The Life of a Backpacker in Asia in the 1970s
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.