Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu

J. Maarten Troost (2006)
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THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

J. Maarten Troost follows The Sex Lives of Cannibals, his popular first book on his two years living in Tarawa with Getting Stoned With Savages, the story of another adventure to the South Pacific.  Troost and his wife Sylvia again decide to escape life in the United States to move to Vanuatu, a rugged cluster of 80 barren islands located north of New Zealand and east of Australia.  The couple’s transition back to a relaxed clothing-optional island lifestyle is again hilarious, with daily challenges with typhoons, earthquakes, giant centipedes, the adjustment to drinking kava, and for the first time, pregnancy.  They decide to move to the slightly more modern island of Fiji, which brings a whole new series of challenges.  Troost is an entertaining writer, and there is some interesting commentary on the nature of escapism. 
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ABOUT J. MAARTEN TROOST

Born in the Netherlands but raised in Canada and Washington DC, J. Maarten Troost has emerged as a prominent and popular travel writer.  He has three funny travel books that all center around the South Pacific, including The Sex Lives of Cannibals (2003) and Headhunters on My Doorstep (2013).  We also recommend Lost on Planet China (2008), the story of Troost's travels through China.

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GREAT QUOTES FROM GETTING STONED WITH SAVAGES

"Chapter 1: In which the author, much to his surprise, finds himself holding down a job, a real job that could possibly lead to a career, which causes him considerable distress as he envisions his world reduced to swirling acronyms, whereupon his beguiling wife offers him another way, an escape, an alternate road, and together they decide to the distant island of the South Pacific,"
- J. Maarten Troost, the name of the first chapter of Getting Stoned with Savages

“Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But it’s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home.”

INTERESTING LINKS:

A MAP OF FIJI AND VANUATU