The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)
perceptivetravel.com
perceptivetravel.com
Parent one: This is just the time I was in Indonesia. End of 1971. No guidebooks. No english spoken. A different time. A wonderful time to be travelling. It's so true about the expense of developing pics. Which continued after we had children.
Parent two: Great article. I remember those dorms in India and the 6 weeks I spent in Nepal where you walked or cycled everywhere. I carried my medium format camera with me. I photographed the main temple in Bhaktapur which was destroyed by the big earthquake in 2015. That's where I met Tom who carries on his travels, currently in Sri Lanka with his bicycle. Great memories. Your pictures of China will be a good record in the not too distant future.
NB. I have spent most of my life in Asia since 18 (now 40). Caught the end of TCs and no ATMs or internet. Also sent the article to some other friends of the era, may update with their responses when received.
One internet cafe in town with decent connectivity, but great coffee!
Went back in 2015 and it was completely changed - eco-lodges, new age tourism, bix box stores, lots of resorts like Playa Del Carmen.
Looked more like Ibiza.
My host family didn’t speak English at all. Every day was like a puzzle: what does this building do? What are these tickets people have? What is this strange food, is it even food? How does this toilet even work? My only contact with home was an email I sent every month, because I had to go to a special place a different city that had internet. There were so many snacks, books, products, clothes, TV shows that no one at home had ever heard of.
I went back in the 2010’s and everything had changed. The security of your phone makes the feeling of isolation, risk, and adventure disappear. You can look everything up, it’s been documented, you’ve heard of it already. You’re still texting and talking to your normal friends on social. Everything is everywhere, you don’t really detach from home.
It really was a special window of time.
or tickets, payments, menus are on phones now
I see you've never been to developing country. Good luck with your online menu in street restaurant or same with buying shady overpriced ticket where even locals dunno what's real price and you end up paying less than locals (Indonesian buses in general).
I think the way we relate to people in other countries has changed somewhat due to contemporary technology. We've gone from "encountering the Other" to "encountering distant cousins" - having additional slices of shared modernity. It's not entirely bad, and people and outlooks and cultural norms are still be very different around the world.
(When I first went to Japan, I could barely communicate there and everything was mysterious and exciting a la Lost In Translation, but with my current language level and familiarity, there's still fun in wandering slightly less touristed areas and chatting with the locals. Whether they're familiar with foreigners or not, it's generally an interesting exchange to learn about their experiences, like with the Hokkaido man who singlehandedly built Japan's northernmost lotus pond to try to improve the tourism potential of his hometown, or the Sasebo jazz bar owner who took me to a tiny bar in a cave-like bomb shelter.)
The reason? It’s more enlightened than the US, and you can smoke hash.
How times have changed…
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.
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/644-dont-buy-shirts-in-her...
Now it’s legal some places in the US and Afghanistan has a brutally repressive moralistic government.
Those two things already kill most of the adventure
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!
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.
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!
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.
> I remember taking an overnight bus from India to Kathmandu. That bus was probably not more than $5. I remember that morning, after traveling all night, rolling down the Kathmandu Valley and seeing the Himalayas, and a whole city with zero cars.
Imagine all the cars in a big city in the 70s, with all the inefficient carburetors and the leaded gasoline fumes, and arriving at the above...
Nowadays, the not-beaten path probably also has concrete buildings and people on their smartphones. I remember doing a van tour in the steppe of Mongolia, for the last night the driver drove around until we saw someone on a horse. The tour guide asked that man if we could stay in his yurt, and Mongolian hospitality meant of course we could. In the yurt the family had a smartphone, I saw the USB-A plug for the charger, and it amused me that even in the middle of nowhere, Mongolia, people also had to try 3 times to plug in that darned cable...
When not in the internet café, many children and young adults play games on their mobile phones.
About 2 weeks ago I was in a coffee shop nearby and 3 adolescent boys were playing games there on their mobile phones. They bought a coffee to get access to free Wifi and then spend at least a couple of hours, perhaps all day, playing games.
It's fundamentally a bit of a gamble. The folks that keep doing it enjoy the gamble. There are some hills I've crested while bikepacking and some towns I've been through that have been absolutely gorgeous and those certainly help, but everyone I know who enjoys this kind of travel enjoys getting outside and getting a bit rough and dirty. I encourage everyone to travel like this as long as they feel safe (and it's important to remember that different genders, sexual minorities, and ethnicities will feel differing levels of discomfort in different locations so safety should always be top priority.) But if you don't like the gamble, then head to a resort and take a tour bus to the Taj Mahal!
You'll also meet a network of longer-term travelers who exchange info about where to go (and not go). You don't have to go somewhere that literally no one has been to see something a bit unique, magical, and mostly devoid of casual tourists.
I suppose it's not realistic to do this for a lot of destinations, but where it works it works well.
I now know well a tiny village I go back to regularly where I'm part of the small summer swell of visitors, to go fishing and sailing without a crowd of tourists, because getting there is a bit complicated without assistance.
Consider something like Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal. If you mentioned something about the Trans-Siberian Railway, everyone and their dog would recommend going to Olkhon. Not that many people actually went there, because the island is quite remote.
It was about first generation international travelers showing up with thousands of dollars in electronics in places with much less tolerance for wealth inequality, feeling entitled to selectively decide when to follow local customs.
I got the sense it's meant to give you a sanitized experience, so that locals can have their own places, but you don't feel excluded.
(I visited Paris and London pre-Instagram, doing about 3 days in each, turning my phone off as much as possible and trying to stick to paper maps)
For me, the Lonely Planet era was after the overland routes to India closed but before smartphones became popular. Flying started becoming affordable, and infrastructure in the form of backpacker hostels and printed guidebooks largely replaced the word of mouth as a way of sharing information. It became increasingly likely that if you discovered something nice off the beaten path, other backpackers had already been there and documented the place in a guidebook.
Probably right, I didn't leave North America until the twenty aughts. Things changed very rapidly in a short time between that first trip and just a few years later.
You can find the original one on archive.org if you'd like.
Or a wikivoyage that tries to get you to drive through the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baltimore XD
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/The_Wire_Tour
(Every halfway edgy "tour" I did, I had a guide or was ready to handle things on my own, then did so.)
Everybody says they want to see the unspoiled remote village, but they actually go to Vang Vieng. The rough and ready backpacker accommodation of the past with a cheap bed and nothing else can’t compete with the place up the road with the pool and air conditioning.
There is remarkably little option to travel today like we did in the 90s. Because kids today don’t want that. You can spend £20/night on the place that would have been £20/night back then. But the £5/night place has been torn down and replaced with another £20 one.
But I agree Vang Vieng was for me tourist hell, though if you get on motorbike and just ride along those karst mountains through villages and unpaved roads it was much better, the problem was the village itself mostly and tubing, I despise much more Luang Prabang full of retired package tourists everywhere you moved, that was truly much more disgusting than VV.
And with that comes the expansion/availability of flavored sugar water and cigarettes at their local corner shop, and the dissolution of community trust.
Im beginning to question if modernization is the right choice for everyone (or anyone).
Some hard evidence is diet changes negatively affecting certain groups of people (e.g. Aboriginals, possibly African Americans). Some groups' metabolisms have a really difficult time handling wheat and/or sugar, leading to obesity.
Softer evidence includes general happiness (which is an important metric when considering which life is "better"). It's a meme, and a truth, that simpler people in Africa are happier than us modernized folk. Its not often you meet a modern man that is present, undistracted, and unwanting.
The curse for unmodernized societies today is the communication available to the outside world. Humans are cursed to be discontent once they find out there are better options available.
This is not a truth, but definitely a meme
India/South Asia partially but more so for women.
I can already notice the difference visiting places now compared to the 90s.
Yeah, it turns out the “simplicity of famine” after a tribal territorial dispute destroyed food supplies isn’t so great after all. Or simple water sanitization problems causing severe sickness for 1/4 of your people.
That simple life is good when it’s the right ratio of work rewarded with reward (food, shelter, respect in your peers). Otherwise it’s life and death misery.
More people have suffered and died in modern warfare than any other wars because its that much easier to harm and kill people at scale.
That's my cherry picked argument vs yours.
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/
I went off to grad school as DADT was in effect, then Uber came into my college town, and I could see how things changed rapidly, in many ways, and not all of them good.
It's great people can get safe, cheap rides without DUIing all over the place, but it's at it's heart a jitney service propped up with Saudi money.
>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.
I'd argue there's plenty of charm and discovery if you just turn off your phone and be mindful someone doesn't know if you're from North Dakota or North Korea if they haven't met you before or heard you speak.
I really enjoyed AB's show, but I worry people take the wrong thing from it -- they engage in low key herofication[1] of the specific cook or restaurant, rather than learn the names of a few dishes to try at a cafe where they might not give a damn if some American has a good experience or even comes back.
You didn't address me directly, but in case you did, that's an uncharitable interpretation of my story. If you weren't, you're probably right - I worry about the same. People just watching the show and only going to the places he did, and not doing any of their own cultural exploration.
For the record, I spent 2 weeks in Vietnam, and I spent most of that time just wandering the streets of Saigon and Hanoi, following my nose, seeing a delicious bowl of soup, and pulling up a chair, or coming up to a nighttime Banh Mi vendor, and pointing and grunting at the fillings I wanted.
In amongst that, I also did some research of specific places I wanted to visit, and The Lunch Lady was on the list. Even if she wasn't exceptional (even for a place as steeped in culinary quality as Vietnam), which she was, there is something to be said for a parasocial connection with someone's experience. Mild heroification is still meaningful emotionally. Whether he would be upset by this or not, I got to sit in the same chair as Bourdain and have the same experience as someone who I admired and who's thought process resonated with me. That meant something to me. That feeling was real, and my memory of the spot is richer and more vivid because of that connection.
Anything can be taken too far. I admire Elon Musk's bold strategic vision in rockets and electric cars, but I have no interest in blanketly giving my life to defend his horrible ideas on cave submarines, car-sized city tunnels, flamethrowers, or twitter moderation policy. Unlike seemingly a million of his followers who would also just as blindly defend him from credible sexual harassment allegations.
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.
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.
We visited one tribe that was considered Bad by the missionaries, so we didn't stay there. They were thought Bad because they all chewed betel nut and consequently had red mouths.
Wonder what those areas were like pre-internet and pre-social media. Do you have a blog post or pics somewhere?
Details: we were told to bring gifts for the women & children, but not for the men. For the women, only threads & needles for sewing. For the kids, just wrapped candy.
When we got there, the kids all got together and sang for us. Then they said, "OK, now you sing to us!" The rest of the group was British, so the only song they all knew was "It's a Long Way to Tipperary."
They had a big hut that the tourists slept in. After dinner, the women would bring out their crafts and sell them to us.
It's not true that roosters crow when the sun comes up. They crow when it's still dark.
I found a source for others since I know I didn't :-)
(It's apparently "Karen people")
>The Karen, also known as the Kayin, Kariang or Kawthoolese, are an ethnolinguistic group of Sino-Tibetan language–speaking peoples.
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...
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.
Was there in 2019, I'm not sure if I used Google Maps for buses or figured out the paper timetables, in any case there was a lot of waiting for and on the bus (due to the traffic).
I think a whole day is enough for UB, maybe 2 days, and that would include a trip to a cashmere factory store (got a cashmere sweater for 60 Euro) since there's nothing else to do. Apparently the way to get around town is to stick your hand out, and everyone's a taxi you can haggle with. I didn't know any Mongolian so I didn't dare do this.
I did a 5-day van tour of the steppe (mostly south of UB) with 4 European 20-somethings (plus a driver and guide), it didn't disappoint, each night we went to a different yurt camp set up for tourists, where there were also vans full of Koreans with wheeled suitcases..
https://www.iqair.com/blog/air-quality/ulaanbaatar-mongolia-...
The everybody-is-a-taxi replaces the missing public transport system there.
Ulaanbaatar is ugly but nevertheless interesting. There is much to learn. I liked the big market with its yurt parts section very much.
The Altai is very far away from Ulaanbaatar. Very far. It is a 1.400 km tour mostly on sand tracks. I would use a car and plan a week for just the trip from Ulaanbaatar to the mountains. But only if you hurry and don't want to stop and have a look left and right of the main track.
To enter the Altai you need a special permit because it is border area. But you get that easily in the capital.
Remember that you need a vehicle or a horse to get somewhere. There are domestic flights. But when you leave the airfield you need something to transport you into the mountains.
If I would fly to Mongolia, I would buy a small Chinese motorcycle there (200ccm, you get a new one for 1k$).
If you are a horse rider then Mongolia would be your paradise. In this case I would be a horse.
But I am sure you can find a guide who drives you with his car whereever you want.
And the Mongolians are nomads. So they have a tradition of traveling. Traveling is the most normal thing to do there. As a traveler this makes me somehow feel at home.
The key for Mongolia is time. The country is so big, you need time to explore and to learn how things are working there.
The Altai was amazing. The horse trek was an organised affair (through Zavkhan trekking) and struck that sweet spot between immersion and comforts. Comfort preferences vary but we got hot meals, someone else dug our pit latrine, but we still had to pitch our tents. On horseback or not, I highly recommend it.
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.
But if you were someone who "didn't follow the news" for the last 10 years, you would consume government's propaganda instead, and believe it. Which is my point.
That's my point.
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.
But did you grab english language papers as you traveled? Or truly just stop getting western news?
(I agree going offline can be cool and good.)
I’d learn about it all after getting home. Or sometimes not. I remember there being big movies that had come and gone while I was away that I only learned about years later.
It’s hard to imagine, watching the current crop spending every evening on their phones instead of talking to other travelers.
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...
Here’s a guy who’s headline (to the rest of us) is he was in the middle of documenting tech in the 90’s, and, to hear him tell it, that’s not the thing that defines his life. Wired was just a middle filler for his real story , which is about travel.
Ah Japan! It never changed much really. Although we have a lot of bilingual signboards (in English / Japanese) now.
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.
I spent most of my early career traveling all over the place. Meetings in 3 cities in 2 countries in a day? No worries. Got to be 8 time zones away for lunch tomorrow? My carryon is already packed. I got to see great things; always found a way to eek out a little time here and there to explore. When I could book-end a trip with weekends that let me get out were the best.
But, in the end, business travel is about business. The movie "Up in the Air" hits really close to home (tho I didn't lay people off when I got there...usually). I have (had) a job to do wherever I landed that trumped any extracurricular plans I might have. The physical process of business travel has gone from mildly annoying to something out of Camus. Worse...every year older, it's harder and less pleasant. And in the end, with a small exceptions, the inside of an office and hotel room doesn't change much country to country, and on many trips, that's all you see.
From now on, when I travel, I want it to be purposeful. It will be about the destination, and not about whatever I can squeeze in around my business obligations.
The big lesson I learned was if the engagement was on a Monday morning, and I had to fly Sunday, that needs to be reflected in compensation somehow. I was forcefully adamant that I flew during the week only without structured and logged PTO compensation.
The other company I worked for had no issues with me booking longer stays past the engagement as long as I covered expenses for those. That gave me a day or two in most places and I could hit highlights.
But that always means my personal plans are secondary to the work requirements.
Those 'bookend' weekends I took when I could so I could actually see things? Obviously on my dime, though every company I've worked with was good enough to let me book the hotel/plane tix at the company rate (my regular place in the middle of Dublin is something like 300 Euros a night normally but I think 120 at corporate rate). Good times!
But really that 1-2 days you eek out of opportunity and corporate kindness is nice enough to get a taste of things (and recommended)...but not really enough to get what I'm looking for any more out of distant, otherwise very unpleasant travel, especially crammed into the margins of a business trip.
https://calmann-levy.fr/livre/une-vie-de-routard-97827021368...
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.
From the names it seems reasonable to me that "New York" and "New Jersey" should be parts of "New England
Also why fly 4000 miles just to have sex? Why not just pay for a companion here?
As an asexual I don't really understand this. My friends are constantly rambling on or making remarks about how so and so would make a good potential lay. I guess its about quantity and more can be had at lower rates, especially in poverty stricken countries.
I suppose if you sold your company and your portfolio is earning several million dollars to tens of millions of dollars its easy to be sugar daddy to a college student and it seems like its culturally accepted here.
Makes sense why there is such strong calls for abortion rights, something like this would be unimaginable in some cultures and I can see why but then again I don't quite agree with trying to oppress individuals from choice.
This part of human society, I just do not understand. For instance, I don't understand why so much of the population would be so driven to have sex or have romances.
Or alternatively, imagine you are very very hungry, and a person who doesn't feel hunger doesn't understand why you would go to great lengths to eat food.
Some people also don't feel pain either and don't understand why people go to great lengths to avoid the feeling of pain.
You can make many metaphors for whatever things you desire and avoid on a feeling level and understand how non-asexuals feel.
Heck I remember in 2006 you could found guesthouse meters from Khao San Road in Bangkok for 80THB with nice street meals for 20-25 THB, essentially free water from purifier stations, so you could easily exist in Bangkok as traveller in 2006 on 120-150 THB per day (3-4 USD) with food and accommodation covered and mind we are talking about extremely touristy Bangkok. In Kanchanaburi you could have even nicer accommodation in Jolly Frog for 80 THB with delicious dishes in evening night market next to train station.
That was regarding price level - regarding untouched or hardly touched places with people not speaking English, this covers big parts of Indonesia and I don't much changed in decades since author experiences, Indonesia and China are countries where you will have/had definitely problem to find English speaking person, luckily at least Indonesian language is extremely easy so I could handle at least basic communication in Indonesian after few days forced to learn it to get to places where I wanted and stay on budget, I was eating only in local warungs/street eateriers where no tourists roam hanging with locals greeting me everywhere happy to see foreign face since they rarely see one stepping out of daytrippers going from car outside to take photos and back to car.
Even in Thailand if you stay out of famous islands you could still find undeveloped islands like small Ko Chang, Ko Jum etc., some of them without any cars, without power lines from mainland running on diesel generator only in evening.
Same goes to Philippines, many places in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. Of course don't expect this in tourists hotspots, but if you try to go elsewhere I am sure even in 2022 you have no problem to find places untouched by tourists where they don't see foreigner whole year. And even if they see it's very different approach whether is someone going everywhere by minivan eating in fancy hotel restaurant or you getting around and eating like local (being cheap).
Of course social media, GPS, always connected phones, offline translators changed experience a lot for those who wanna use them, but it doesn't mean it has to be for worse, I'd see translators as improvement, you are able to get much more local now really in places where no foreigner roam. OTOH GPS kinda ruined travelling, since getting lost was part of the experience and was forcing you to interact with locals, now idiots can go all they around staring at their phones without saying a single word to local. ATM is convenient for withdrawing money, but cash is still the king in developing countries.
Btw. it makes also huge difference whether you travel in peak season or off season, it's like two different worlds if you don't mind worse weather, places which are packed with tourists in peak season can be easily completely deserted in off season.