Beyond the Boarding Pass by Jaylen Hayes: book review

Beyond the Boarding Pass: Quirks of Global Journeys, Fun Facts and Trivia Across Various Modes of Transportation by Jaylen Hayes (2024) is a guide to what can or cannot happen when travelling.

The book has seven chapters, covering: airports, railways, ships and ferries, buses and coaches, alternative rides (bikes to balloons), taxis, and finally travel tips and hacks – all related to the types of transportation – in other words, how people get from A to B to C in a direct or indirect route.

The book is an accumulation of both facts and stories that make travel fun, frustrating, or fraught with problems.

There is much in this jam-packed book to describe all the parts that I liked, because there is an interesting, amusing, extraordinary, absurd, or revealing fact on every page.

Perhaps the chapter on alternative rides is one for me to begin with because it was an unexpected category but fits well in the theme of this book. It includes cable cars, gondoliers, and hovercraft. Fun fact: there are more bikes than cars in the world – from boneshakers to coffee bikes. I found the chapter on ‘the culture of cab rides’ interesting too, especially the unlikely places to hail a cab. While the book is fun, the section on travel hacks includes practical and common-sense advice.

‘Lost’ is also covered. Where is the largest lost-and-found office in the world?

This book is well presented and easy-to-read with clear and relatable headings and sub-headings. This is a fun travel book for everyone in the family, and a book that can be read over and over again.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an Australian author and international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, and foreign aid audits and evaluations. She lives in Paris. Her latest book is: Innovations within Constraints Handbook (2025).

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