Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Travel Misadventures by Gigi Pandian


JENN McKINLAY: One of my very favorite people to connect with at writing conferences is the super talented Gigi Pandian. She's smart, funny, adventurous, and a brilliant word smith, but also, she shares a deep and abiding love for Elizabeth Peters, aka Barbara Mertz, with me. Read yesterday's post for more on that. We are reader soul sisters, for sure! Now here's Gigi to tell you more about her (mis)adventures in research and writing.

GIGI PANDIAN: “Misadventures” is a much more appealing word than “nightmares” or even “hassles,” isn’t it? That’s my story and I’m sticking with—even though my latest misadventure involves breaking my ankle while exploring an off-the-beaten-path Cambodian temple.

Ugh, I know! Perhaps the most unexpected part of that experience was that it didn’t end up ruining the trip, but quite the opposite. Instead of cutting the trip short, we relied on more people to help us get around, and in the process met wonderful people who we otherwise never would have met.





And by forcing me to slow down, fracturing my ankle had an additional unexpected benefit. With my leg propped up with an ice pack in Phnom Penh at the Raffles Hotel Writers Bar, I wrote a draft of my locked-room mystery story “The Cambodian Curse,” about a seemingly impossible museum heist of a Cambodian statue, and I figured out the treasure in The Glass Thief—the new Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery that’s out today.


I don’t know about you, but I love traveling for the same reason I love reading—to take me to destinations more surprising and wondrous than I could have imagined. Travel is an adventure, and that’s why we embark on trips that take us out of our comfort zones. It shouldn’t surprise us that it involves unexpected snafus—or twists, as we’d call them if we were reading about them.

I admit it. I don’t always find life twists as fun as the ones I read about. (Roberta—I’m thinking of you when you lost your passport in India!) As my ankle swelled from apple-size to grapefruit-size on our 2-hour car ride back to Siem Reap from the temple of Banteay Chhmar, I was not a happy camper. We were only halfway through our trip. Should we stay?

By the time I pulled out my notebook that sweltering evening, we decided to treat it as an adventure. I’m a writer, after all. I better have a good enough imagination to turn an injury into an adventure. I’d sprained my ankle before, which is what I thought this was at the time, so I knew how to get around with an injured foot. I iced it, wrapped it, and put it in a brace. We were already halfway around the world in a country I’d never previously visited. We were staying. 

How could I not? None of my research compared to history and culture coming alive. Especially in a country like Cambodia that’s been through so much strife, from French colonialism to the bloodshed of the Khmer Rouge. Many of the historical Buddhist and Hindu temples from the thriving Angkorian Empire are only now being cleared and excavated. Banteay Chhmar, the Angkorian temple where I broke my ankle, is currently being excavated, so it doesn’t have wooden steps and walkways for tourists. Over the course of several hours, we only saw half a dozen other visitors, and only two of them fellow Westerners. We had a marvelous guide to show us around (thank you, Mr. Pel!), but still had to step carefully. By the end of our day there, I got sloppy. Which my husband still won’t let me forget—he’s the one with a bad foot, so he was far more careful than I was. I took my mobility for granted. Oh, the things we take for granted!



Of course I’d rather not have broken my ankle, but I’m still glad I went on the trip. Some of my travel misadventures have been more fun than others—being trapped in the Louvre during an art heist was definitely better than having to sleep on the cold floor of an Italian train station after missing a connection—but in spite of how much I adore being curled up on my couch with a good book, what I gain from understanding and experiencing more of the world will always pull me out my front door again.

What misadventures have you encountered on your travels? Did you still think it was worth it?


THE GLASS THIEF is out today! In the latest installment of the multi-award-winning and USA Today bestselling series Publishers Weekly calls “everything a mystery lover could ask for,” historian Jaya Jones travels from San Francisco to Paris and Cambodia to solve two impossible crimes before a killer strikes again and a priceless treasure vanishes forever.

The book just received a *starred review* from Library Journal! “Charming and eclectic characters populate this Indiana Jones-esque adventure, which comes highly recommended for
fans of locked-room mysteries in the manner of Agatha Christie and Elizabeth Peters.” 

p.s. Gigi is hosting two virtual book launch parties today to celebrate, one at 7am Pacific Time for early birds, and one at 7pm for night owls:

USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author Gigi Pandian is the child of cultural anthropologists from New Mexico and the southern tip of India. She spent her childhood
traveling around the world on their research trips, and now lives outside San Francisco with her husband and a gargoyle who watches over the garden. Gigi writes the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mysteries, the Accidental Alchemist mysteries, and locked-room mystery short stories.

Sign up for Gigi’s email newsletter to receive a free Jaya Jones novella and Accidental Alchemist recipe card downloads: http://gigipandian.com/newsletter/

44 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Congratulations on your newest book, Gigi . . . I enjoy locked room mysteries and I’m looking forward to reading Jaya’s latest adventure.

    The only travel misadventure I have to report happened in the Atlanta airport . . . I stepped sideways to avoid a dad dragging a poor little one along at a fast clip, and somehow that stepping aside broke a bone in my foot. I can relate to traveling on with an injury.

    But as far as misadventures go, I’d really like to know more about being trapped in the Louvre during an art heist . . . .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. Thanks, Joan! Ugh, so sorry about your broken foot! I empathize ;)

      Here's more about my experience with the art heist at the Louvre:
      http://www.pensfatales.com/2010/12/theft-at-louvre.html

      Delete
  3. Congrats on the new book!

    I'm trying to think of a good travel adventure story, but I don't have any to rival yours. Fortunately. I don't deal well with twists in real life. If you want me to be spontaneous, please give me a week advanced notice.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Mark! Ha -- I hear ya. My two favorite places are curled up with a good book at home and on a grand adventure. Just the extremes ;)

      Delete
  4. Congratulations on the new book.

    As far as travel adventure stories, nothing in the extremely limited trip-taking that I have done really qualifies as a misadventure. The closest might be the time I was coming home from a bus trip to Connecticut. I got into the station in Providence where I learned there was a 90 minute wait for the bus to take me to my final destination...which was just 45 minutes away.

    About the only other thing was when I went to a comic convention in 2005. I was staying with a friend of mine for the weekend and his girlfriend took her lunch break to pick me up at the airport. She dropped me at their house and went back to work...and broke up with my friend at the job. (Please Note: Not because of me, he and I were just the victims of her incredibly bad timing.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Jay.

      I'd say that friend break-up counts as a misadventure!

      Delete
  5. As I left the crocodile mummy museum at the Temple of Kom Ombo in Egypt behind the rest of our group, I was approached by a local vender carrying (what else?) a cobra. "Lady, you want to pet nice snake? Is safe, no teeth." I was a quarter-mile down the path before he could finish his sales pitch.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I take it you didn't bring home a pet cobra? :)

      (I feel bad for the poor toothless cobra!)

      Delete
  6. Hi, Gigi! Congratulations on the new book! I always say the misadventures make for much better stories than when everything goes smoothly.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Annette! I definitely get better stories out of the misadventures.

      Delete
  7. OMG, Gigi, I can see how you might consider going home! Good for you for making lemonade, instead.

    I've traveled a lot, mostly alone, in that States, Japan, West Africa, Europe. and Brazil, and have been amazingly lucky, even hitchhiking from Michigan back to California safely. One, in graduate school, I arrived too late to catch my plane to Europe - because it was time change weekend and I'd forgotten to fall back or spring forward, whichever it was. Luckily I could get the same flight the next day. Now my standard nightmare is always about airport: from forgetting the passport to somehow being in the pilot's seat knowing very well I do NOT know how to fly a giant airplane! I can't wait to read the new book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. (Sorry about all the typos. Sheesh! Haven't had enough coffee yet...)

      Delete
    2. Edith, that's funny I'm the same -- the only repeating bad dream I have involves airports! Usually I keep getting farther and father away from my gate no matter how quickly I walk!

      Delete
  8. Gigi, wow, you made the best of a horrible situation! (Yes, and we had to made the same decision about the lost passport.) But did we hear about the art heist??

    Congrats on the new book and the starred review!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. Thanks, Roberta!

      I wrote about the art heist at the Louvre in my third Jaya Jones novel, QUICKSAND, because it was too fascinating an experience not to write about. http://www.pensfatales.com/2010/12/theft-at-louvre.html

      Delete
  9. Congrats on the book, Gigi! I don't think I would have gone home, either. I mean...how could you? You might never get back, right?

    Most of my travel adventures are tame in comparison and involve delays. If I see you at Malice in the spring, ask me about getting to Dallas for this year's Bouchercon. Or about the year Bouchercon was in Raleigh. :)

    And I agree with Annette. Stories about misadventures are always better than when you're living through it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Liz! Yeah, it was only a very brief moment when we considered going home, but really, on the other side of the world we had to stay :)

      I'll definitely ask you about your Bouchercon travel experiences when next I see you. Two Bouchercon misadventures? Will you try again next year?

      Delete
    2. Sadly, I don't think I'll make it to Sacramento - but not because of the travel misadventures. :)

      Delete
  10. You are such an optimist, and hooray for making the best of it. Poor thing— But you are brave and intrepid… No wonder Jaya is such a treasure!
    My travel misadventures? Nothing as cataclysmic so far… I am off to New Orleans on Friday on Spirit air, though, does that count :-)?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Spirit Air! I do have to say I'm a wimp when it comes to booking flights. I stick to my favorite airlines whenever possible. I'm tall so I take comfort on long flights seriously!

      Delete
  11. Congrats on the book, Gigi! Can't wait to read it! And I want to know about the art heist, too! My worst travel misadventures have had to do not with breaking things but with being ill. I got Norovirus while staying in a London flat on my own. Had to call the emergency doctor service and the doctor actually came in the middle of night, wearing a three piece suit and carrying his black bag. Then I did an entire book tour in Germany with the flu. I was scheduled to fly back to London when the volcano exploded in Iceland in 2010 and all flights were canceled. My German publicist managed to get me a seat on the train from Hanover to Brussels, where I only made my Eurostar connection by running flat out with my luggage (still with the flu.)

    But the most memorable and terrifying thing that has ever happened to me was arriving in England on the morning of 9/11. Of course I was five hours ahead of New York and didn't learn what had happened until late afternoon UK time. I had no way to contact friends and family for a week. I was staying in a unfamiliar London flat in a neighborhood I didn't know, and in those days didn't have the network of friends in London that I have now. I've never felt so frightened and isolated. Now whenever I hear the planes over west London I always thinks about how entirely empty the skies were that week. It seemed like the end of the world.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow on all of that, Debs, but esp the 9/11. It was an awful day, an awful week. How hard to be alone during it.

      Delete
    2. Argh, getting sick while traveling is the worst! And that's dreadful about your 9/11 timing. Sending belated virtual hugs!

      Delete
  12. I have no travel misadventure worth telling, but I wanted to say hello and to say that after you promoted the book of short stories featuring The Cambodian Curse, I bought it, read it, and loved it! Now I consider myself a Jaya Jones fan and can't wait to read this one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, thanks so much for the note, Susan! I'm so happy to hear you're having fun with Jaya.

      Delete
  13. Gigi, you’re a trooper! Congrats on the new book! I can’t wait to read it! My travel misadventure would be Shingles this past summer while in Canada. Unfortunately, I did cancel the tail end of my trip because I was worried about being contagious. Instead, I spent a week living in my brother’s basement until the blisters passed. Ugh!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks so much for having me visit today, Jenn! Shingles -- ugh! I hope you at least got some good reading done while hiding in the basement ;)

      Delete
    2. My copy of THE GLASS THIEF arrived. Life is good. Thanks so much for joining us today, Gigi!

      Delete
    3. It was such fun to stop by and commiserate hearing all these other travel stories! Thanks again :)

      Delete
  14. Gigi the new book sounds terrific- congratulations on the starred review! My ‘adventure’ began at Logan where I managed to trip my husband with my roller bag - he fell and hit his head. He had to get ok’ed by a doctor before they’d let him fly - he caught up with me and our kids in Mexico 5 hours later . (He didn’t have his cell phone with him because he figured I had mine) Lessons both of us learned...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Hallie!

      I'm glad your husband was OK, but how stressful, especially without a cell phone! It's funny to think back on all of the travels I did in remote places before cell phones. We rely so much on them now, I can't imaging going back.

      Delete
    2. So true! All of my travels in remote places and hitchhiking took place BCP - before cell phones.

      Delete
  15. Hi Gigi! You were the first author I accosted in Dallas, downstairs in the book bazaar. Yay for your new book! I don't know that I'd label any of these things misadventures, more like interesting stuff that happened. Driving in Spain with my husband was interesting, to say the least. He did fine until he was on that very narrow mountain road on Gibralter with a full size bus coming down hill at him. They say as long as you have two inches to spare you're fine. Ha. Anyway we made it and he did not complain about driving after that. Until Granada. We turned in the car in Madrid and took the train to Salamanca. On the return trip we were in the depot with absolutely no one else there. This young guy came in, sat one seat away from me in this empty station. My husband was walking about, patrolling. I kept an eye on our luggage while Frank kept an eye on me. That was weird. We also drove about in Costa Rica years ago. On our way to somewhere in the boonies we were stopped at a "toll" bridge by a military-looking group. There is no military in Costa Rica. And no toll either, but we paid it and left. No arguments. I went on a tour in India about three years ago and it was magical. One young lady saw a cow wandering around as they do and ran over to have her picture taken with it. She stood by its head and the cow lowered it and pushed her away. I thought we'd all die laughing, including her. I love to travel and don't get to do enough of it. The unexpected just adds to the joy usually, says the person who hasn't gotten sick or busted herself on a trip.

    ReplyDelete
  16. What great stories, Pat! Thanks for sharing. Yes, there's never enough time for travel, is there? And I always struggle with the decision of whether to go somewhere new or go back somewhere I know I love.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hi Gigi! Hope your ankle is feeling better. Trying to remember a travel misadventure. I stayed at Hans Brinker hostel in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It said Breakfast was included when I reserved my stay. Well, it turned out that "breakfast" was only coffee. Everything else - orange juice, cereal, eggs, fruit, bread cost ONE pound. So if you wanted a real breakfast, it would have cost $$$$. Once I found out, I put back all of the food and walked next door to a pancake house where I had the best breakfast in Holland! The pancakes in Holland are more like crepes. Yum!

    So despite the misadventure, I managed to make lemonade out of lemons!

    Diana

    p.s. It's always fun running into you at the farmer's market / cafe.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is feeling better now -- thanks!

      Sounds like that false breakfast turned out well in the end with the perfect crepes.

      p.s. Ditto :)

      Delete
  18. Congratulations on your new book and your starred review, Gigi!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Hi Gigi. The picture of the temple is marvelous. I've added to my list of authors that I've met through JRW.
    My misadventure was more about family obligations. My grandmother died while I was in Taxco on my only chorus concert tour. The travel coordinator got me home in time for her service. Bus, which had assigned seating, to Mexico City airport and then two flights to SFO. I don't there was a lot of Wi-Fi available then but I made it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So many great authors stop by JRW, don't they? My TBR pile is stacked so high with great book recs.

      Sorry for your travel ordeal, but I'm glad you made it home!

      Delete