biblically-serious-about-the-guidebook travellers, blind to the possibility of chance, to the spontaneous, the ´what-if´ seekers have the chance to create their own personalised travel experience.
Years ago, arriving at a small Indian town, to find all the hostels full, I accepted an invitation to dinner and a room from a kind gentleman on his way to a wedding. Along with my travelling partner – also a girl – I was whisked off as a guest to the wedding. As we made our way in this very foreign land – we knew absolutely no-one at the wedding – we danced, sang and had a ball. We were even later offered a wonderful, air-conditioned double bedroom in the hotel, no strings attached. There was nothing sordid about the ordeal, and certainly nothing unsafe about it. I doubt one would find a listing for “how to get invited to an Asian wedding “ in a guidebook, nor should one.
Mr. Kohnstamm may have had a more ribald time on his trip to Brazil than I did in India – He had sex? Shame on him! Did some drugs? Oh me, oh my! – but I can’t quite understand what’s wrong with enjoying oneself a bit on the road. Kerouac certainly did it. So, for that matter, did Marco Polo and Richard Burton. Whatever the furor surrounding “ Do Travel Writers go to Hell?â€, I shall be reading it with glee on my holidays this summer. I hope to laugh, to cringe and to be moved to question – surely the point of his book in the first place – what use should be made of the guidebook in this century? In our era of now-time – internet, mobile phone images and get-it-out blogging – we must be aware that by the time any writer has visited, written and published a travel guide-book, errors will already have crept in, overtaken by the vehicles of the web. And the subjective views of the guidebook will be matched, I am sure, by equally subjective, up-to-the-minute information culled from blogs, websites or friends´ texts.
Perhaps this shocking revelation that travel writers do not have the time nor the cash to get to every single hostel, restaurant and sight will see the rebirth of the real traveller, one who dares to carry a guidebook as a subjective companion – not a divine prophesy on where to eat dinner – or to travel without one at all.
If travel writers do go to hell I look forward to meeting Mr Kohnstamm there in fifty years or so and having a rollicking evening of lusty tales over a few beers.
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I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having fun or being funny. But I don’t think Kohnstamm’s behavior is an example of either, really. It’s also not original.
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has anyone seen this
(editor: i shrunk the link)
http://tiny.cc/IrOs1did you ever stop to think that maybe you were denigrating kohnstamm for coming forward about some bigger industry practices?
way to represent big corporate interests against a single author. you really have that independent traveler spirit.
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God bless SIOBHAN for breathing some sensibility into this thread. C’mon folks! Let’s not take this whole thing too seriously. I am all for keeping the adventure in travel. Let’s not blame anything that goes “wrong” in our travels on erroneous travel guides. I agree that mishaps on the road are often times THE BEST entry way into the wildest most outrageous tales that I have experienced. God forbid you travel and have to TALK to local people cause the phone number that was listed in your guide book happened to be out dated or have the wrong area code.
I tend to not like traveling with the people who have to PLAN every last detail of their trip BEFORE it happens and leave their presence as quickly as I find out they mess up my MOJO.Go on….travel and be free. Don’t travel to be bound.
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Roner-
I’m all about freeing yourself from the guide book– precisely for the reasons you state, I’ve never used them in the first place.
But I just don’t but the claim that guide book liberation was ever Kohnstamm’s point.↵ -
“did you ever stop to think that maybe you were denigrating kohnstamm for coming forward about some bigger industry practices?”
Nope. Did I ever think the lady who sued McDonald’s over scalding coffee wasn’t a frivolous lawsuit? Nope. Then I got the facts, just like now. Just like you did.
“way to represent big corporate interests against a single author.”
That was the plan, Steve. Travel bloggers are as corporate as you can get. Half of us are really shills for Let’s Go. But I’m sure you knew that all along, too.
“you really have that independent traveler spirit.”
Glad you could make it after the fact, Steve. If only the NY Times, CNN, etc. had your prescience, what a beautiful world this would be. We should’ve just asked you first.
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Aren’t their two sides to this story? Surely, if the publisher is not offering sufficient funds, an offer to pay expenses, etc. then they know they are a partner in crime in this fictitious guide?
Before people act as judge and jury, they should find out how many hours are involved in research and how much these guide books actually pay. For many, it doesn’t even work out to minimum wage.
Now, how could someone fly to Columbia, stay at hotels, eat at restaurants, enjoy the sites etc.on minimum wage or less? It’s a losing proposition. The plane ticket alone would eat up the entire payout, in some cases.
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im with “let’s be honest”, as far as ive heard these travel writers are paid LESS than minimum wage, and as you rightly state it’s impossible to travel to every little town and experience all that must be experienced to truly write a guidebook on this kind of money. it’s little wonder that places are overlooked and some “bribes” are taken. i bet there isnt a guidebook writer out there who hasnt done such a thing, nor hasnt given a more positive review about a place due to the way they were treated. come on!!
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Just to share…
Last year in Colombia I made the mistake of buying the LP. It was so off touch that it took the phrase “the book of lies” to a whole other level. It was common knowledge, at least around Colombia in 2007, that the author hadn’t been to the country for more than 3 weeks, and that the book was based on the previous edition. It was also no secret that certain key hostels (I’ll respect their anonymity) were contacted for info on their cities. At least one hostel declined assisting, and another throughly enjoyed the opportunity.
I wrote to LP, telling them how disappointed with the edition I was. Surprisingly, I received a response, which began with “I am afraid that I must totally agree with your email. Our Colombia guide is not up to the standards of our other guides and has suffered from a lot of problems. In regards to the missing sections in the guide, there is a bit of a history behind that.”
Basically, no one should be surprised by this story. Least of all LP.
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The language spoken in Brazil is portuguese, not spanish. Brasileñas is spanish The correct portuguese word is brasileiras.
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Kohnstamm is well aware that people read these memoirs to see how low they can go it’s an impulse that we’ve seen over and over. The sad thing is it will sell and it will pad out his retirement nest. I will follow your example of not giving the man a penny.
I wonder if people would pay to read of my exploits where I pursue the literary gangsters, criminals, US interns, drug dealers and Thomas Kohnstamms of this world and kick them ugly in their local alley. I could call it “Do people who attack people who are going to hell go to hell?”. I’ll contact his agent.
I found this link to a new Aussie comedy travel show about Colombia. I don’t think it irons out the inconsistencies in the Lonely Planet but at least they took the time to go and it’s nice to see something of the everyday existence of Colombians without mention of the usual.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=z-TNGOHxnK8&feature=related
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Has anyone read the book? Is it good?
If it is, all bets are off. You’re all a bunch of monkeys.
His personality, his lack of ethics–that’s ad hominem. It’s about the book.
Some people are talking about him like he is a womanizer, and somewhere along they way they have been burned by this kind of guy, so they overeact to something. The emotional reaction doesn’t match the situation.
Really seriously, if the book works, I dont care what if he’s an asshole.
Melville was rumored to get drunk and throw his wife down the stairs.
So now you aint gonna read Moby Dick?
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gary,
first, the original article made it look like he was a writer intentionally taking advantage of LP, and if you write for a livng that makes you look bad. i dont blame people for getting angry. yeah they overeacted, but they cooled out when the facts came. whats youre excuse?
second, if as you say its about the book ,which was originaly thought to burn people, youre coming in after all the facts are in. how conveinient for you. maybe you should actually look at the followup article and save the monkey comments for yourself, since youre also acting on half the facts. this thread is dead.
third, i guess youve got no problem owning a whole wall of hitler paintings, because hes a good painter right? no ones a saint, but if someone is an asshole it does matter. if it doesnt to you, i feel sorry for you. just another mcshopper with no conscience. too bad thats ad hominem, but in a forum its not about the book its about the comments, and yours make you look like a souless jerk.
fourth, if melvile was a wife beater, yeah,some people would read his books, and feminists would get on websites and complain. maybe youd go one the feminist site and tell them theyre monkeys and its all about the book, and id still feel sorry for you. but melville was gay so you lucked out. even though you still got no soul, and i really hope you dont have a wife.↵ -
Reading about Thomas Kohnstamm did not come as a surprise to me as most guest house, restaurant, and bar owners in South East Asia will tell you how much they had to pay to be recommended.
As for not complying, from a hotel that was listed as closed for refurbishment for years after it reopened, to a guest house slagged off when the owner of a neighbouring establishment was friends with a researcher, a restuarant owner who was threatened with a bad review for insisting that the resarchers paid for their meals, the list is endless.
There was also the story of a researcher in Vietnam who admitted to being driven around by a local who only took them to establishments that paid him commision.
Any one who trusts that pile of rubbish is an idiot/
Now that the BBC now own 75% of it, I hope that it gets its act together and realises what a croc of s*!t it bought and sorts it out
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