Since I’ve been gone I’ve been making some observations. Many of those observations are about the places that I’ve been and the people that I’ve seen, but I have some observations about the people who travel along side of me. The subject that I would like to talk about today is what makes a backpacker a backpacker.
One might assume that a backpacker is just another human, but it is my job today to prove that they are an entirely different species all together. There are races within that species of course, but make no mistake, they are not Homo sapiens.
A backpacker is a clever creature, sometimes surviving on 1-3 dollars per day for food. Similar to the gypsy nation, they have been known to set off away from home with less than a thousand dollars and somehow make it around the world for 7 months. Recent reports say that they have been seen in the fields of Australia’s fruit farms working for an unbelievable $18 AUD per hour. They can easily be seen at the hostel kitchen “nicking” a bit of food here and there to stay alive. Nicking is a word for acceptable stealing. You can Nick a salt shaker or a splash of oil to cook with; you steal a laptop computer to sell it for a plane ticket Singapore.
There is a word that is more erotic and arousing than any other in the English dictionary to a backpacker. The very whisper of this word will surely fornicate a backpacker’s inner ear. This 4 letter word begins with an F and is much more powerful than the 4 letter F word that humans go so crazy for. Free!
Free is something that strikes so deep in the heart of a backpacker that it can only be strengthened by compounding it with the second most powerful word in a backpacker’s vocabulary. It’s another 4 letter word that starts with an M. Where as humans find the word “Fuck” in the top ranks of arousal, the only word that could possibly be added to the word “Fuck” to make it any more arousing is the M word “Mother”. This can be used in several different fashions including such phrases as “Fuck your Mother.” and “… You Mother Fucker” and even “…. So I fucked YOUR Mother”. The Backpacker’s M word is “Meal” and the single most powerful phrase in the backpacker language is “Free Meal”.
The humans of Cairns have cracked that code and made it into a cutting edge marketing tool. Almost as if the heads of marketing for all the local bars are half backpacker themselves, they all have some sort of free meal deal at every major bar. The marketers know that if you feed them, they will come and right around the time they are done chewing, you can easily hit them in the face with a happy hour that will surely land them at your bar for the rest of the night. So the rhythm goes a little something like this: Free meal from 7pm- 8pm which includes 1 drink. Then from 8pm to 9pm happy hour (drinks are practically free). Then top it off with a wet t-shit contest or something from 9pm till 10pm where the drinks are full priced and you’ve got a bunch of drunken backpackers who are ready to pay out the nose for the rest of the night for small and watered down drinks. It’s a perfect system that at least 3-4 bars use successfully on a nightly basis.
Australia: Reasonable drinking laws?
At the bar and around town you will notice some policies that a drastically different than in the good old USA. In the Bar, Aussies will not serve someone a double drink or a shot of something. In addition, many bars have a 10 minute period at the end of each hour where they will not sell any alcohol. These provisions are designed to prevent people from getting too drunk. In addition, they will measure out the alcohol to the drop in a mix drink to make sure that your drink is not too strong. Gone are the nights where a 5 dollar tip will land you a “half and half” (half rum and half coke). Gone are the days where I can smell someone’s drink from 3 feet away. But on the more logical side of things, it’s ok to walk around in most public places with an open drink.
Back to backpackers though, the female kind will rarely shave their legs past their knees. Luckily for the males, most of the females are young and Scandinavian enough to have ultra fine blond hair in the first place. The females often carry a larger bag than the males in order to have enough clothes to match any occasion (I think those ones are usually Flash Packers (a backpacker with money)).
Wait a second, I’ve got a bone to pick with Aussies. It seems that they accept and mimic our Hollywood culture very well but the service culture absolutely could not be worse. I can read the invisible sign above their heads that says “I’m only at work here, what’s the rush?” Aussies work at a snail’s pace and apparently have zero pressure from their manager to speed up (probably because their manager has the same snail’s pace). It seems that they have figured out that the majority of someone’s adult life is spent at work so essentially they tend to live and not work. It’s more about them than it is about the customer. They have absolutely no ambition to make their day more efficient so that they can serve more people. They would be Sisyphus sitting at the bottom of the mountain with the bolder, lying on top of the bolder getting a tan. I can see how many jobs are not to be rushed, but the service industry is not one to drag your feet in. I seriously think that they are checking their Facebook when they stare at their computer screen for 5 minutes before checking you into your fucking room.
To make things worse, there is usually only one line to help all customers. In America (and I should hope everywhere else in the world) there is one line that checks people into their rooms, one line that checks them out, and one line for quick questions. This means that if you want to buy some laundry detergent, or 15 minutes on the internet, you don’t have to wait for 50 minutes. Being American (full of inventive and out of the box thinking) I tend to walk outside and call them on my cell phone (so that I get the front of the line) for any questions or errands (such as extending my reservations) that I don’t need to be physically present for. They hate this, saying “well are you here now?” “Nope, I’m actually nowhere near you now.” (I’m on a whole different level).
I recently met a local Aussie who just moved up to Cairns who completely agrees. He says “Oh it’s national. Aussies love to take their time and if you bring it to our attention, we get super passive aggressive. And it’s not like the Jamaican don’t worry, be happy type of slowness, it’s the it’s all about me attitude.”
More on the anatomy of a backpacker in the coming months, but for now I’d like to say that traveling in westernized nations is all about seeing people do the same things you do at home completely differently. Sometimes they do things much better than you do and sometimes they do it worse. It’s like jumping into a machine that can jump into parallel universes. As I move to eastern nations, I get to see something even more exciting, how people do completely different things than we do at home. For now its apples to apples but soon I’ll be off to Thailand where there will be nothing but oranges to choose from.
I hope things have calmed down in Bangkok before you move on to Thailand. My favourite island there is Koh Chang, over near the border with Cambodia, a short ferry ride from Trat. Quieter than other islands, White Sand Beach at the top end has a couple of excellent cheap places to chill out. Elephants in the jungle interior of the island, some good scuba diving too. You can cross the Cambodian border near Trat.
I don’t really recommend Bangkok for more than a day or so – taking in the main temples and palaces along the river. If there is still trouble in Bangkok, you can probably get transport out to an island or up into the hill country from the airport, by-passing the capital until the trouble dies down.