A Few Perfect Hours
Harrisburg Patriot-News (November 7, 2004)
by Christopher Mautner

Taking place in the pre-9/11 era, Neufeld's true stories of his adventures (along with this-girlfriend, now-wife Sari) traversing Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe seem almost quaint by today's standards. One can hardly imagine backpacking through Thailand in today's climate.

Yet despite the risk of coming across as antiquated, Neufeld manages to pull the reader in as he takes a rather dangerous tour of underground caves, pauses for a respite at a Buddhist monastery and bumps into a group of overly friendly missionaries.

Though each section is engrossing, and Neufeld's art helps sweep the reader along, the stories themselves don't ever really coalesce. Readers will come away feeling as though they don't have any more knowledge of a particular country or place than when they started.

More than an in-depth travelogue, Hours is perhaps best thought of as an entertaining series of vignettes, the kind told by friends over cocktails.