My sister recommended me the book Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
. She warned me that it was a “girly book” but I like travel books and since one of the countries the author visits is Indonesia, I thought I would give it a read.

Some parts of the Italy section were good. It was supposed to be about food, but food was only the topic in a few paragraphs. Nothing like an Italian version of a “Year in Province”. Some parts of the book are interesting, but most of the book is about how the author is trying to get over her divorce and an ex-boyfriend.

In India she stays at an Ashram. I don’t know but the whole thing of westerners going to India to find God through meditation is a bit of a tired cliche. She had plans to stay at the Ashram for a while and then travel around India. A convinces her to stay at the Ashram for the whole time she is in India. I think this was a mistake and would have got more out of spending a few months traveling around the country.

Sometimes I think I have problems, but then I see and hear of people who are much worse off than myself and the problems I have really are minuscule compared with them.

Finally she goes to Indonesia (Bali) to meet with a medicine man. She complains about the corruption yet partakes it in herself to get a visa to stay longer in the country. She befriends a female medicine doctor who is poor and has nowhere to live. She raises money from her friends in America and raises $18,000 which she wires to lady’s bank account in Indonesia.

The woman complains she can’t find the right place and says how it would be better if she just had a bit more money. The author and her friends thought they were doing a good deed. Take the story out of Bali though and it would be described as a scam or a con, which the author got played.

The book is going to be made into a movie with Julia Roberts playing the lead.