by Lesli Heron
Sure instant messaging, Skype,
email and cell phones are amazing technological marvels. You can email or IM
the minute you land. You can email those photos of you on a camel in front of
the Pyramids, zip lining through the rainforest, boarding down a sand dune,
chugging back pitchers of ale at Oktoberfest etc. You get the picture, and so
do they! Travel used to be a way to blissfully disconnect. Sure one can’t deny
the benefits but we may be losing some of the authenticity of travel. Remember when…
Maps
The GPS system on your phone can
pinpoint your exact location, even when you can’t, and quite literally put you
on the map. Gone are the days of standing obliviously in the street as you try
to get your bearings. Remember how amazing getting lost can be. Take a breath
and enjoy what you can discover while you’re trying to find yourself.
Postcards
There’s an App for that! Take a
picture on your smart phone and hit send. Remember when you wondered if you
would make it home before your postcard or the fun in trying to fit all the
necessary stamps on the card leaving little room for the ‘wish you were here’.
Guidebooks
Although the advantage of the
tablet is that you can fit several guidebooks on to one device, there’s something
odd about pulling out your tablet, rather than rifling around in the bottom of
your backpack for the battered book that you have been relying on to get you
around. Nor can you doodle all over the tablet with your own commentary! But
the weight of guide books is a drawback.
Music and
book swapping
Before the time of the tablet,
the MP3 and the iPod, travellers used to carry around books, CDs and cassette
tapes. This led to inevitable boredom and the rereading of books - even if you
didn’t really like it the first time round. The simplest solution was to either
buy more on the black market in places like Bali or along the Khao San Road in
Bangkok, or to swap with your fellow traveller. Now if you get bored, you turn
on the Wi-Fi and simply download a new book or album. It’s not quite the same,
is it?
Scrapbooks
Most tickets are now digital. If you want a copy, you have to run it off the printer. It’s just not the same as having that scrap of card in a language that you can’t read to remind you of the places that you’ve been and the great things that you did there, like your photo on your Visit Angkor Wat pass or your Cook Islands driver’s license or your name on your Petra entry ticket.
A lot of people also now keep a digital travel diary, rather than handwriting one, meaning that they miss out on all of the joyfully obscene comments and bizarre doodles that other travellers graffiti all over their treasured memories.
Photographs
Printed photographs are a thing
of the past. Gone is the anticipation of taking your film in to be developed
and the anxious wait to see if you got some amazing shots. But also gone is
paying a fortune for a lot photos that end up in the waste. This is a good thing!
Since we now edit as we go along do try to resist the temptation to delete
those embarrassing shots – they may turn out to be some of your best memories.
Thorntree
café
Before the days of the internet
and cell phones, the Thorntree café was a legendary travel institution where
travellers posted messages on the tree for which the café was named. They stopped
here on their way through Nairobi while exploring Africa to communicate with
the friends that they had made on the road.
While the original tree no
longer stands, a third generation tree can still be found in the Sarova
Stanley, the site of the original Throntree café. However, the food has become
overpriced and the messages are now those of praise for the Stanley, rather
than abstract messages or fond farewells from traveller to traveller.
Poste
Restante
Poste Restante is a way of
collecting your mail while on the road. Your friends and family could keep in
touch by sending mail to the local post office marked ‘Poste Restante’ for you to
collect on your way through. Remember the anticipation of arriving in a new
place and heading down to the local post office to see if you had any mail
waiting for you? It was pretty much your only connection to home. I remember a
parcel from home that kept missing me from one Poste Restante to another in India
and eventually found its way back home to Canada a year later!
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