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The following is a story written by Cris Prystay, Staff Reporter of
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, in 2004 when we started backpacking together in Thailand. [Photo above by Cris.] Here it is ten years later - a few things have changed; many have not. Although we spend a bit more on lodging now, Jim still hitchhikes (me, not so much), we still eat mostly freshly cooked food at local street vendors for dinner, preferring to live on the economy to better enjoy the experience of Thai culture and Thai people.
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. [See photo above of hut.] "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 Pacific Asia Travel Association and former head of the 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."
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. About his first retirement trip, a solo journey to New Zealand eight years ago, he said, "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 southwestern U.S., 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 for 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, also took an 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 and stay in places with cold water?' But we couldn't manage 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 places 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. [Penang, the lovely woman seated with us in above photo, befriended us the first year we went to Mae Sai for a 2-month visa stamp. We have visited with her every time we return to Mae Sai.]
Despite some 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 with a restaurant owner in Kachanaburi, 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 got meals and accommodation, plus a small stipend of 1,500 baht a day ($38.30) that 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 it's not over when you get to that age."
No, it definitely isn't over!
