Flashpacking

A backpacker is someone travelling independently and on a budget. They avoid organised tours and typically choose simple accommodation and take local transportation.

"Flashpacking" is term that has arisen in recent years to describe a subclass of backpackers. The main distinction is that flashpackers are not so limited by budget constraints. High-end digital cameras and iPods are common equipment. Increasingly a laptop will also be crammed into the backpack between the sarong and the Lonely Planet guidebook.

I don't necessarily think there is anything noble about travelling on a shoestring. Some travellers take pride in how little they spend on a trip - the mock travel guide "Phaic Than" parodies this by boasting that one of its authors travelled on such a low budget that he actually made a profit on his last trip to Asia.

For me, independent travel is about the lifestyle. You are more open to meet people - both locals and travellers - when when avoiding organised tours and high-end accommodation. A backpack is a practicality and allows you to hop on the back of a motorcycle taxi which is often the best, if not the only, travel option to get to a budget hotel.

Having a tight budget for food might mean missing out on some local food. It will typically exclude the tourist-priced western dishes. I much prefer to eat local food while travelling, but after a few breakfasts of Pho (noodle soup), I feel no guilt about tucking into a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs with local coffee and fresh tropical fruits.

For me, independent travel is also about the experience. The broader the experience, the better. This goes for accommodation as well as food. Staying at a high-end resort is also an experience, but for my tastes is too generic and not as much of an adventure as staying in lower end budget options. At the other extreme, very low-end, dingy, flea-filled hotels aren't generally the sort of adventure one deliberately seeks out.


I'm on the "gadget-freak" sub-sub-category of flashpacker backpackers and I think I started early. I backpacked in 1999 with a CD player and a digital camera. This was in the dark days before MP3 players and when digital cameras were large, clunky, expensive battery eating machines. Laptops were impractical for travel and were without wifi. GPS devices wouldn't become popular until the US Defence Department turned off the accuracy reducing "selective availability". (oh dear, I think I've written a "kids of today don't know how good they've got it!" paragraph)

For my 2009 trip, I took both my digital cameras: a mid-range one with a good zoom lens and my pocket size waterproof one. I also brought my iPhone which has been invaluable. I think I got my full flashpacker stripes when I bought myself a MacBook Air duty free at the Hong Kong Airport. With free WiFi being pretty much ubiquitous, a laptop is usually the best method for internet access. It also allows me to write, write, write. Bus journeys are a good chance to sort photos, write emails and do blog posts.


I'm writing this on the bus from Dalat heading towards Saigon. I'm going to be dropped off on the way to visit Cat Tien national park. This is not the typical stop, so I'm hoping the driver remembers. I'm a bit reassured as I found the GPS coordinates on the parks official website. By entering them into the GPS app of my iPhone I know that we're now 54km and 1 hour 20 mins away from the park. Good thing too: I'd like a toilet stop for my bowels which are on an Immodium induced "pause".

Travel Lady

The Travel Lady taps on her keyboard. "Flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Dalat," she says, "Is okay with stopover?" I frown. It's a short flight. "Where is the stopover?" More tapping. "San Franciso," she says. "San Franciso?!"

I plan to fly the next morning and that's too late for online booking. I figured that going to a Vietnamese travel agent in Vietnam with a prominent "Vietnam Airlines" sign in front would mean I could book a Vietnam Airlines flight. Not only is my travel agent probably using one of those brain-dead flight searchers that don't include domestic flights, but apparently she lacks a basic understanding of world geography. And relative costs - she slides a printed quote over the desk: $750.

So, I could take a 50 minute flight for around $50 with Vietnamese Airlines, or spend 24 hours on planes and $750. Maybe I'll try another travel agent. "Cam-on; Thank you" I say and make my way for the door.

Bus trip to Can Tho

The Friendly Woman sitting in front of me on the bus motions to get my attention. She indicates in the direction of the ticket inspector and makes a sign. She spreads her fingers wide and taps her palm against her first curled in a circle - 50 thousand dong, about $2.50.

The ticket collector comes around as the bus is pulling out.  "150 thousand dong," he tells me. I tell him the price is 50 thousand and we start to haggle. "I paid 50 thousand to come here," I lie, not wanting to implicate my undercover accomplice, Friendly Woman.

The bus is stopped and the collector calls over the motorcycle driver who had brought me to the (slightly dodgy) bus station. Since he had already ripped me off for the taxi, I guess they figured I would be gullible enough to trust him for the bus fare. They come down to 80 thousand and I give up by offering 70 thousand. Friendly Woman glances at me when the inspector leaves. I show her 7 fingers and she raises her eyebrows. I guess being overcharged 20% is a lot for her. For me, I avoided the original "200% gullible foreigner surcharge" and I ended up being taken for around $1.


Friendly Woman offers me further advice. She points at my shoulder bag and mimes pulling her own close to her. She indicates in the direction of the Sleazy Guy who is sitting across the aisle from me. The warning wasn't really necessary. When the bus was still in the station, Sleazy Guy had shifted across to sit next to me. With a serpentine smile and tobacco breathe he nattered at me in Vietnamese. "Fine," I thought when he touched my arm, "the Vietnamese are open and tactile people. My pale skin and hairy arms must be a curiosity." When he put his hand on the inside of my knee, I thought that was a bit too open. A stern frown and a firm shove  sent him scurrying back to his side of the aisle. "Great," i thought, "now I know what solo female travellers have to put up with." So, no, I didn't need further warnings to be careful around Sleazy Guy.

Boat trip from Phu Quoc

I feel eyes upon me and look across the aisle to see a sweet little Vietnamese girl giving me a toothless grin.

I smile, wave and say "hi," thus utilising 50% of my Vietnamese vocabulary. Her mother encourages her to say "hello" which she does. I take a photo with my iPhone and show the screen across the aisle. She gets curious and takes a step closer. I hold out my hand for her to shake. It takes her a minute and lots of encouragement from her mother to gather the courage.

She's interested in my phone and I wrack my brain for apps that might be suitable for kids. I've got a little fireworks application that responses to touching the screen and this keeps both occupied for the next half an hour as we send explosions and flashing lights around the screen.

Tired of fireworks, we move on to my photo album. She's able to look through by swiping her finger across the screen. Her mother looks across the aisle with interest. I show them photos of Switzerland and try to mime that snow covered alps means that it's cold.
Every time a western woman appears in a photo, the girl points at the innocent Swedish girl sitting next to me and asks me a question in Vietnamese. I have no chance of explaining that my dark-haired ex-girlfriend in the photo is not the blonde Swede sitting next to me. I nod enthusiastically. "Sure," I say, "it might as well be her." The Swedish girl raises her eyebrows and gives me a side-wards glance. Regardless of how many different western woman come up, she points at the Swede asks the same question. I nod agreement. We get to a photo of wedding in a park I once visited. The girl points at me and the Swede and asks a question in Vietnamese. In for a penny... "Sure," I reply. "Our wedding in Russia was very lovely," I tell the Swedish girl. She gives a laugh

We look at photos of my Cambodian trip 10 years before. There's ONE photo of me in there standing naked under a waterfall facing away from the camera. My bare, white buttocks cause much giggling for everyone. I tap on to the next photo and the girl swipes back to it. More giggling. Well, serves me right I guess.

Meditation Tip #2

Following on from Meditation Tip #1 :

Meditation Tip #2: Breathe
Take deep relaxing breaths from your diaphragm. Belly breathing may or may not come naturally for you.  To practice, exhale and rest both hands lightly on your stomach with the tips of your middle fingers touching. As you breath in you should feel your fingers separate, touching again together on exhalation.

Some schools get excited about exactly which orifice you breath through. I've heard several yoga instructors even claim that airflow through one nostril or another will affect which side of your brain is more active (hmmm....). Outside of hayfever season, I prefer relaxed breathing through the nose. Do whatever works best for you.

Another aspect is the pace of breathing. I read a paper pointing out that many relaxing activities such as meditation and singing share a common element of a controlled exhalation. The theory is that replicating this breathing pattern may give the same relaxing effect. Try it and decide whether it works for you. The technique is simple: time your inhalation for around 4 seconds and your exhalation for 6 seconds.

Thoughts on: Whatever works

Not a movie review - head over to salon.com's review of Whatever Works for that - rather, my thoughts on the film, assuming the reader has seen it.

Despite a veneer of cynicism, "Whatever Works" is ultimately a optimistic philosophy of love. Indeed, the movie title is our protagonist's view of love explicitly expressed in one of his speaking-to-the-audience asides. While that philosophy might be an admirable one, the movie labours the point.

This film is also more than a bit deceptive in its presentation of this view of romance: it's not about two people finding each other and accepting each other for who they are. Rather, each of the main relationships in the film starts with someone falling in love based on some unknown initial spark - so far, so good: the ingredients for attraction are mysterious ones. However, the object of desire then conveniently finds a completely different, previously undiscovered, side of their personality. Each member of the Celestine family from Mississippi turns out to be one neurosis-resolution away from happiness and true love. While this may all be part of the joke, it comes across as more than a little contrived. The daughter, Melodie, discovers a suppressed intellectual curiosity. Her father has an almost insulting easy adjustment to the realization of his homosexuality. Melodie's mother, in an entertaining performance, discovers her talent for photography. Apparently photographer-artists are obliged to live in polygamous relationships; this aspect of the film is lifted directly from Allen's previous, and more satisfying, movie Vicky Christina Barcelona.

While a big part of a romantic relationship is self discovery, the personal growth resulting from the couples in Whatever Works is one sided. I'm not willing to credit Boris Yellnikoff's (Larry David) realisation that "maybe loving a human being isn't that bad" as being that much of a breakthrough.

My main problem with the film may be that the movie rests on Larry David's character whom I struggle to appreciate. Again from salon, Heather Havrilesky points out that Jason Alexander plays the "Larry David" character - as "George" in Seinfeld - better than Larry David does. In the recently concluded television series "Curb your Enthusiasm" Larry David portrays himself. The character George comes across as a lovable loser. In contrast, we get to see how much Larry David delights in showing us just how cynical and unlikable he is really is - it's the George character with mean-spiritedness replacing the goofy charm.

Overall, I didn't get many laughs from the film. This may in part be because I watched it on a long-haul flight with crackly audio on Swiss airline's mediocre entertainment system in economy-class squinty-vision. Comedies are usually better seen in a theatre to get the social proof of the rest of the audience laughing along.

Meditation Tip #1

A friend asked me about meditation and it occurred to me that I've learned meditation on at least 3-4 different occasions. Despite being wrapped in a lot of mystique, there seem to be a few essential points that are common across schools of meditation. I'll share my take on them over a few posts.

Meditation Tip #1: Relax
Find a comfortable position. I suggest lying down: leave your arms sightly away from your sides, palms and feet relaxed outwards.

Other schools suggest you sit. Qigong even goes for a standing position. Whatever works for you.

I keep my eyes closed. Alternative is to focus on a point in the distance and soften your gaze.

See also
Meditation Tip #2
Meditation Tip #3