My year of backpacking (1985)

Nineteen eighty-five was my year of backpacking with two friends through Southeast Asia. That past, of foreign countries, has itself become a foreign country: I did things differently there. All three of us did, and so we remember things differently. This leads to some interesting discussions and debates on the very rare occasions when the three of us get together to talk about that time in our lives. Here are some of my memory snippets.

Hong Kong

• The rickety fire trap we stayed in—something (but not Fawlty) Towers. Instead of using garbage cans, detritus got thrown out the window into a central “courtyard.” Presumably someone eventually hauled it away, as it hadn’t yet reached the level of the 14th floor. Lots of backpackers stayed at something (but not Fawlty) Towers, including a stereotypically statuesque, blond Danish woman who walked around most of the time wearing mostly nothing. 
• The stifling heat and humidity. The Danish woman was the only one who looked cool and collected.

China (I suspect traveling in China now is very different than what we experienced in 1985)

• “Mayo.” That’s the phonetic spelling of an oft-uttered word by seemingly everyone in the tourism industry in China at that time. It means “We don’t have,”, as in “No, we don’t have a room,” or “No, we don’t have any food,” or “No, we don’t have any running water,” or “No, we don’t have to help you,” etc. etc. It seemed like the country was actively trying to discourage tourism. We seldom had the opportunity to talk with a “regular” Chinese citizen, as in, someone who didn’t work in the discourage-tourism industry. I do remember one man we met, an English teacher. He was lovely. We invited him to dinner at our hotel, but “regular” Chinese people were barred from entering.
• Every backpacker carrying a copy of Lonely Planet’s China Off the Beaten Path.
• T telling J and me that we were pronouncing “Guangzhou” and “Yangshuo” incorrectly, even though we were saying it exactly like her. (T speaks Mandarin and Cantonese, and so was the ideal travelling companion for China—there were no English signs there at time, and hardly anyone spoke English.)
• Another stereotypically statuesque, blond Danish woman crying in a train station. She had been there for two days, trying to buy a train ticket. But because nobody spoke English and there was no English signage, she hadn’t been able to. For her, T was a Norse god.
• The dreamy memory-of-mountains landscape of the impossible-to-pronounce-correctly Yangshuo.
• The pile of dead rats at a market in the equally-impossible-to-pronounce-correctly Guangzhou. We initially thought they were being sold as food. It turned out they were actually a form on advertising by the vendor, who was selling rat poison.
• Strange looking animals in cages in front of restaurants. You know how people at seafood restaurants used to point to the lobster in the aquarium that they want to consume? (And do they still do this?) I later learned that the strange looking animals were pangolins.
• THE WORST TRAIN RIDE I HAVE EVER BEEN ON. I don’t even want to get started, because this post is already too wordy. Suffice it to say that once we had boarded we were stuck on THE WORST TRAIN RIDE EVER for 35 hours because all the stations between where we had boarded and where we were to disembark were closed to foreigners.
• After weeks of awful food, finding a cooking school in Chengdu that served a delicious egg and spinach dish (or maybe it was eggs and tomatoes). 
• THE WORST TOILETS EVER. In some places, the facilities consisted of a long line of holes one squatted over. That in itself wasn’t the issue. Rather, it was the fact that there were no barriers/privacy screens at all between the holes. And no toilet paper.
• Paying more for everything than T, who got the “overseas Chinese” price.

Tibet

• Stunning landscape (good).
• Stunning culture (good).
• Stunning smell of burning yak butter at all the temples (bad—is has a stunningly rancid odour).
• Feeling breathless. Not just because of the stunning landscape, culture, and overpowering smell of yak butter, but also because of the high altitude: Lhasa is situated at 11,975 feet (3650 metres) above sea level. 
• How much the Tibetans and the Chinese hated one other.
• Witnessing a sky burial. I am ashamed now when I think of how we tourists gawked at what should have been a private ceremony for grieving family and friends. Nobody took photos though. Before the proceedings got under way, the person performing the ceremony mimed someone taking a photo, and then made a gesture of drawing the knife he was holding across his throat.
• A stereotypically statuesque, blond Swedish couple who looked like they had been flown in for a Vogue shoot. They were actually backpacking like the rest of us.
• Hiring a driver to illegally chauffeur eight of us to the China-Nepal border. At the time, the only legally sanctioned mode of travel from Tibet to Nepal was by plane. But pretty much every backpacker did the same thing we did. The driver barely slept, and drove like a complete maniac. I lost count of the number of dogs he hit. One of the passengers lost it at some point and started screaming and hitting him. What should have been a four day trip was completed in two days.

Nepal

• Wonderful restaurants in Kathmandu, often run by Europeans who went to Nepal in the 1960s and 1970s and never left. I still remember the  apple strudel that was served in a cafe run by a German couple.
• The ancient temples. 
• The Himalayas.  
• Entering Chitwan National Park illegally with an illegal guide. We had to wade across a river, and I refused to roll my pant legs up because my legs hadn’t been waxed for several months. The illegal guide screaming at me, because the wet pant legs would alert the park rangers that we had entered the park illegally and there was a substantial fine for those who were caught (we weren’t).
• Climbing a tree to avoid being trampled by a mother and baby rhino in Chitwan National Park. The rhinos at the base of the tree, catching our scent. Me snapping photo after photo, with dreams of seeing them to National Geographic. Me discovering afterwards that I hadn’t loaded the film properly, and didn’t get any photos of the rhinos.
• A dog pulling itself along the side of a busy road with its front legs. Its hind ones were paralyzed, or broken. People on bikes swerving over to kick it. I doubt I will ever go to Asia again—the mind-boggling indifference to animal suffering overshadows my memories of the ancient temples, the Himalayas, and the rhinos.

Burma (since renamed Myanmar)

• Paying for our taxi from the airport into town with apples we had saved from the flight.
• Paying for most everything with some consumer good that the Burmese couldn’t buy because the country imported virtually nothing at that time. The items of choice were Johnny Walker (I can’t remember whether Red Label or Black Label was preferred, but one of them was), jeans, and lipstick. Travellers were required to exchange dollars to buy at least $25 worth of local currency. It was really, really difficult to spend even that paltry amount in seven days (the maximum time travellers were allowed to spend in the country), because nobody wanted to be paid in the local currency.
• Going back in time to what felt like 1950s/1960s America, mainly because of the vintage vehicles. 
• The mind-boggling temples of Pagan (since renamed Bagan). Mind-boggling in number, beauty and solemnity. 
• Delicious strawberry milkshakes in Rangoon (since renamed Yangon).

Thailand

• Staying at some hellhole in Bangkok, with the three of us having to sleep in a double bed because nothing else was available in our price range. Waking up one night screaming in a corner of the room because a rat had run across me. 
• Encountering some very scary people on a trek through Northern Thailand, which was a big centre of the Asian drug trade. 
• The two psychotic Americans on the trek, who spent most of their time looking for cobras. They wanted to kill one. They both carried large knives for this purpose. 
• The gorgeous beaches of Koh Samui. 
• Gorgeous raw silk.
• The frequent sight of older Caucasian men accompanied by very young looking Thai women. Some of them may even have been Thai girls.

Malaysia

• The warning sign at the border that Malaysia enforces the death penalty for anyone caught with drugs. At the time, several westerners were on death row there because of this.

Singapore

• The order and tidiness after the general chaos of the other countries we had visited.
• Afternoon tea at Raffles Hotel.
• Getting my legs waxed.

Indonesia

• In the middle of what someone referred to as “bum fuck nowhere,” Boney M’s Rasputin blasting all day long from the ferry that crossed the lake. 
• The orangutangs at the orangutang sanctuary. One of us keeping watch for crocodiles while the other two bathed in the river by the sanctuary (I guess wherever we were staying didn’t have a shower). 
• Eating THE BEST Nasi Goreng from a little roadside stand, served in a banana leaf. 
• Jakarta: very scary. The bus driver yelling at us to get off and run, because we were about to be robbed. 
• The beauty of Bali: the place, the people, the culture, the food. Except for Denpasar, the capital, where we were almost robbed. As it turns out, three women yelling can be a powerful deterrent to would-be thieves.

We flew from Indonesia to Northern Australia at the end of 1985. Australia, and New Zealand, are another post for another time. 

This is much longer than I intended: as I started writing, more and more memories surfaced.  And I know much of what I have written sounds negative, but these are only snippets and don’t represent the sum of what I suspect will have been the adventure of my lifetime.