welcome to Backpackerland
Once you've left the airport you find yourself a cheap hostel and sleep badly because it's hot,much hotter than it was when you left home, and you haven't paid enough for an air-conditioned room. Besides, there's the noise of the busy street and some crazy tourist playing a harmonica all night. On top of the you're jet-lagged because you're crossed two time zones at least. All your worst nightmares have come true,but you don't care, because this is an adventure and you aren't at home any more.
In the morning you feel exhausted but more alive then you have for years. You go out on to the street and have your first cup of coffee.
Everywhere there are foreign vehicles,strange smells, different colours and people wearing different clothes. As you look up and down the street you see more and more people just like yourself, travellers- but they've been here for at least three days. They're much more interesting -looking then you, and seem completely at home as they visit the shops and market stalls, or hurry into the cybercafes to see if their mums have sent them an email. Welcome to Backpackerland.
Backpackerland is a new world of possibility, not quite real. You go into it as a third-year economics students from Liverpool, young lawyer from Seattle, a secretary from Melbourne or a student teacher from Turin. A few dollars later you are a cross between a 19th-century adventurer, a 20th-century clubber and a 21st-century philosopher reading travel guides and writing poetry by the roadside.
Backpackerland has recognised meeting points like Khao San Road in Bangkok , the Kings Cross area of Sydney,and the Colaba Causeway in India.It exists because travel is cheaper then ever before. Each year,more and more young people cross the world from east to west, from north to south, stuffing clothes, notebooks and cameras into their backpacks to experience the clamour of Mexico City, the heat of the Atacama desert or the snowy altitudes of Nepal.
Travelling has changed out of all recognition in the last 30 years. In the old days you waited for months for a letter from your granny and if you ever did manage to phone home it cost the earth and you couldn't hear each other properly. It was only the bravest who risked cutting themselves like that. Now you're almost never out of touch. The cybercafe computers in Kathmandu, Phnom Penh and La Paz are as anything you'll find in Tokyo, Washington or Berlin. So the moment you get off the plane you can email the friend you had a drink with the day before you left home.
When I was last in Thailand I bumped into Colin, the man who'd done the electric wiring in my little flat in London. Back home he'd always seemed miserable and cold, but now Colin(who had just been exploring in the jungle) was tanned and fit, and he was smiling a lot. That's the kind of thing that happens in Backpackerland. You can be anyone you want to be and life is full of surprises.