The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s
At the end of the 90s backpacking in Asia wasn&#x27;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.<p>Lonely planet was the only decent source of info but it didn&#x27;t cover it all.<p>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.<p>Now that kind of time wasting just seems almost unfathomable.<p>Every where I arrived I had no bookings, just a few addresses from Lonely Planet that you&#x27;d have to reach to inquire if they had free rooms.<p>I&#x27;ve rarely been as happy as I was travelling around there with just a bag of clothes on my back. Good times.