I was reading a piece in the Straits Times’ ‘Digital Life’ yesterday about eReaders. One featured person liked the advent of eBooks because she already has ‘over 300 books on her shelves’.
For her there was a very practical reason for adopting the electronic version of the paperbacks clogging up her home. And it got me thinking about my travels over the years and how the huge strides in accessible and portable technology might make some of those trips different now – possibly easier or more convenient – if I was to do them again.
My initial thoughts were around how many books I could take away with me on my iPad. In 1992 I left England for a planned trip of a year that ended up being 14 months. I read a lot and I would have been able to take all of those books with me, of course, if I left on that trip today.
I was traveling in an RV 4 months ago on the west coast of the US with my brother. (The first thing we did in LA was go to T-Mobile and buy local SIM cards with data. We did this before we ate.)
Once on our way in the RV and as the evening approached, I would be following directions on my iPhone that was equipped with a Sat Nav application and my brother would be ‘googling’, calling up campsites, and using Google Maps on his iPhone. At one point he said, quite seriously to me, ‘I can’t believe people used to find their way around without all this.’
I love technology. Ask anyone who knows me. And the fact that I could have a Sat Nav system on my iPhone with data for the whole of the US for less than 10 USD was bordering on making me ecstatic. Seriously. And I don’t miss maps although, on that trip, when planning to drive 500km in a day we still found that opening up a large paper map was the only way of actually getting a real sense of the day’s drive and making sure that the desired route was adopted by the Sat Nav using waypoints and other techniques.
Back in 1993, towards the end of my 14-month trip, I spent a few weeks on Koh Samui. It was a time when I made full use of that wonderful – almost ingrained – understanding that some travellers have of leaving books in ‘mini help yourself libraries’ at the reception area of tiny hotels and beach bungalow establishments. I ended up reading books I might never have picked off a well-stocked bookshop shelf.
During that long trip, visits to various Poste Restantes were of supreme excitement and anticipation.. Even the Wikipedia entry sounds romantic – Poste restante (French, trans. post remaining) or general delivery is a service where the post office holds mail until the recipient calls for it. It is a common destination for mail for people who are visiting a particular location and have no need, or no way, of having mail delivered directly to their place of residence at that time.
I can’t convey to you the excitement I felt queuing up every month or so in some new Post Office in some new town or city waiting to grab that neatly bundled pile of letters.
Often the post collecting was accompanied by me posting my own little package back home sometimes with a few of those wonderfully familiar and comforting little cylinders of used but, as yet, undeveloped film.
I even remember getting a letter from my father telling me (for the first time) of his impending 4th marriage. There was something about that ‘out of the blue’ news that a more regular stream of emails and SMSs would have taken away.
A few years later I remember being on Zanzibar with a shortwave radio held in exactly the right spot with the right amount of cloud cover in the sky listening to a Worldservice news bulletin.
One of the themes to a series of programs currently on the Nat Geo channel is about ‘getting lost’ yet I wonder if I am being a tired old cynical romantic who misses the (I was going to say ‘old’ but it’s not long ago) days gone by when you read a book that just happened to be there and drove or wandered down a road for a few hours before realising you were going the wrong way.
I’m a total geek when it comes to technology but wonder what we need to do to keep the romance and excitement in travel. I’m passionate when it comes to expecting free wireless in a hotel but a small but slightly more passionate part of me wishes there wasn’t any wifi or 3G anywhere.
