An excerpt from A Deat Bat In Paraguay:

[In Tupiza, Bolivia] I did some research on the internet while waiting a day for my tour to the Southwest to begin. (How I could make it four days without constant access to toilet I wasn’t sure.) I learned that Bolivia is the poorest country in the continent by GDP per capita. If you include Central America, it’s second behind only Haiti, a place so sad and impoverished that the worst off subsist on cookies made from mud.

I thought about all the countries I was now “qualified” to visit, places I would most likely survive with only somewhat serious intestinal problems. But it’s doubtful I’d enjoy myself. Even Bolivia’s rough, pink-colored toilet paper was getting to me. After a few days it began to feel like someone was trying to jam jagged rocks up my butt with every wipe, and after extended walks I began to notice an odd, unpleasant itch in sensitive areas too embarrassing to discuss with other gringos. How I sorely missed the luxurious softness of American toilet paper! It didn’t help matters that the pink color made it hard to tell when I was done cleaning or not. I theorize that Bolivians have dirty asses because of this.

If you’re going to South America for an extended period you need a survival strategy for your ass. Here are six tips:

1. Don’t use the hostel toilet paper. They are one grade above newspaper and will give you the abraded anus if you have to go often due to diarrhea. Go to the supermarket and buy the most expensive toilet paper they have, which won’t be expensive at all. Your ass is important so don’t skimp on this, even though I know you will.

2. Take probiotics. If you’re going to a poor country with an already sensitive stomach, I recommend you take probiotics, which are “good” bacteria for your stomach that is supported by scientific research. Two you can try that don’t require refrigeration are Jarrow Bourlardii and Jarrow Dophilus. If you need something heavy duty to repair damage then go with Kirkman Pro-Bio Defense. If your stomach is beyond fucked yet a doctor insists nothing is wrong with you, go with the most concentrated probiotic you can legally buy: VSL3. For much lighter concentrations buy yogurt like Activa, which you can find everywhere. Honestly I don’t think one serving a day of Activa will make a significant difference, but it doesn’t hurt.

3. Lay off caffeine. I know you like coffee and soda but caffeine is a gut stimulant that is like cocaine on digestive muscle. When you’re taking long bus rides or hikes you don’t want to have to go unexpectedly, and holding your shit in for hours at a time is really uncomfortable. Trust me when I say it’s better to be constipated while traveling than going too often, but if you’re too constipated then slowly ramp up fiber intake starting with one apple a day. Or have a double espresso in the vicinity of a toilet.

4. Fight the sludge. After a while in a poor country the consistency of your shit may turn into gooey sludge. This is probably because you eat a lot of outside food that isn’t handled in the most sanitary way. Here’s my anti-sludge diet:

Breakfast: Sandwich of cheese and deli meat, apple, yogurt.

Lunch: Nutella or peanut butter sandwich, banana, pear, exotic fruit (papaya in Brazil, avocado in Colombia)

Snack: Crackers

Dinner: Rice-based meal with chicken and veggies (carrots, green peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes)

Use white bread and rice first because the anti-sludge diet has a lot of fiber which you don’t want to overload on and get mushy craps (though I argue that mushy is far better than sludgy). It takes about 3-4 days to eliminate the sludge.

5. Take something for the gas. Gas decreases your overall quality of life (along with your confidence when it comes time to mack), and seems to increase dramatically during travel. Simply travel with GasX (simethicone). Pop two, wait 20 minutes for a big explosion, and then you’re gas free for several hours. Foreign pharmacies sell simethicone as well. (I find that Argentine dulce de leche gives me awesome gas, probably due to the potent mix of sugar and dairy. In fact anything with dairy causes problems for me, so I only eat things like rich chocolate cake when I’m going to stay in for the next half day.) One thing I like about simethicone is that it doesn’t get absorbed into your bloodstream so you don’t need to worry about long-term effects.

6. Peppermint. If your stomach in an angry bear like mine then you need something to settle it down. I recommend peppermint pills, a natural gut relaxant (try either Pepogest or Heather’s Tummy Tamers). I pop one before eating meals that I know will cause me trouble. Only side effect is having minty burps afterwards. I pushed these on my sister recently who told me the other day that they’re “like crack.”

A chunk of A Dead Bat In Paraguay was about my intestinal adventures, which I enjoyed sharing in detail. Click here to read up to 20% of the book on Google Books.

In A Dead Bat In Paraguay I wrote:

While packed in the procession dancing along with my friends, Skol beer in hand, I realized how much worse Carnival would be if I didn’t know anyone. I wouldn’t know which blocos to pick and there would no one to tell me what the Carnival songs meant. And I definitely wouldn’t know that the cloudy white liquid in plastic bags shaped like condoms were caipirinhas. For foreigners who come alone, I don’t see how Carnival can mean anything more than getting drunk with a strange crowd.

The main feature of Carnival is the street parties called blocos. It usually starts as a prosession led by either a truck full of speakers or a band in a train car. Samba is the music of choice. They stick one song on repeat (if you’re lucky they change it up after a dozen or so plays), and a crushing crowd follows the lead car. Then the car stops and everyone focuses on drinking and talking. That’s Carnival.

The result is you go to a bloco, have a few beers, pretend you’re having a great time to another culture’s song and dance, and then go to another one. Carnival is basically drinking cheap booze with the mob, to music you don’t know or understand.

The crowd is so thick that if you lose your friends you’ll have problems finding them again. It’s unbearably hot and sweaty bodies will be pressed against you like in a game of pickup street ball. While the actual blocos are free, you have to pay five times more for already crappy lodgings. Gringo gouging is common.

As for the girls, most hang out in huge groups of friends, and at the blocos they run into even more friends. While you can pick up in a bloco, they are not designed for you to do so. Do you think a quality Brazilian girl celebrating her country’s prime cultural event with a dozen friends wants to hook up with a gringo who doesn’t speak Portuguese? Most of the hooking up happens within the social circle, so if you have no Brazilian friends you’re at a huge disadvantage.

The clubs are mostly empty at night because everyone is so tired from drinking during the day. Therefore it’s actually much harder to bang a Brazilian girl during Carnival than any other time. I’ll be in Rio for my second Carnival and I’m already preparing for a week of no new poon or going out. I plan to get some writing done and it’ll probably be my most productive week of the year.

In fact I have yet to meet someone who can explain to me why Carnival is worth it, but of course no one wants to say straight-up that it blows. But it does. Besides the colorful samba parade, which is great but only a few hours long, Carnival is a steaming piles of marketing bullshit designed to part you from your money. You won’t get laid, you won’t like the music, you won’t like the crowds, and you definitely won’t like the cheap booze. I really like Brazil, but I dread another Carnival.

New Years Eve is more of the same but with a pretty fireworks display. Save your money.

Here’s an Bang excerpt from page 56:

You may want to turn an attractive lady friend into a wingman. The female wingman is supposed to let other females know that you are accepted on this Earth by at least one woman. But we use her differently than a male wingman. While your buddy is by your side to talk to the girlfriends and absorb distractions, the female wingman is there to increase your social standing. When you enter a venue, you want to talk to your lady friend long enough for other girls to see. Make the interaction ambiguous by talking close and encouraging her to touch you from time to time. Then, go approach girls on your own, who will now be much more receptive to your game.

The purpose of the female wingman is just to increase the success rate of your approaches. While you can bring your lady friend along with you in the approach, I find that the girls tend to talk too much amongst themselves, severely limiting my ability to game. Don’t let a girl do the approach for you—approaching a girl you want to sleep with is your job and no one else’s.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a man properly use a female wingman. He thinks that because he has some social proof the girls will start coming up to him, or that the wingwoman will do all the work, but it rarely works out like that. What ends up happening is that he barely talks to other girls.

I will always recommend men use a male wingman before female ones, for two reasons. First, when you have a cute girl on your arm you get lazy and comfortable, probably because your hunger is tamed. Second, there’s a subconscious desire not to get rejected in front of other women (especially ones you know), so you’ll tend to only go for other girls who gave you a good signal like eye contact.

Unless your female wingman knows you play the numbers game to get sex, and that you do get rejected often, you’ll be much more hesitant to approach than if you were hanging out with another guy. While I do value the social proof that comes with hanging out with beautiful women, the female wingman is too overrated for guys who already have game. The benefit is marginal unless you know exactly what you’re doing.

In Bang I do give some additional tips on macking with a male wingman, including what to do in the unfortunate situation where you feel like your wingman is cockblocking you. Check out the Bang homepage to read more excerpts.

Oh, Merry Christmas.

Here’s an excerpt from page 153 of A Dead Bat In Paraguay….

If I’m in a club bathroom with a gringo friend talking in English, there will be at least one native who understands our banter and asks where we’re from. In the Duff bathroom I ended up meeting a Chilean who studied in Los Angeles.

“Chilean girls are tough,” I said.

“Do you talk to the girls in English or Spanish?”

“I start off in Spanish. ¿Habla inglés?”

“No no no that’s wrong. Always start in English.”

“They won’t even understand.”

“That’s the point. You need to play up that you’re an outsider right away. At least for the first three minutes speak in English only. It’s different and exciting—they will laugh and enjoy it.”

“Then after three minutes?”

“Start moving into Spanish. By then it won’t matter because you got their attention. Always talk in English first.”

Then I thought back to the night in Santiago with Rodrigo where I started in English by accident and got in pretty well with the group. Even though asking habla inglés already implies that I speak English, I decided that this random bathroom guy knew what he was talking about.

Even though this lesson seems trivial on the surface, at the time I thought it was rather groundbreaking. About a week later I ended up in Cordoba where my entire existence was about getting my Argentine flag. I met another guy there named the Predator whose moves I put in the book are ones that I still use every now and then.

Here’s part of a review of A Deat Bat In Paraguay from Tyler:

There was no sugar coating or diluting any of the experiences he went through. Stories that some people would take to their grave, Roosh wrote in black and white for the world to read. That’s what made this book so funny but also so intriguing. After some of his stories, you realize he is giving you the full experience and holding nothing back.

“I sat in the front seat and the chubby girl got on my lap. I positioned her body in a way that much of her weight was against the door instead of crushing my body.”

While I was reading this book, I was doing a little bit of traveling of my own. I was up in Maine at one point, staying in this vacation cabin with a girl. One night while she was getting ready for bed I was reading through a few chapters and I began laughing. Imagining how some of this stuff went down, I was reading it out loud. She kept wanting me to read more of it.

Here’s part of a very in-depth review from Ferdinand Bardamu:

An important part of any book is its diction, and on this front, A Dead Bat in Paraguay is as smooth and pleasing to read as a good wine is to drink. An acolyte of the Hemingway school of literary writing, Roosh shies away from flowery descriptions and overblown metaphors, relaying his story with an understatement that conveys imagery and emotion in its own way. His bone-dry sense of humor pervades his prose at almost all times, with lines like “I made love with the toilet.” Roosh is awfully fond of toilet humor in the literal sense – a lot of the laughs come from his loving descriptions of the painful, explosive bowel movements he had while on the road. No mere clown, though, he also retells the struggles of his journey with a bluntness that gets the reader invested emotionally. A large part of the narrative is Roosh’s attempts to hook up with the local women in the various places he visits, only to be met with repeated failure. His constant battle to adapt his game to the cultural idiosyncrasies of the women who he tries to bed is so compelling that when he finally meets success, you’ll want to cheer.

The frankness and honesty of A Dead Bat in Paraguay is a refreshing change from the fake, phony, and fraudulent memoirs that have flooded the book world in recent years, but it also hurts the book in some ways. Any good storyteller has the ability to bullshit with aplomb, and Roosh isn’t quite there yet. His emphasis on relaying the details of his trip has too much of a “just the facts, ma’am” feel to it, as if he was writing a college paper and not a commercial book. The weakness of this approach culminates in the book’s ending, which just sucks. In fact, it isn’t really an “ending” – the book just sort of stops.

In pointing out these issues, I don’t want come off as being too critical. In a literary world full of flotsam, jetsam, and other varieties of garbage, Roosh Vörek has produced something remarkable and memorable.

And a short one from a reader:

Just finished your book. Thought it was great. I cannot give you a good review that you are able to post because it would suck if I even tried, but I really appreciated the book, and I am proud to have it on my bookshelf now. I’ve always liked how you tell it how it is and how you are completely honest with yourself. You’ve been inspiring for awhile and that book made you even more. Thanks for everything.

I thank these guys for their reviews.

You can learn more about getting a copy at the A Dead Bat In Paraguay homepage. Also if you go to buy the ebook version of one of my books, I offer my other one at a pretty nice discount, kind of like when you go to the movie theater and they ask if you want to upgrade your beverage size for 40 cents more.

Someone emailed to ask me if I was writing a sequel to DBIP, and the answer is a definite no. Not only do I not want to touch memoir writing for a while, but the past seven months have been enjoyable without the violent ups and downs that would make a good story. A book about me generally getting what I want from life wouldn’t be very compelling. I may put out a brief epilogue though after I return to Rio.

I recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek guest post for Medellin Living, a blog run by a guy named Dave who I met here in Colombia. Here’s an excerpt:

3. There’s casas and there’s casas. I’m talking about the places where older gentleman callers visit for 30 or 60 minute intervals. Many gringos I’ve spoken to, especially American gringos, have told me that frequenting these casas is great for their Spanish, and is much more economical and fun than paying for a 38-hour block of lessons from EAFIT. This is a great option if you don’t mind that your language study to come with a slight risk of the clap.

EAFIT is a popular university where many gringos study Spanish. I like to think the post is funnier if you’ve been to Medellin.

Dave also wrote a review of my new book on his other blog, Go Backpacking.

Ultimately, A Dead Bat In Paraguay is not your typical travel memoir, and that’s exactly why I enjoyed it. Roosh’s book should appeal to all backpackers, though I have a hunch young men will appreciate it more. For the lady travelers, if you’re curious to gain some insight into the inner workings of the male backpacker’s mind against the backdrop of discovering foreign lands, you’ll want to check it out too.

Time is ticking for me here in Medellin as I have to leave the country by October 22. You can only stay in Colombia for six months a year on a tourist visa.

I got two more reviews of my new book A Dead Bat In Paraguay to share. The first is via email…

First and foremost: The honesty of the book shines through very brightly. The book is fearless. Embarrassment, shame, humiliation, rejection, self-doubt (and not the cool, hip kind you’d see on TV, but the kind that’s like a thorn in your confidence): It’s all there, not gussied up in the slightest. I don’t think I’d have the courage to write this book.

Because of that, the book is actually inspiring. Not stare-up-at-the-stars inspiring, or dramatic-comeback inspiring – those are just masturbation. Your acceptance of the kind of pains that can erode a person’s moxy until he is tiny and petty, and your persistence through that pain with an eh-fuck-it attitude, comes off as more genuinely masculine than anything I’ve seen or read in a very long time. It reminded me of Luke in “Cool Hand Luke.” I actually wanted to go get rejected all night at a bar after reading this, just to think afterwards, “I’m as tough as Roosh.”

That’s mixed in with a lot of humorous and insightful commentary.

If I had to complain, I would say the prose comes off as too simple sometimes, and the frankness of the book occasionally undercuts the storytelling. I know that contradicts what I said earlier, but I guess what I mean is this: In reality, sometimes the hero slips and falls in the shower and so the villlain wins, or vice versa. When you find out that’s what happens, you think, “Well, shit, that was anti-climactic,” but afterwards it will stay with you longer because it’s more relevant to your life than a shoot-out in an abandoned factory in bullet-time. That’s like your book.

Also, the price was right.

The second review is from Brooklyn Boy…

Admit it. You want to travel. See the world. See the sights. See everything you’ve never gotten the chance to. It will change you. That Eat, Pray, Love book has become a phenomenon … or so you hear. It worked for her, it can work for you. That’s how these things go.

Except it isn’t. There are parasites and half-day bus rides and no part of your path that feels uninfluenced by Lonely Planet. The native girls challenge your once-bulletproof advances and the backpackers that don’t seem every bit as vapid as the stateside ones who bored you. You will get robbed. And you will return to a hometown that seems locked in step with six-month old footprints.

You can read his entire post here.

There were two reviews from last week and you can also check out a couple quick comments about the book on the forum. Order the book here or learn more about it.

Alright so this week I published my new book and shared sample pages and reviews. Let’s close it all out with a behind-the-scenes breather…

- One thing I didn’t want to do was take years to write this book. So I avoided real work and moved into my Dad’s basement where I wouldn’t have to worry about things like cleaning my bathroom and cooking. All I did was write, shit, and game.

- I couldn’t write the book inside my Dad’s home because he had internet (i.e. constant porn access), so most of it was written in the Starbucks next to a Leisure World, a place where old people get ready to die. I had my choice of many older ladies and I could have racked up a lot of notches, but I focused on the book instead. For you!

- I tried to keep track of how many hours it took me to write this. My estimate is a little over 500 hours. I shouldn’t have told you this because if you don’t like the book you’ll think, “Haha he wasted 500 hours of his life on this!”

- What’s great about books is that for a short amount of time you experience a sort of mind meld with the author. Reading about someone’s experiences is like a shortcut to experiencing them yourself. And then there’s experiences like mine which you may hope not to experience yourself.

- Sure I wrote this book to entertain and educate, but the real reason is for the fame. The irony about becoming world famous by writing about trying to get laid is that girls recognize me and I no longer have to try to get laid. Giddy!

- I’ve held proof copies of the book, but not the final copy since I’m still here in Colombia. You’ll hold my book before I do. This has to be the first time in the history of the world that someone has sold copies of his book without caressing it first.

- The plan was to finish the book in my Dad’s basement, but 14 months there I still had no book. I decided to move out before I turn the age of 30 so people don’t start calling me a loser. It took 4 more months in Colombia to get it done. I was so scared of getting my laptop jacked in Colombia and being set back that I never took it outside my house until I was completely done.

- At the very end of the book’s homepage you’ll see an option to download the RTF format which is friendly to iPhones. So far I’ve sold more of those than Kindle copies. The iPhone is the future of ebooks?

- If you want an autographed copy then hang on for bit. I’ll be back in D.C. some time in 2010. I’m returning to Brazil in five weeks for an indeterminable amount of time.

- One sneaky person snagged a copy of the book last week from Amazon. He or she is the first person to purchase the book. Someone else bought it on Sunday. It was actually available for sale on Amazon for about a month if you searched for “Roosh” or the book’s title.

I want to thank everyone who bought my book so far. If it wasn’t for your support with my first book Bang then there would be no A Dead Bat In Paraguay. If you haven’t already, check out the book’s website to learn more about it before grabbing your paperback or eBook copy.

Of course I’m going to plug this book like a mother the next few months, but starting Monday we’re returning back to normal posts.

POSTSCRIPT: Before I forget I wanted to thank my design guy Dan for doing the book’s homepage and also for modifying the main image at the top of this page. Check out his work.

Here are the first two reviews. There’s a queue of more reviews to share, and I will get to those in the upcoming weeks.

The first review is from Craig via email. He writes:

Roosh,

Just got finished with the book, and I’ve got to tell ya, I found myself laughing out loud at over a dozen times during the story. You did a great job summarizing your six-month (South American ordeal) with enough detail and conversational fragments to keep the pace moving along, but without the sensation of losing too much depth.

Without a doubt, I’ve never read something that made me want to go and take a shit right then and there, just to nod in approval of its firmness.

I’m very pleased to see this sentence in the book–so much so that I made a note to myself tell you as much: “If travelers are more independent than the average person then they must also be the least empathetic.”

Spot on.

At some point I decided I liked that idea (remembering good lines, that is), and made a small collection of my favorites, most of which certainly made me chuckle out loud:

Six spoiler quotes removed!

It’s wonderful to see a story that isn’t all happy and rose-colored — certainly more realistic (and more in line with what people should actually be reading before traveling to keep their expectations in check).

It’s impressive that, despite all the anguish, you’ve managed to once again find yourself in South America. I’m assuming the investment in the language certainly played a part in that thought process. I certainly hope you’re eating some natural yogurt this time around, to keep the good bacteria counts in your belly topped off (to keep the bad stuff at bay). A small, regular serving of sugarless yogurt is the cornerstone for good health abroad…

Digestive advice

Thanks again for the fun read.

In February I put up a three-part interview with Craig where he shared a lot of his travel tips.

The second review is from Alpha Dominance:

In addition to the knowledge Roosh shares, the story itself is well written and entertaining. It highlights the experience of South American travel, from the hardships of food-born illness, the hardships and hazards of traveling thousands of miles by rickety bus to the camaraderie of hostel living and the difficulty of getting a genuine cultural experience off the beaten path of the lonely planet travel guide. It’s an enthralling read but an accessible one, not requiring a doctorate in literature to enjoy.

I recommend checking out “A Dead Bat in Paraguay,” you won’t be disappointed.

You can read his entire post here.

Visit the A Dead Bat In Paraguay homepage to get your copy.