[HN Gopher] The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s
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The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s
Author : andyjohnson0
Score : 102 points
Date : 2022-05-26 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.perceptivetravel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.perceptivetravel.com)
| ghaff wrote:
| One of the biggest changes is that even in the 1990s in many
| places, you'd have minimal or no contact with anyone back home
| and probably even reasonably cut off from news. When I went on a
| few ~month long trips to Nepal around that time, you were _just_
| starting to see some terminals for email here and there towards
| the end of the decade. But you were pretty much cut off from most
| communications.
| lowwave wrote:
| that is the main reason I don't use smart phone or internet
| WHENEVER I can. it improved my life a lot to live a humane
| being.
| golergka wrote:
| Must be nice to live in country stable enough for you to able
| not to follow the news.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| My parents come from a developing country which was
| underdeveloped in the '90s and we did not "follow" the news.
| Relevant bits of news were hawked by anyone and everyone (if
| there were any general strikes, curfews, etc) but otherwise
| we were just blissfully unaware. My family came from an urban
| area and it was probably a different situation in rural
| areas, but rural areas never had any of the events you needed
| to steer around from the news anyway, so I don't know if it
| was any different practically speaking.
| ghaff wrote:
| Not sure about your point. Trekking in Nepal in the 1990s,
| there wasn't an option to get the New York Times delivered to
| my tent every morning regardless of the stability of the
| country I lived in. And, indeed, backpacking in many
| locations even in the US, I wouldn't expect Internet access
| today.
| hans1729 wrote:
| Now I'm curious, where do you live? "News" are serving a very
| weird market, almost 100% about selling stories that satisfy
| the distorted attention span of demographic majorities who
| have no interest in going beyond the surface level of their
| groups model of consensus. It's an omnidirectional
| intellectual wasteland, ignoring some pieces of economical
| (etc) analysis.
|
| What do you have to be informed about a priori?
|
| After years of dodging newspapers I got hooked on "news" in
| feb-mar 2020 due to Covid. Took about one month until I
| remembered that it's a complete waste of time. I feel like
| the HN-audience has very little to gain from news directed at
| the general population.
| golergka wrote:
| Used to be Russia until early March.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Back in those times, that was often limited to places that
| hadn't been recently _politically_ de-colonized.
|
| Wow ... great article. Imagine calling Nat Geo and getting to
| actually _talk_ to the photo editor. Or going someplace to
| enjoy navigating a culture without guides or signage or
| language or pocket tech. _Real_ adventure.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| That's a ridiculous comment. I don't follow the new here in
| the United States and do just fine. I don't watch TV, I don't
| visit news websites, I don't use twitter, reddit, or
| Facebook. But I still hear about important news thru everyday
| conversation. 99% of the "news" is useless unimportant
| filler.
| golergka wrote:
| > here in the United States
|
| That's my point.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Growing up in the 1960s in New Jersey was very parochial
| [...] I knew nothing about Asia, or even travelling;
| I had never even been out of New England.
|
| I realize I'm nitpicking here with regards to a very enjoyable
| and wonderful article but... what? New Jersey is not in New
| England. Same quadrant of the country. But that's bizarro.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are parts of New Jersey 11 miles from the closest bit of
| New England. I'd be inclined to treat that as close enough.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| From the names it seems reasonable to me that "New York" and
| "New Jersey" should be parts of "New England." As a
| Californian, I thought of all of the NE as New England and am
| surprised that they aren't. Wikipedia says the "Dominion of
| New England in America" in the 1600s did include New York and
| New Jersey.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Neither is old Jersey in old England.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| New York was Dutch, not English.
| exabrial wrote:
| My next job I want to travel again. I spent three years traveling
| to not-sexy places in the USA an UK, and a year going between US
| and China. Despite note being hot destinations in any of the
| countries, it was still fascinating. I quit a year before the
| pandemic because there was a loneliness about it, and I was never
| going to find a significant other if I was always gone.
|
| During the pandemic I took up Mountain Biking and that is now
| becoming my excuse to travel post pandemic. I'm exploring all
| sort of new places and taking my mountain bike with me. Looking
| to do some "destinations" once a year, like Saalbach in a few
| weeks, but next year I hope to have the skill to do something
| like Whistler in Canada. Even in the USA though there's so much
| to explore: Winter Park, Bentonville, and many more.
| tomatowurst wrote:
| sex tourism was also probably a thing back then
| akamaka wrote:
| Previous discussion here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18642755
| yhoneycomb wrote:
| sas224dbm wrote:
| I was backpacking around Asia in '94 .. my connection to the rest
| of the world was my trusty Sony shortwave radio (ICF-SW1) ..
| anyone else remember those glorious days ? :)
| IntFee588 wrote:
| Although I maintain that a persistent travel itch is a symptom of
| dissatisfaction in day-to-day life which should be addressed, I
| backpacked Europe and the Middle East the summer after
| university. I was an incredibly enriching experience and one of
| those things people should do if they can afford it. I plan on
| doing Cape Town to Cairo in a few years.
| humbleMouse wrote:
| grecy wrote:
| Cape to Cairo is incredible, though if you want to actually get
| off the beaten path, I recommend West Africa top to bottom.
|
| I went places where locals had never seen white people, where
| it honestly felt like I'd back in time 50 years and where
| people are just genuinely joyous from the bottom of their
| hearts, even while living in mud huts. It's an incredible part
| of the world, and also one of the most difficult to travel
| (visas, corruption, malaria, etc.)
|
| Here's a playlist of what it looked like from ground level:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waQGUz0Z97Y&list=PLNiCe5roBX...
| snickerer wrote:
| I am very grateful that modern technology has led me to exciting
| places that I would not have found without it.
|
| I traveled for 20 months between 2016 and 2018 in Asia and Europe
| with my self-made 4WD camper. I spent months in the Mongolian
| steppe and an Iranian desert. Without the map data from the
| Openstreetmap project (and a satellite navigation device) I would
| not have found many fantastic places and wonderful routes.
|
| The Mongolian nomads still have their yurts (ger they call them),
| their herds, and their families. But they also have smartphones
| and solar panels today. Does this ruin the experience of visiting
| these wonderful and hospitable people? I don't think so. It makes
| to better because you can stay in contact easily after leaving
| their country.
| woevdbz wrote:
| This is an inspiring read, and somehow it makes me think, without
| looking at the author's name, that the author is very likely
| male. I imagine solo backpacking was/is a very different
| adventure for a young woman.
| bklaasen wrote:
| May I introduce you to the delights of Dervla Murphy's
| adventures: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dervla_Murphy
| ilvez wrote:
| But totally doable. I had a friend who traveled from Europe,
| through Siberia to Japan. All over Europe, Americas, went even
| to Africa IIRC. She's still travelling now, but with a boat and
| a companion. Probably been around the world many times now.
| I've heard only few incidents that were spooky for her, mostly
| just stories about wonderful people with big generosity. But
| that was 2000s and further. So different times.
| bravasaurus wrote:
| Fascinating read. What a privilege to have traveled the world at
| a time when modernity made doing so possible cheaply, but hadn't
| yet taken ahold of the destinations. A historic window of
| opportunity that's all but closed.
| notahacker wrote:
| Most of the world still sees few foreign tourists, and much of
| it is interesting nevertheless. Difference is these days you
| might actually be able to use an ATM and internet in towns, and
| you don't have to carry film for all the photos you want to
| take in your backpack..
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Difference is these days you might actually be able to use
| an ATM and internet in towns, and you don 't have to carry
| film for all the photos you want to take in your backpack.._
|
| Those two things already kill most of the adventure
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm not sure lugging cash with you in a moneybelt is
| actually all that exciting really, and you're welcome to
| use the internet as little as you like and won't encounter
| it much when trekking in mountains or crossing desert in a
| broken-down 4x4 anyway.
|
| I'm reminded of the time I _nearly_ lost my wallet and the
| guesthouse owner pointed out that when he 'd done that in
| the seventies in a neighbouring southeast Asian country
| he'd had to stop and work for very little money to raise
| the funds to get home. I don't think he considered that a
| highlight of his trip!
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, and you also used to be much more dependent on
| "magic" bits of paper for tickets/reservations/etc. I get
| the nostalgia for a less computerized world but aspects
| of it weren't really all that great when something went
| wrong.
|
| I probably don't disconnect as much as I probably should
| for certain types of travel. But not everything about
| completely disconnecting is wonderful.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| > I probably don't disconnect as much as I probably
| should for certain types of travel. But not everything
| about completely disconnecting is wonderful.
|
| When my partner and I travel, we travel at a breakneck
| pace. We get up in the morning, stuff our faces with some
| calories, then head out, and we're usually walking,
| backpacking, bicycling, motorcycling, and occasionally
| train/driving/tour busing through most travel locations
| for 10+ hours a day. We frequently net 7-10 mi of walking
| per day unless we're in a particular place where you have
| to drive to get around. I still use my smartphone to
| download tickets, reservations, and maps (often don't get
| signal in parts), but we never sit still for long enough
| to have more than a small peek at the smartphone while
| having lunch or dinner.
|
| I'm always amazed at how many people find it so difficult
| to disconnect on vacation. Maybe if you're the type to
| sit around in a comfy hotel and vacation that way the
| temptation is stronger, but for me, travel is the easiest
| way to disconnect.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| Imagine visiting Afghanistan! Just hopping in a bus and going
| over land!!!
|
| The reason? It's more enlightened than the US, and you can
| smoke hash.
|
| How times have changed...
| grecy wrote:
| Friends drove in very recently, and had a great time:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmkT1oRVACc
| treis wrote:
| >Imagine visiting Afghanistan! Just hopping in a bus and
| going over land!!!
|
| I heard tales of people/companies buying an old city bus in
| Europe and driving it to Europe. They'd get gas money along
| the way by charging other travellers and then make more by
| selling the bus in India.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Dervla Murphy, who just passed, did it by bike.
| coldtea wrote:
| There were also the "Magic Bus" rides, frequent commercial
| but cheapo bus rides from Europe to India...
|
| https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/644-dont-buy-shirts-in-
| her...
| searchableguy wrote:
| US forced its war on drugs on most countries in the past.
|
| India banned many drugs under pressure. Now those same drugs
| are legal in US states and western sphere but not here.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, you can still smoke hash in Afghanistan, I'd bet...
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| In the 70s it was arguably safer to do so in Afghanistan
| than the US.
|
| Now it's legal some places in the US and Afghanistan has a
| brutally repressive moralistic government.
| op00to wrote:
| The US isn't brutally repressive yet, but we're
| constantly working on it!
| eggy wrote:
| Very true. I am a bit behind the author of the article in age,
| and in my first real adventure trip, and I can tell you it is
| not the same at all now. You can be on a mountaintop calling
| home from half way around the world. We are so tethered to
| smartphones, ATMs, and others to guide our treks now, or at
| least most people are, and we lose the ability to truly wander
| without interference. Solitude, not loneliness. I used to buy
| one-way tickets to places, go with very little cash to exchange
| at a bank, and make my way working here and there to make just
| enough to drip feed my trips.
|
| I grew up in the late 60s/early 70s in Brooklyn. I didn't make
| my first trip abroad until I was 18 to England and the
| Netherlands. Not too exotic. Then some of the islands like
| Jamiaca, the DR, etc. But then I went to live in Spain in the
| Northern region of Huesca after touring all over Spain. What a
| blast. I called my Mom and Dad after being out of communication
| for three months. My brother, who I had not really seen a lot
| while in the U.S. started writing me every three or more weeks
| where I was living in the mountains near the French border.
| Then Portugal, and other European cities. Costa Rica (before
| Ecotourism took off), was my first foray into rainforests,
| jungle camping, rafting in waters with different fauna, and
| their ilk. I later went on to a few more places, but longer
| stays than 8 months or a year. I lived in Macau for six years,
| Indonesia for a year in a rice-farming village with dirt floors
| in most of the houses, and traveled to Thailand, the
| Philippines, and Vietnam (honeymooned there). As smartphones
| and the internet popped up everywhere, the experience became
| diluted. Yes, I climbed volcanoes, dove great reefs, camped out
| in cool jungles, but the individual time alone with myself and
| no distractions was noticeably missing. I realized this when I
| was able to make a Skype call almost everywhere I went,
| sometimes with better internet than I had in the U.S. I think
| the current way to get some of this back is to turn off your
| smartphone, or risk leaving it somewhere, and enter a less-
| visited place. I am old, and biased, but the gaggles of digital
| nomads in cafes, hammocks, and on beaches with their notebooks
| and tablets propped open almost makes me wish for a
| "Transcendence" event (the movie, not the movement, but some
| will argue it's the same thing), or dare I say a post-
| apocalyptic existence (just a daydream, not a wish!). This
| article warmed me over with nostalgia for this same experience.
| I guess there is still the ocean and the deserts, but they
| probably have 5G by now!
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I went to Thailand on an Excite/Adventure tour in 1989. I was the
| only American in the group and it was mostly younger people.
|
| Checking into the hotel in Bangkok as a single man, they just
| assumed I was there for sex, and asked if I wanted a girl sent up
| to my room (the answer was no, in case you're wondering).
|
| We also trekked through the "native tribes" areas in the north,
| where the tribes had been "persuaded" not to practice slash-and-
| burn agriculture anymore, and made a side income from hosting
| tourists. Believe it or not, one of the tribes was called the
| Karens.
| altacc wrote:
| The Karen (no S) you met were most likely refugees from Burma.
| For decades their lives have been very controlled by the Thai
| authorities, who use them as exotic tourist exhibits. The Thais
| don't allow them to farm for themselves as they want to keep
| them dependent, subservient and profitable (I confer no
| judgment in the tourists who visit them as it's complicated).
| So they tend to have secret fields in the jungle so that they
| can grow their own food and not suffer the whims of their
| hosts.
|
| The Karen have long been one of the primary armed groups
| fighting for their own state and against Burma's military
| junta. As a result they've been persecuted by the junta.
| Currently their territory has some of the worst combat in the
| ongoing civil war.
| shriphani wrote:
| There's a substantial Karen presence in MN now (I think these
| are Burmese refugees and not from the Thai side of the border).
|
| Wonder what those areas were like pre-internet and pre-social
| media. Do you have a blog post or pics somewhere?
| srvmshr wrote:
| >. .. in Japan it was a constant struggle to communicate and find
| things
|
| Ah Japan! It never changed much really. Although we have a lot of
| bilingual signboards (in English / Japanese) now.
| ghaff wrote:
| And Google Translate and GPS (which is particularly handy given
| the addressing system). Communications can still be a bit tough
| even in major cities, but it's definitely easier than it was 15
| years ago.
| deanCommie wrote:
| A lot of this stuff is so much more recent than people realize.
|
| I went to Southeast Asia in 2010: Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos,
| Thailand.
|
| One of my stops was the famous "Lunch Lady" from Anthony
| Bourdain's No Reservations [0]
|
| There was no Uber, I had no data. I had printout of a map, but
| just look at the kind of map I had to go on in that URL from
| 2008. There were slightly better directions from Vietnamese-only
| websites.
|
| I had to get a cab driver to take me to ROUGHLY the right area,
| and then wander around until I found her.
|
| I'd have to go to smoky internet cafe to upload photos and email
| my family.
|
| Ubiquitous mobile access and data is what's really flattened most
| of our world. It's unquestionably an improvement for the people
| involved, but travelling definitely has a lot less charm and
| sense of discovery now.
|
| [0] https://gastronomyblog.com/2008/08/09/meet-the-lunch-lady/
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Ah... I had the priviledge to glimpse a tiny sliver of what he is
| writing about, that feeling of experiencing something that will
| be soon lost forever. People, culture, rituals, food, form of
| existence.
|
| I did 6 months backpacking in India and Nepal in 2008 and 2010.
| Nepal was tame, relatively full of westerners(at least parts
| visited - Annapurna circuit in pre-season time, Kathmandu,
| Pokhara, Chitwan). But India could be wild in many ways. We went
| off popular places quite a bit and travelled and lived as close
| to natives as possible, and you could still find places where
| kids (or whole village) would look at you in awe and horror when
| you came, everybody would gather around you, touch you, bring you
| home for dinner and so on.
|
| Those experiences in my late 20s shaped my personality more than
| anything else. I felt back then I was in another universe since
| forever, former existence just a memory of distant dream even if
| it was just 2 months into trip. All this pointed me later to
| directions in life that stood test of time as best choices of my
| life.
|
| I still did it almost completely unplugged (well internet coffee
| max once every 2 weeks, super unreliable), no phone, no credit
| cards, just all cash i took with me on body belt.
|
| This could be achieved on average monthly budget of +-500$ back
| then. But costs were growing maybe 20% every year.
|
| Imagine what the original experience back then must have been...
|
| As one friend with similar mindset, whom we found around
| Annapurna said back then - you can't share those stories with
| people back home. They don't understand the magic, the intensity,
| be it positive or negative. Often they don't even want to hear
| about it. But with similar person you feel you are member of same
| tribe, and they understand that smile when you tell stories much
| better...
| carabiner wrote:
| A memoir along the lines of OP article: How an Average Man Lived
| an Adventurous Life. He backpacked around the world as an
| American in the 70s and 80s. Hippie trail, you name it. At the
| end, he retired to his hometown with his wife in Illinois.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| For a more close to home focus, I do have to point to A Walk
| Across America from the same time period (I think the author
| wrote a sequel about more international stuff)
| robga wrote:
| (with the disclaimer that it has been 30 months since travelling
| widely)
|
| It's still possible. 99% of travellers proceed along narrow
| planks of tourist hotspots that represent 1% of what is
| interesting in the world. Once it was lonely planet trails, then
| tripadvisor routes, now instagram pin plots. It's so easy to step
| off those paths, and doing so is very rewarding. Use those guides
| as guides as to what what not to do - at least not for long.
| chis wrote:
| How do you find things to do then? I'll share what worked for
| me: follow a particular interest in depth, that way you can
| rely on your unique expertise to guide yourself off the tourist
| track. But that doesn't always feel sustainable.
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