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The backpacker at the Buddha-bar
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Here is a world governed by the Lonely Planet Guide, slumber and lecture, where its members have been on the road for at least a year, and which ILIJA TROJANOW explores.
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The Mekong ... Nature has not foreseen the advent of powerboats.
THERE is a daily ship connection between Siem Riep, the tourist entry point to the world-famous ruins of Angkor Wat, and Phnom Penh, formally known as the capital of genocide and nowadays renowned for its French cafés by the Mekong. We take a very modern boat, whose bow shoots out of the water at high speed like the beak of a crazed heron. Naturally only tourists can afford this fast journey, a comfortable alternative to the 12-hour torment on the rutted tracks of Cambodia. But since the affluent tourists fly in and out of Siem Riep, the boat is only used by backpackers, a caste of young travellers with time on hand and relatively empty pockets.
At boarding there is some shoving and shuffling for a place on the roof, where one can stretch out, pull the cap over one's head and continue the art work on one's suntan while relaxing from the pub tour of the previous night. The backpackers have come all the way from Yorkshire or Queensland to close their eyes. The boat flies across the Tonle Sap Lake and roars into the channel connecting the lake with the Mekong. Unfortunately, nature has not foreseen the advent of powerboats.
Fishermen who do not paddle to the shore with some urgency have to cling on to the sides of their dugouts, hoping not to capsize in the midst of the propelled waves. The boat torpedoes around the next bend, the backpackers snooze, their Walkman headphones in place.
Some read the latest Wilbur Smith or John Grisham, others study the Lonely Planet Guide, often called the "Backpacker Bible", but which better resembles one of these advisory books on how to save taxes. The short notes on the country and its people are mere loincloths for its true aim: to serve as a comprehensive guide for the ultimate saving trip. Once travel guides needed to inform the traveller of the bargaining culture abroad; today there is no stopping the haggling energy of the visitors. The backpackers only open their eyes when the boat stops for refuelling. They have been warned by the Lonely Planet to be wary of the Orientals and their wily tricks. When it becomes clear that the halt is scheduled, they sink back into slumber or lecture.
The next moment of action erupts when the boat reaches the capital and two determined cohorts face one another. On one side, the rickshaw drivers, hotel agents and touts, small men with thin limbs and dawning resignation on their faces, whose dinner depends on whether they can manage to bag a foreign customer. On the other side, the backpackers, tanned and fit, casually shoulder their rucksacks and adjust their sunglasses. Those who show any apprehension of the dense expectancy on the quay are clearly greenhorns, probably quickie-tourists on a three-week holiday. The true backpackers are on the road for at least a year.
Thailand ... probably the current centre of the backpacker universe,
They hop onto the quay, whisking away the first attackers like irritating mosquitoes. Soon cries of disapproval are to be heard: Two dollars? You must be crazy. Half a dollar, not a cent more! The voices vibrate with a sacred rage, for the backpackers are not fighting out of pure self-interest, they are protecting the world from the worst of all evils: overcharging. Many a paradise has been spoiled, not due to unregulated construction or pollution, but because it is regarded as being "unreasonably priced". What is regarded as expensive depends on the backpacker's daily limit. A Scottish girl is on a budget of £10, a Dutch student is travelling on 15 Euro a day — sums with which they couldn't even get a hair-cut at home. But the savings have to last for a journey around the world. Such limitations exert a lot of pressure on the backpacker. Sometimes he haggles his way into fury, regarding a dollar too much as the peak of moral turpitude. The locals are nothing more than wily business people who manipulate every offer and invoice. Therefore, most of the day is spent in the quest for the best price. On the quay in Phnom Penh, the backpackers smugly climb into the rickshaws, to be driven to those guesthouses which have been sanctified by the Lonely Planet, the "excellent value"-pensions.
All illusions about the young travellers of today are lost in Bangkok, probably the current centre of the backpacker universe, where life is cheap and comfortable, comfortable and cheap. In Banglamphu one guesthouse stands next to the other, restaurants are as plenty as bars. Locals do not visit these establishments, they prefer the parallel street, where the restaurants serve far tastier food, but are sadly lacking as far as the trinity of backpacker entertainment is concerned: loud tech-ethno music, TVs with a non-stop repertoire of Hollywood films, and computers with an internet connection. Before dinner a few e-mails are sent off to fellow travellers, sharing tips or setting up dates (often hardly necessary, for the backpackers are cruising on a highway with few exits). During dinner, "Lord of the Rings" or "The Matrix" is gobbled up, while the palate gets to taste Thai culture. Afterwards those backpackers who do not make use of the cheap sex on offer sip their drink in rattan chairs, listening to the sounds of "Buddha Bar" (the name itself implies a Maitreya cocktail): a remix of fusion from all over the planet, a cannibalistic stew, which stuffs the listener with so many acoustic leftovers, that he longs for the simplicity of a Baul couplet or a Tabla bol.
The often derided Hippies of former days idled away their inebriated time in Kathmandu or Lamu, but there were many amongst them who opened up to other cultures, ventured into the unknown, interacted with the foreign people and their reality. Today's backpackers are devoid of any such ambition. They are happy with the filtered and chloride version of the foreign that is served at the traveller ghettos.
They hardly differ from the package tourists they feel disdainfully superior to.
They regard foreign cultures as suppliers of fragments with which to colour their comfy and secure mainstream existence.
The path they take leads to uniformity — backpackers all look alike, covered in a sarong, a lungi, a kurta or the gaudy post-hippie uniform, available cheap at service stations along the highway, like Goa or Chiang Mai. A touch of ethnic jewellery completes a uniform that is cool, spaced-out and completely conventional. A few phrases of Thai or Hindi are picked up, not in order to understand the locals, but to adorn the lingua franca of the backpacker guild — English — with a few linguistic status symbols. Thus adorned — appearances are supremely important! — the backpackers assemble at the next Full Moon Rave Party and celebrate their freakish rituals of trance and drugs, which set them apart from the package tourists. All said and done, both groups mirror the egocentric and exploitative attitude of the centres (from which they come) towards the "periphery" of this world. They will never attain to the wisdom of the Moors, who believed that only he who travels knows the worth of man.
Ilija Trojanow, a German novelist, is the founder of Marino Verlag, a publishing company for African and East European non-fiction. He is currently based in Mumbai, working as a freelance journalist. The winner of numerous literary awards and prizes, he is the author of a collection of articles on India called Der Sadhu an der Teufelswand.
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