The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s | Hacker News Reader

The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s

perceptivetravel.com

226 pointsI-M-S90 comments

At the end of the 90s backpacking in Asia wasn't all that different. I did this for several months at a time without a cell phone, internet cafés were very slow and unreliable and there was no good way to book budget accommodation anyway.

Lonely planet was the only decent source of info but it didn't cover it all.

I spent some time on islands in the Mekong in Laos where there was only a few hrs of electricity per day and no connection to the outside world. To leave I took a motorised canoe to the mainland and then found out the next flight out of Pakse was in a few days, so I spent several days there doing basically nothing.

Now that kind of time wasting just seems almost unfathomable.

Every where I arrived I had no bookings, just a few addresses from Lonely Planet that you'd have to reach to inquire if they had free rooms.

I've rarely been as happy as I was travelling around there with just a bag of clothes on my back. Good times.

It wasn't until you really got into the late 2000s that things started to change. And, even then, really ubiquitous mapping/GPS, more and more being online, machine translation, etc. have changed traveling to places like China on almost a year-by-year basis over the past decade.

It probably boggles a lot of people's minds that even 20 years or so ago, taking off on certain types of trips to many parts of the world meant, at best, infrequent contact and, often, essentially disappearing. Today I expect there's increasingly an expectation that you'd get a satellite messaging system under those circumstances.

The difference in information availability generally is astounding. I imagine that would drive most of us crazy generally if you go back a few decades.

One of the highlights of coming back from my trips back in the 80s was reading through the month of Swedish newspapers that had piled up in my apartment and get "fast forwarded" on all the news that had happened while I was away.

I was careful to sort them by date and not peek on the newer one so I didn't get "spoiled" :)

Today, even when I travel to quite remote corners of the world, I spend much of the day on the same web sites as usual, reading the same things, talking to the same people. In a sense, I'm never really leaving my regular life, for better and for worse.

I spent 6 months living and backpacking through Southeast Asia in 2010 and even then, I'd say my experience was very similar to the article in the OP. Yea, there was Lonely Planet, but hardly anyone carried one around with them since it was bigger than a brick. And even those who did use Lonely Planet books, it was because every hostel had a LP book in its communal library that people would flip through while sitting at the hostel bar.

As for internet/cell service, it was mostly the same story. You could get cell service if you really wanted, but it was usually pretty costly and I don't think I met anyone who actually did buy it (I did for 1 week just to see if it would be worth it - it wasn't). Everyone seemed to prefer to use the hostel bar as the place were people gathered to use WiFi. And even just 8 years ago, WiFi in most parts of SEA were nowhere near good enough to do things like video chat, and in some places it wasn't even good enough to do live text chats. Some communities (esp. in rural areas) didn't have internet at all. An email every few days was the best I could do with most of my friends. Infrequent contact was pretty well understood then too, at least among the travelers I interacted with.

When it came to getting around, some people had maps that they'd printed out and carried with them, but I'd say most people relied on word of mouth and asking other people for directions and arranging rides.

It does seem to be quite a different story now. I've been back to SEA often in the past 8 years and each time I am surprised at the changes. The "banana pancake trail" has hit the mainstream, and the tourist infrastructure has grown to match. Buying a prepaid SIM card with unlimited data seems to be the first thing people do when getting off the plane in SEA. Hell, my cell provider (T-Mobile) gives me free data in every SEA country without even having to swap SIM cards. Uber/Grab is used for getting around in many places, totally removing the need for maps or asking directions. And you can get 4G coverage in all but the most remote jungles.

>It probably boggles a lot of people's minds that even 20 years or so ago, taking off on certain types of trips to many parts of the world meant, at best, infrequent contact and, often, essentially disappearing

This was a highlight of travel back then in my mind. Full and complete disconnect from 'the world' back home. There was no guilt trip about lack of contact either - it was just accepted that there would be an email as an when an internet cafe could be found.

Totally. The first time I was in India was 2006 and the second was in 2016. Talk about a different experience. I mean, India is still India but having that map and actual internet access, no matter how intermittent made a lot of difference. It also drastically cut down on interactions because there was no need to ask directions. Being lost will force you out of your comfort zone quicksmart and that just stopped happening in a post iPhone + maps world.

Yeah, right? I had this experience in China. You move from being really far outside of what's happening and where things are and what people talk to almost being able to go anywhere yourself, talk to almost anybody and find out what's going on. Smartphones have changed travelling a lot. Although you must sure to get a good VPN before going to China.

I traveled through Turkey in 1993. The PTT (phone monopoly) had a saying which doubled as a vision statement: "A phone in every village!" They hadn't met that goal and I'd sometimes roll into these little places where there were no phones at all. But there was always one TV set in the tea house because football.

I'm really glad I caught the tail end of pre-internet travel in the '90s. I've been overseas since but it is not the same. The sense of journeying into the unknown is simply gone.

The flip side of this is that access to electricity and telecommunications is lifting most of the world out of the Dark Ages.

Same here. Backpacking Asia in mid-2000s. Already had a digital camera, but had to stop at internet cafes now and then to burn them to CD and mail them home. Haha.

I’s Imagine that every Internet cafe in every developing country had them for duplicating VCDs:

Did the exact same thing, but was super paranoid, so bought CD-Rs from two different brands and and made two copies every time I burned a CD. One to send home, the other to carry with me throughout my journey.

One of my CDs did have some corrupt images, so that redundancy paid off.

I lived in Laos in the late 70's/Early 80's. Even with full use of the diplomatic pouch, a letter to the US and back was a 3-month round trip, with only a ~80% success rate. We'd learned to send one, then its carbon copy with the next bag, just in case.

Phoning home was utterly impossible. The only cable line back was a fax machine the size of a refrigerator that went straight to the State Department, and was the only room guarded by stern men with guns.

(the slightly more disposable diplomats themselves had only local, unarmed security to pick from. This was a non-trivial risk- while we were there, the Japanese ambassador and his wife were both murdered. Perhaps surprisingly to some in modern times, Americans were pretty well received by the local population. It was safer for us to go shopping than, say, the French, Russians, or Japanese, although it was still too much of a risk for me to go to a local school. The Australians were the most popular, although I strongly suspect this was also linked to them having a nice swimming pool that they shared with everyone.)

The only doctor we had access to was a retired, somewhat eccentric Swedish veterinarian who specialized in pigs, and pigs were pretty close to people for most things.

(He kept a copy of Playboar on his office reception table.)

And finally, I remember getting chased through the metal detector (they didn't really care about guns, for the most part. It was people trying to carry durian in an enclosed space that really pissed them off) by a scared water buffalo in the airport, which then proceeded to run around on the airstrip for an hour until the local kid from the farm it came from hopped on his back and rode him home.

Of course, nowadays I can pull up any of half a dozen free webcams and see who is strolling down the streets near where I once lived. It feels like a lifetime ago, and yet I'm barely in my mid-40's as it is. Things sure do change fast.

Parents of a friend of mine were Swedish diplomats in Vientiane in the 70s, apparently the world of expats there at the time was very small? It must have been magical (communist dictatorship aside).

Laotians to me always seem even happier than the Thais. On a packed bus ride in Laos full of dirt poor locals, a few chickens and tied up pigs, there was a guy in the back having a shouting conversation with the driver in the front. They were enjoying it a lot.

Other passengers started to chuckle along, you could tell there was a crescendo building. Eventually the conversation ended in an explosion of rapturous laughter from everyone on the bus. It was impossible not to laugh along despite not having a clue what it was all about. Looking around you'd see nothing but huge smiles, all black teeth from beetle nut.

There's dozens of these little moments I'll never forget.

>apparently the world of expats there at the time was very small?

Small is a bit of an understatement! All of us (Americans, Russians, and everyone in-between) were restricted to a few square miles in the middle of Vientiane. And if you weren't attached to an embassy in some manner, you weren't there, period. This does make me ponder, it is almost certain that my folks knew your friend's parents. Small world.

This was during the time when any Laotian who had any kind of education or wealth was desperately trying to leave the country before they got 're-educated' by a bullet to the head. The Vietnamese moved in shortly after the Pathet Lao victory, and the witch-hunt was brutal. There is a reason there were zero local doctors available for anyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathet_Lao

As grim as this was, it also contrasted strongly with memories like you describe- an incredible degree of friendliness from most folks, even when at the time non-Lao were so rare in country that whenever we went outside, it was guaranteed that for most folks we'd met that day, we were probably the first caucasians they'd ever seen. During the water festival, it was hard to go outside, because everyone wanted to soak us, and it was all in good fun- they wanted to make sure we got to join in, and didn't feel left out.

One final vignette to share. A few times over the years we were there, when out at market with my Mom, a shop/stall owner would come over and (politely) pull us aside, and out of the crowd. Shortly after we would see ex-NVA or other bad news men looking for foreigners to take their aggressions out on. The shop owners were local people who were quite literally risking their lives, just to make sure that the odd-looking big-nosed people they'd never met before weren't hurt. That level of consideration was omnipresent, even with the background conflict in play. And that is the way I choose to remember my time in Laos.

Mobile phones, free wifi, Facebook, Instagram – and all that – have ruined backpacking.

I did the SE Asia thing in 2003 and it was magical. We met strangers over beer and cigarettes and had all sorts of random conversations. You booked a bus to the next place in the local travel agent. I’ve still never figured out how the tickets worked; how the bus company back in Pnomh Penh knew that someone in Sihanoukville* had bought a ticket.

I’ve been back a bunch of times since, and now it’s just kids on their phones.

A couple of years ago I sat behind a pair of Swedish girls on a beach in Koh Tao: sunset over idyllic beach ahead, cheap cocktail in hand, beanbag-under-bum, yet I watched the two of them just cycle through the social media apps on their phones checking for updates. It was all I could do to not ask them why they’d bothered coming away. It was tragic and it made me sad.

(*An unbelievable paradise in 2003. A total shit-hole now.)

Looks like some people are celebrating their victory back at Palo Alto.

I agree with you but keep in mind that we're also getting older which makes it harder for us to re-live the magic of our youth.

That is a factor, but I was 27 when I did my "champagne backpacking". I was no starry-eyed 18 year old, although of course my eyes are considerably less starry now at 42 than they were at 27...

> Mobile phones, free wifi, Facebook, Instagram – and all that – have ruined backpacking.

It's one of those arrogant, old fart things to say and you wouldn't understand it unless you'd lived it but it's 100% true.

EDIT - what's also contributed to this is AirAsia. Now you can have breakfast in Hanoi and lunch in Phuket on the same day for just 50 bucks of travel costs.

Back then you'd fly for 10x more or taking several days of gruelling overland travel and it's those moments that add the kind of character to trips that's now hard to obtain.

> (*An unbelievable paradise in 2003. A total shit-hole now.)

seconded. $1 a night room, free ganja in the bars if you bought (granted an overpriced) beer. Swimming in the sea at night with the phosphorescence all around you, hearing the dolphins under water.

Was back there in 2011, had changed completely and from an account of a friend who lives in Cambodia has just got worse and worse.

But that's "development" for you

This describes well my trip to India & Nepal in 2008 and 2010 (6 months total, mostly Himalaya + Andamans and a bit of western Thar desert). Just one fat LP book for whole effin' India with list of hotels, sights and way to get to next place. Those few internet cafes were old virus-laden desktops, with internet connection often in bytes/second, where sending email back home took easily 30-60 minutes, especially if you wanted to send a single tiny picture. Connections frequently dropped of course. I didn't even take my basic phone with me, never regretting it.

The thing is, if you have 3 months or more, you just don't care about the pace. You can't do similar backpacking in 2 weeks, people end up rushing around to see as much as possible. So many random meetings with strangers because we were clueless, ending up being invited into their homes for a dinner. Ending up on a 1km long beautiful empty beach in Goa, with like 2-3 other people on it. Seeing satellite photos now, its one bar next to the other.

These days, even if I carry my phone with me, I have it turned off for days in a row. Mostly turn it to check airbnb or write something to my parents. Otherwise it just ruins the submersion into the experience a bit.

I had a very similar experience at that same time in Laos. Waiting days to be able to cross the Mekong. Exchanging money for local currency resulted in obscene piles of cash that made me feel like a bank robber. "The bus" was an ancient truck with wooden slat seats in the back and stopped for everyone and everything - animals, welding kit, more people. There were no paved roads, most villages had no power after dark so it was candle light, playing card and conversation for entertainment. I remember when I decided to leave it took days to get to Luang Prabang. Everything felt sort of adventurous and rewarding. I was glad I got to experience it. Aside from a couple places I have rarely experienced that level of buzz from traveling since then.

In 1978 I went overland from Greece through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to India. I later learned the route was called the "Hippie Trail", but I never heard that term at the time. The route shut down just a few weeks after I passed through: Iran closed because of the Iranian revolution. Afghanistan closed because the Soviets were moving in.

The feel of travel was different then because no internet, no cell phones. I communicated with friends and family using letters, single-page blue "aerograms". When I see them now, I'm amazed how tiny my handwriting was. To receive a letter I would have people send mail to the American Express office upstream.

My trip ended when I noticed my urine was the color of Coca Cola - a sign of hepatitis. I got a flight out of Delhi the next day to London, for the free health care.

Really hope the world will return to that kind of freedom in travel sometime soon in the future.

Don't hold your breath. :-(

Erm, how is there less freedom of travel today compared to 1980?

There was a big cold war with a real iron curtain dividing the world back then.

Yeah I'd say it's easier to travel these days in many ways. Airfares are lower as a percent of income and the internet is everywhere. On the other hand it doesn't feel quite as exotic and the price differential between the west and cheap countries isn't as big on the whole. Some countries are kind of closed like Afganistan and Iran but on the other hand ones like China and Myanmar are more open than they were.

But that's not what I was responding to. Re-read the context:

> The feel of travel was different then because no internet, no cell phones.

The feeling of freedom that came from pre-internet travel was a result of being able to leave your home and its associated troubles and constraints behind and go someplace where they couldn't find you. Nowadays, all those troubles and constraints follow you around no matter where you go.

You know you can just leave your mobile at home or turn it off if you do not like it?

Or go to wild areas without good connection(or power) if you are too addicted.

Trust me, there is still plenty of wild adventurous traveling going on ... even if you have a smartphone.

Yes, you can still go to the wilderness, although even that is disappearing fast. But in 1985 you didn't have to retreat from civilization to be far from home. Today you do.

I travelled to Europe in 1985. When I landed in London I quickly realized that I had vastly underestimated the cost of living and I didn't have enough money with me to last to the end of the trip. Today that problem would be fixed with a trip to the ATM, but back then there were no ATMs. Dealing with contingencies like that was a big part of the experience. When you travelled in 1985 you did it without a net (pun intended) because there was no net. But you didn't have to leave civilization behind. Today you do.

So you felt free, because you could not get money? No, I know what you mean. The spirit of not having everything nice and secure and organized. Then you have and need space for improvizing.

When I did backpacking shortly before the smartphone area, I also ran out of money in New Zealand ... but I ran out completely with only emergency money send option, so I had to discover traveling very low budget style. Hitchhiking, wild camping etc. adventure. (until I got back to australia for farm work)..

But - I still do this regulary and so I can tell that the smartphone certainly changed traveling, but there are still plenty of adventures waiting outside if your are open for it and not just want to impress your instagram facebook peers with cool pictures.

> So you felt free, because you could not get money?

No, of course not. Don't be daft. At that moment I didn't feel free, I felt trapped. But I got through it, had the time of my life, and learned that I could get by on less money than I thought I needed. I don't think I would ever have learned that lesson if circumstances hadn't forced me to.

Some people think freedom is access to unlimited resources. It's not. Freedom is the ability to achieve your goals with the resources you have at your disposal, whatever they might be.

> there are still plenty of adventures waiting outside

Yes, that's true. But nowadays you have to seek them out much more actively then you used to. Simply being far from home is not enough any more.

It's kind of like free climbing versus climbing with a rope and harness. Knowing that you might actually die (or have to sleep on the street) focuses the mind in ways that simply being on a rock (or being far from home) does not. Nowadays you have to work a lot harder to shed the harness.

It's harder travel without a smartphone when the travel world is set up expecting that you DO have a smartphone.

I wouldn't say that the feeling was that I was more FREE. I would say that the feeling I had was that I was more AWAY, remote. But even so, I remember that one of the inspirations for my trip was a pic in National Geographic, a street scene in Herat, Afghanistan. It seemed SO exotic. And then, on my trip, I came to that very spot. But somehow, by the fact of me being there, it was already not so exotic. Like, how exotic can it be if I am there?

I wasn't making a comment about freedom to travel, just the FEEL of travel, but regarding places that are open and closed (to me, an American), right, China, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba, Eastern Europe weren't open back then. Now they are. But countries where I traveled and felt safe then, I wouldn't feel comfortable going to today: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt. I guess overall, much more of the world open today.

What did your friends & family think when you told them you were going on the trip?

Afghanistan and Syria really were hippy hotspots in the 70s. Things change, political stances blow over, regimes blow out.

In the last 15 years, the the contemporary traveller has gained access to Turkmenistan, Myanmar and others, and much more simple and safer travel to previously dangerous countries (the Balkans, Rwanda, RDC, North Korea, etc)

It's this shifting landscape that makes travel for the non "me too" crowd interesting..

>It's this shifting landscape that makes travel for the non "me too" crowd interesting..

Forgive my naiveté but I'm not sure I understand what you mean? Are you talking about the "partying" travelers who tend to bar-hop and hookup?

Probably referring to the Instagram crowd.

The people passing through Afghanistan and Pakistan back then were heading eventually to three hippie places: Katmandu, Goa, and Poona (back when Rajneesh was there). I didn't use drugs, so i didn't relate so much. I was doing the trip for the adventure. Here's a read about that era in travel: https://www.richardgregory.org.uk/history/hippie-trail-01.ht...

Afghanistan used to be pretty accessible for certain periods of time. Friend of mine travelled back to Europe overland from India and crossed Afghanistan in what must have been the mid 90s, he had plenty of photos posing with mujahideen guys with Kalashnikovs. Pre 9/11 I don't think there was much animosity towards the west.

Even now areas like the Wakhan corridor in Afghanistan are pretty accessible. I wouldn't do it, but plenty of people do.

I think the mujahideen were quite friendly with the west for all that lovely money and guns they were getting ;-)

I don't remember it being discussed. At that time, I and my parents lived in the USA, my one and only sibling in Israel. Me and my brother would exchange letters like may be twice a year. Likewise, my friends who lived in other cities, we exchanged letters just a few times a year max. So, it was normal for us not to communicate that much. It's not like we were texting each other every day and then suddenly went dark.

Also, parenting and childing were different back then (the 70's). For example, I remember when I was 16 I secretly hitchhiked solo from Detroit to Washington DC and then Chicago and back to Detroit. I explained my absence to my parents by telling them that I was riding with some friends to DC, that is, it was totally okay for three 16 year old boys to take off to another city back then. Now, I think a lot more parents wouldn't allow their kids to do that.

The autobiography of Lonely Planet founders Tony & Maureen Wheeler gives a fascinating glimpse of this era, and turns into a startup story along the way. Highly recommended for Hacker News readers who also like travel!

Unlikely Destinations aka Once While Travelling aka The Lonely Planet Story (no, I don't know why it has three different names/editions...)

https://www.amazon.com/Unlikely-Destinations-Lonely-Planet-S... (not a referral link)

Disclaimer: I used to work for LP back in the day, and had the pleasure of meeting Tony & Maureen on several occasions.

Also check out this interview from the founders on "How I Built This" podcast:

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/06/626649702/lonely-planet-maure...

With some exceptions I think the readership of HN is generally under age 45... If any of you happen to know people who were part of the counterculture in the late 1960s and early 70s, and know folks aged 60 to 75, ask them about stories of traveling overland from Istanbul to India. There was a well trod route of backpackers traveling through Afghanistan in the pre-soviet-invasion era, when it was safe, cheap and welcoming.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/christian-caryl/strange-rebel...

More reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail

As the Middle East and Southwest Asia became less hospitable to tourists, the Hippie Trail kinda fell out of favor. The "new" trails are the Banana Pancake Trail (same idea as the Hippie Trail, but in booming Southeast Asia) and the Gringo Trail in South America. Although these "trails" are much different because of a lot of reasons discussed elsewhere in this thread, such as less hitchhiking, more "flashpacking", and generally increased connectivity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Pancake_Trail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail

One thing the map doesn't quite get right, with my knowledge of Afghanistan geography, is that traveling through the country was not a straight shot from herat to Kabul... Mountains and almost impassable roads in between, in the exact centre of the country, meant at the time, and now, there's generally two viable routes.

Going straight through the center of the country, through Ghor and Bamiyan provinces requires a high clearance 4x4. For more normal vehicles, one route from herat to the northern provinces and the Mazar-e-sharif region, then salang pass to Kabul. Or go southeast from herat to Kandahar, and then Kandahar to Kabul.

Also there was a fair portion of the hippie trail that went to Kabul, then to Kandahar, and to Quetta, bypassing peshwar and the nwfp. Though the cannabis lovers certainly all wanted to visit oeshawart.

Yep ,I still met some last disoriented hippies in 79 in Bali and Lombok. There were about 5 travellers in the whole of Lombok and the long beach in Kuta belonged to me alone for five days.

Indeed, and by many accounts Afghanistan was the highlight of the trip. There some nice photos of Afghanistan in 1960s here:

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/07/afghanistan-in-the...

Thanks for sharing this link. Great stuff.

Are those scans of old film photographs? If yes, then I'm surprised how rich the colors are compared to digital photography today. Is it that film has a different character from digital? Did photographers have a different aesthetic sense when they developed film back then? (I assume that there's some artistry involved not just in taking a photo but also in developing it.) Is film still marvelously better than digital photography?

Or am I falling victim to some sort of psychological trick where warmer colors just look better?

The reason I ask is that I recently scanned some old family photographs from the 1990s, and I had the same impression of them: rich colors that you just don't see today. And these were anything but good photography. They were from a 35mm point-and-shoot and taken in casual settings.

Yes, those must be old photographs. And yes, there was some artistry involved in developing both the film and making prints.

The demise of film and color processing is a tragedy. Sure, it was expensive, much more so than simply snapping digital photos to your heart's content (as long as you have enough storage, of course), but it made you think about what you were doing before you pressed the button. And processing film and developing prints was endlessly fascinating, even if it was frustrating at times.

I have yet to see any digital photograph as rich as lovely old Kodachrome could come out, even when sent to the local drugstore to be developed. It has actually nearly killed my desire to make photographs. These pictures made me really happy.

Honestly, I sort of have the opposite perspective. I never had a darkroom after graduating school and slides became something I mostly just shot on trips. I find digital and the sharing of digital photos rekindled my interest to a large degree.

K14 development process was automatic and really streamlined. Sometimes you could order to push/pull the roll a stop but that's about it. BW film, and prints (BW or color) certainly an entire other matter…

Those photos are warm. Could reflect the actual light and film choice although I'm not sure there were explicitly warm-balanced films that far back. If those are from the 70s, presumably either Kodachrome or Ektachrome--though actually Ektachrome from that era tended toward the cold site.

Honestly, comparing scans to digital images today. The difference is going to be mostly how they're processed. If anything, I find there's a trend to overprocessing (e.g. HDR) certain types of digital photos today.

Last October (and this November) when the SF Bay Area was filled with smoke particles in the sky, I noticed the light was very "nostalgic".

And it did make me wonder if older color photographs had warmer tones due to Kodachrome, or simply because the skies were more polluted back then.

Kodachrome was generally considered to have realistic tones. Traditional Ektachrome tended to be colder and was more likely to fade over time as with E-6 process films in general. Kodak did produce some explicitly warm E-6 films later starting with Lumiere.

Photographers did also use filters including for warming effects.

Photographers and art directors have always exerted creative control. Both the technical means and tastes change over time though.

Ektachrome of the time of article was E-4. The later E-6 has much improved color fidelity and archival performance, even if not close to Kodachrome still.

They were probably taken on Kodachrome, which was renowned for its colour reproduction (or at least its aesthetics). It's also archival quality film, so older negatives don't age much if kept in the dark. It was also designed for projection so had a fairly high contrast.

They're also obviously scanned, and we don't know what settings were used. Kodachrome is pretty great though, I wouldn't be surprised if they looked that nice in the flesh. That's what was truly impressive about those golden era films, they just worked. You sent them off, they got developed and they looked fantastic.

There are physical differences in how film and ccd/cmos sensors record light, which may have a subtle effect. Nowadays digital sensors are superior in pretty much every way to film, and you can get whatever effect you want using post processing. The exeption is that medium and large format film is still a lot cheaper than super high resolution digital sensors.

It's also a direct positive (slide) film, not a negative. A properly exposed Kodachrome is absolutely gorgeous in real life, scans do it little justice.

I’d bet there’s a healthy chunk of “nostalgia for times and technologies past” that is affecting your perception as well. The “default settings” are different, but nothing you can’t do in Photoshop.

Back then, someone flipping through your photos would say, "Ah, you used Kodachrome! Looks nice!" but if you had the same look on a printed photo today, they'd instead ask, "Why did you use a filter on this?"

I guess my point is that back then, people recognized that using different film and different equipment led to different results, and that the photographer chose their technique in such a way as to make art in the way they wanted. Photography was not simply method to capture a moment in the most realistic way possible, as it often is thought of today.

>Are those scans of old film photographs? If yes, then I'm surprised how rich the colors are compared to digital photography today. Is it that film has a different character from digital?

No, it's mostly the type of film and post-processing, and the fashion of the day (now people like moodier, bluer/oranger pics in Instagram and the like). One can saturate a digital photo just as well, if not better.

My best advice is: ignore the people who say "it used to be nice, but now it is ruined." Go and travel, and experience it yourself. In 20 years, you'll be saying "it used to be nice, but now it is ruined." I hope someone else chimes in and says "ignore the people who say that it used to be nice, and go traveling anyway."

my first thought is always "but what about the people who aren't travelling and don't get to use the modern conveniences you seem to just be on break from?" whenever i hear this sentiment.

you want to truly explore the wild, there are plenty of opportunities. wanting to goto a place that is prettier and has less opportunities for connection seems elitist against the people who actually live in your getaway paradise and make a hard life there using tourism bucks.

Wonderful article.

But it was not only the 1970s: there were still many a hidden spot in Asia in the early 2000s, as travel was restricted in countries with civil war, or dictatorial regimes, and there still are. As those geographies get connected to the global trade- and political system, these habitats of men and animal change, for better, or worse.

The places that remain "left behind" by globalization even to this day share a few things:

- not on any reasonable trans-Asia transport route, so no incentive for outsiders to invest in roads/rail/other transport infrastructure

- politically at least somewhat isolated, so no visa-free travel for most foreigners

- sparsely populated, preventing easy widespread wireless Internet access

- no major exploitable natural resource that would attract a rush of foreign investment

This basically gives us: the Central Asian SSRs (except Kazakhstan which has rich gas resources), Afghanistan, Iran, frontier regions of Pakistan, Myanmar (rapidly changing now), Bhutan and a few others.

I always say to people visiting Yunnan: find a dead end road or a dirt road that goes through an area of green on the satellite. Go there. It's usually spectacular.

what do you mean by "on the satellite"?

Probably Google Map’s satellite imagery.

I've often wondered if there's a similarity in personality between people exploring technology today and explorers of old. This article seems to suggest a link, and that makes sense to me: as the world has flattened and become global there's less interest in exploring geographically and the frontiers of human life are increasingly technological. Kevin Kelly seems to have modeled that transition perfectly.

There are such people and they have Youtube channels. However I wouldn't underestimate the desire of geographical exploration just yet. Even if you can easily travel everywhere this ball we live on is still bigger than any single person can explore in a lifetime. Give me a single city (I'm a city person) in another country where I can stomach the food and exercise the language and I can easily spend a year before I get bored. And I bet there are more than 80 such cities on this planet.

As someone who's been traveling for the last 10 months and currently am in Thailand, this was a very enjoyable read.

Although cheap flights and smartphones with data and GPS have made the life of a traveler incredibly easier, the downside is the places you visit are more touristy and people I'd imagine are way less social (at least to the people directly around them). Often I'll arrive to a hostel just to see everyone in the common area silently glued to their smartphones. I wouldn't necessarily want to go back to a time before this technology, but there are certainly serious downsides to this hyperconnectivity.

It's the same effect that technology is having on everyday life. The increased connectivity of the internet paradoxically withdraws us from our immediate surroundings.

I went backpacking around S.E.A. for a short time in 2002. It was just before the digital boom.

No phone, just dropping into an internet cafe once a week. SLR with about 50-60 rolls of film. Info came from a tatty copy of a guidebook, word of mouth, and reading the lonely planet forum. Absolutely zero digital distraction. Lots of long bus/train/boat journeys with a book for company. It was heaven.

I went back in 2008 and did the trip again. The digital boom had arrived. I could already sense that what I'd previously experienced was lost for good.

I'm nervous about the effect that losing this will have on people. How many people have you heard stories about where they "dropped out" for a couple of months/years and came back with a completely different view on life? What are the people who otherwise would have dropped out to recollect going to do in a world where you literally cannot escape "real life"?

> except when I got to Iran and I got a "real job" with a driver and everything. But then that kind of blew up in my face when the revolution in 1979 came...

He left us hanging there! What kind of job can a 26 or 27-year-old American hippie traveler get in Iran, presumably not even speaking Persian, that comes with a driver and everything? There must be an interesting story there.

Well, I don't know about Iran, but I can tell you that a lot of jobs in developing countries will come with a driver - or two. It's just considered a necessary part of the "package". Bear in mind that in the places I've seen it, mainly in Indonesia, the cost of the driver is not high - maybe $200-300/month. The expat usually doesn't have a local driver's license, so it's sort of a no-brainer, not the luxury you might be assuming...

> I left home with 500 rolls of film in my backpack. It was close to $5 a photo in today's money just to develop and print the photos. So I had to really think about it each time I pressed that shutter.

At 24 frames per roll, the cost to develop and print his entire backpack would be 24 x $5 x 500 = $60,000. That is indeed a big investment he made to document his travels.

Never at that scale or for that length of time, ordering a few dozen 36 exposure rolls of slide film of various speeds from B&H was always one of the rituals before I went on a big trip. As was the painstaking labeling, sorting, and editing when I got back.

Or he made contact prints and figured out which frames to print by using a loupe.

...ah, film.

Forget the cost... 500 rolls is over 30lbs! I can't imagine carting that much film around while backpacking. I don't think I ever brought more than about 4-5 dozen rolls even on month-plus length trips - that plus a lead-lined bag for airport x-ray was already a hassle and a significant portion of my carry-on.

I very much relate to the "really think about it each time I pressed that shutter". I spent so much time shooting film that now, even after over 15 years of digital, I still struggle to kick this habit and need to constantly remind myself to take more shots: explore more variations on a subject, grab a shot even if I don't think it's going to be outstanding, etc.

If you're looking for relatively unchanged Asian culture and great views, I would recommend Nepal.

I was visiting friends in Kathmandu (likely a decade ago) and had a great time exploring the mountains and the cultural areas. Also if you make lifelong friends, they might give you a khata scarf. You can also buy those gurkha knives if you can take it back home. There was also some bad people but that is common everywhere in the world exacerbated with elements of poverty so don't forget your common sense when dealing with sketchy situations. Theres also definitely pollution building up in the rivers.

Also note that the time I visited was some time after the Nepalese Civil War so soldiers still wandered the streets. However they honestly don't care about what you do, I don't know if they're still around now. As well, electricity and water would be out after 10pm so be prepared for that.

Blackouts are no longer an issue. I imagine the water turned off because the pumps couldn't operate (no electricity). I should do a blog post about the reason why electricity was generated but not directed to the right place (corruption).

There are still parts of Kathmandu that feel like you've stepped back in time but are growing increasingly hard to find. The city at times feels overpopulated due to the huge amounts of migrants that came for services and work. While Kathmandu is incredibly polluted (due to road works, construction, river pollution), they've come a long way in the last few years.

In my visits of a few years back, Kathmandu was a horribly sad mess of huge injections of foreign money that creates imbalance, open prostitution, drug use, aggression and general steamrolling of original culture. It was quite sad to see, and I was very happy to move on.

With that said, western Nepal, given its lack of road borders, is quite sublime and relatively untouched.

I was there a few weeks ago. The soldiers are still there, in patrols and along roads, but they don't bother tourists. Electricity is pretty solid, cuts are common but long outages are rare. Most accommodation has UPS systems fitted anyway. The petrol shortages are a thing of the past and there are paved roads in some areas now (main roadways and Thamel).

Kathmandu is a nice city. The traffic and the dust are awful but the city is filled with charm.

Sorry to be that guy but...

> Growing up in the 1960s in New Jersey was very parochial.

> I had never even been out of New England.

New Jersey is not New England. I am used to non-northeasterners making this kind of mistake, but wouldn't expect to hear it in Jersey.

> New Jersey is not New England.

In case anyone else is wondering, New England is (geographically) Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Every state north/east of New York state.

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