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The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)

perceptivetravel.com

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Re: The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)

#61

Post by zarzavat »

eezurr wrote: post #58

>In every culture the native costume is the first thing to go, native architecture is next. Food is one of the last to go, even in modern places where people are wearing blue jeans. So these days I like to go to places where there is still native costume and native architecture. Unfortunately these areas are shrinking. I'm not nostalgic about it; I understand the reasons behind the changes, and it's a net improvement…

So, in which places today do people still wear their native costume in preference to western clothes such as shirts and jeans? I can think of: Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, UAE), Bhutan, Saharan Africa.

India/South Asia partially but more so for women.

Re: The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)

#62

Post by netsharc »

robga wrote: post #36

(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 d…

This part grabbed me:

> 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...

Re: The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)

#63

Post by zarzavat »

chis wrote: post #50
robga wrote: post #36

(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 d…

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.

Learn some of the language and talk to people. Or if you are the antisocial type, find a scenic road and drive a motorcycle and around.

Re: The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)

#64

Post by netsharc »

srvmshr wrote: post #5

>. .. 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.

I went to Japan in 2019, without any Japanese knowledge. It was a freaking breeze, I feel cheated of the experience people had in the 80s and 90s.

Re: The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)

#66

Post by windowsrookie »

golergka wrote: post #40
hans1729 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Afte…

Used to be Russia until early March.

Is there any real mainstream news in Russia? I'm lead to believe that all of the news there is government controlled propaganda.

Re: The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)

#67

Post by netsharc »

Melatonic wrote: post #56
snickerer wrote: post #45

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 rou…

How did Mongolia compare to other places you have traveled? I have been eyeing going there for awhile now - I was mainly planning to maybe spend a few days in Ulaanbataar since I would need to fly in there and then make my way over to the Altai mountains to do some backpacking and mountaineering.

Not OP, but Ulanbataar is a traffic jam. I guess walking is possible, but not great with all the rustbuckets spewing fumes...

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..

Re: The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)

#68

Post by tomatowurst »

symlinkk wrote: post #57
tomatowurst wrote: post #43

sex tourism was also probably a thing back then

Yeah this is the elephant in the room that no one talks about. And it’s not just about old guys going over there and picking up prostitutes, young guys will go over there and pick up regular girls on Tinder, just because it’s way easier to get laid there than in the West, for a bunch of controversial reasons that we aren’t allowed to talk about.

Probably because prostitutes are on Tinder now and poverty drives them to such behavior. You will have a tougher time in more economically advanced countries compared to one popular hotspot which you are talking about.

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.

Re: The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s (2018)

#70

Post by frontman1988 »

coldtea wrote: post #11
notahacker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

> 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

There are still places without ATM and internet for the true adventurer. The adventure level can range from easy in places like Papua New Guinea to moderate when you go deep inside the Amazon forests to hard where you have to survive on the North Sentinel island.
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