A bit on the paranoid side about travelling alone? Want a little bit of assurance that if something does go wrong, you can actually just flick your hair, have a mentos and get away with it?

Here's an interesting book which could get you in the right mood. And maybe, just maybe, get you travelling ASAP.

In The Thong Also Rises, funny women on the road will have your sides aching with stories of travel blunders from North Dakota to Egypt, and back.

• Lie to airport security like Deanna Sukkar when they find a sex toy in your luggage with your mother right behind you
• Sit in on Jennifer Cox's hot night with a yogi in Australia while she goes around the world in 80 dates
• Be a diarrhea vaccine guinea pig with Colleen Friesen in Guatemala
• Board a crusty old Soviet bomber in Laos with Tamara Sheward while her girlfriend gobbles expired valium

As funny as its predecessors Sand in My Bra and Whose Panties are These?, The Thong Also Rises would be an ideal gift for one of your friends who may need the inspiration to go out of her shell and travel the world. Or, you could buy one for yourself and laugh yourself silly at the funny antics these women seem to have gotten themselves into while abroad.

thanks to Claude for the tip