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Backpacking in Golden Years
By Cris Prystay, The Wall Street Journal
February 27, 2004
Mae Sai, Thailand -- Gail Rowe, a retired college teacher from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, sets down her backpack and peers inside a thatched hut billed by her guidebook as one of the better "guesthouses" in this dusty town on the Thailand-Myanmar border.
Mrs. Rowe's husband, Jim, 59 years old, sweeps aside a mosquito net and pats a threadbare mattress on the hut's green linoleum floor. The only other guest at this backpacker pit-stop is a 24-year-old Swedish traveler, staying in a more modern cabin nearby. The Rowes opt for the hut: It's $2.50 a night, half the price of the cabin. "I thought I was on a budget," marvels Angelica Erikkson, the Swede. "These two are ... what's the word? Hard-core."
Globe-trotting on a shoe-string has been a pastime of the young and restless as far back as the 1960s. Nowadays, a growing number of retired baby boomers are hitting the trail with them, bypassing luxury for travel on the cheap.
Travelers over the age of 55 now make up about 15% of Thailand's backpacker population, estimates Peter de Jong, president of the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association, and former head of the Copenhagen-based Federation of International Youth Travel Organizations. "There weren't any 10 years ago," he says.
That leaves many of the young backpackers who throng Asia's budget haunts alternately impressed and bemused. "I didn't expect to see so many old people backpacking," moans Allen Daniels, a 23-year-old student from Los Angeles. "They ride in the same trucks, stay at the same cheap places -- kind of makes it seem a bit less adventurous."
Not all young travelers are put off by the old-timers. Canadian Julia MacIsaac, 25, says she found a soul-mate in retired teacher Sallie Latch, who is 71. They met at a guest house in Mae Sot, another northern Thai town, and hitched around together for a few weeks, at one point squeezing into the back of a pickup truck with 25 Thais and a few dozen chickens for a two-hour ride. I kept thinking 'wow, I can't believe she's doing this,' " Ms. MacIsaac says. "We would take crowded trucks, crowded buses, and she'd just swing with it."
Ms. Latch, from Petaluma, Calif., first traveled this way in Asia in the '70s, as a volunteer in the U.S. Peace Corps. When she retired she didn't even consider alternatives. "I couldn't afford to go for so long, and I wouldn't see half the places or meet the people I do this way," she says. "I just love this kind of travel."
Since the 1980s, a network of guesthouses, hostels and budget-travel agencies has sprung up around the world, luring adventure-loving retirees. Lonely Planet Publications, a budget-travel publisher of guides for place off the beaten track, even created an 'Older Travelers' chat room on its Web site, subtitled "spend the kids' inheritance and hit the road." Here, a group of retirees swap tips on where to get heart pills in Vietnam and which U.S medical plans cover you if you're abroad for six months or more. One note from another retiree: Don't bore younger travelers with "excessive tales of where you've been and how things used to be in the good old traveling days."
Another tip from Mr. Rowe -- don't take on the role of surrogate Dad. A career teacher, he found it hard to shed his schoolroom persona. During his first retirement trip, a solo journey to New Zealand eight years ago, he turned himself into a pariah.
"When I first started traveling, I felt I should be providing advice -- how to get somewhere, how to save money, where to stay that's cheaper," he says. "Then I realized nobody was paying any attention. They were just glazing over."
The Rowes, both teachers, used to vacation in New Mexico, but they dreamed of traveling further afield. Mr. Rowe got the travel bug in his late teens when his father, a World War II veteran and career military man, moved the family to Japan for three years. But except a trip to Britain and another to Spain, Mr. Rowe didn't leave the U.S. again until he retired eight years ago. Last year, his wife, 53, took early retirement and the two began to plan annual trips abroad.
The Rowes had never backpacked, but both had done plenty of camping and fishing in Maine's countryside. "Using an Asian-style [squat] toilet is not a big deal if you've done a lot of camping," Mr. Rowe says.
"Friends ask 'how can you hitchhike around, and stay in places with cold water?' But we couldn't do it any other way," says Mrs. Rowe, a slim woman with curly reddish-gray hair. "We want to travel, and you can't get far on a teacher's pension plan."
They have since made two four-month trips to Thailand in the past two years, spending an average of $10 each per day on transport, lodging and food. They travel with midsize daypacks and take just a few changes of clothes. Mrs. Rowe carries a stock of her migraine medication. Mr. Rowe packs cholesterol pills.
As dusk settles over Mae Sai, the Rowes set out for dinner, bypassing the budget cafes listed in the Lonely Planet in favor of an even cheaper roadside food-stall. A young woman serves up plates of rice and savory stir-fried vegetables that cost the Rowes just 60 cents each. They buy a few bottles of beer and stroll back to the guesthouse.
The Swedish traveler, Ms. Erikkson, welcomes her brother, Andreas, 28, who has just arrived from another town. The group settles on the patio with a few more beers and the talk turns to tattoos. Mr. Erikkson has a Viking symbol on his forearm. Ms. Erikkson hikes up the back of her shirt to show a dog's paw on her lower back.
"Tattoos are OK, but I can't stand facial piercings," Mrs. Rowe says. "When I was teaching, these kids would come in with all this metal in their face. I just couldn't concentrate."
The Swedes exchange glances, and the conversation falters. Ms. Erikkson says she plans to get her tongue pierced next month in New Zealand. "I just have one question," blurts Mr. Rowe. "Why?!"
Ms. Erikkson shrugs and looks away. "I don't know. I just want to," she says. Mr. Rowe moves quickly to salvage rapport by advising her to ask for Valium, then begins to describe his recent colonoscopy. "Time out," Mrs. Rowe laughs. "That's too much information."
Despite such awkward moments, the Rowes see their age as a big advantage in connecting with local people. Mr. Rowe struck up a friendship with a 50-ish owner of the Mae Sai guesthouse, who took him on a camping trip with a group of Thai friends. The couple chatted up a restaurant owner in Kachanburi, near the famed river Kwai, who then invited them to a wedding in a nearby village. And recently, they struck up a conversation with a Thai movie casting director who ended up hiring them as extras in scenes of Oliver Stone's "Alexander," currently being filmed in Thailand. The Rowes get meals and accommodation, plus a small stipend of 1,500 baht a day ($38.30) that actually outstrips their daily travel budget. "We've had so many great experiences," Mr. Rowe says.
For the Rowes, bonding with other travelers is part of that. On a recent night in Mae Sai, a group of backpackers make their way to a noisy nightclub nearby, where Mr. Rowe starts rabbit-hopping to the techno music, then jumps up onto an empty stage. Waiters jump after him and lead him down. "Way to go!" shouts Ms. Erikkson, flashing him the thumbs-up signal. "I'm impressed!"
"It's good to see old people doing this," she says. "That way you know its not over when you get to that age."
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