Are You a Backpacker?

In this era, global boundaries in terms of both borderlines and cultures has flown easily than the past which leads to growth and development of mass tourism industry. However, being tourist not only means that you already cross to another different boundaries, but also greatly matters to the self of traveler by gaining experience, especially backpackers who are traveler with a distinctive style. Even though some of the travelers may face difficulties - losing, stealing, and murder, being a backpacker still is one of choices when a person thinking of start traveling.

According to “Human bones found in Cambodia could be missing backpacker Eddie Gibson” article, Eddie Gibson, the 19 year-old British backpacker, who disappeared in Cambodia during his trip in 2004 is now expected to be murdered due to investigation on a decomposing human body which was found in the place where he went missing.

It has become a cliché to imagine that backpacker are western foreign teenagers with large backpack and a messy look, especially, in Khoasan road, Thailand which is branded to be the destination of backpacking, we all see this kind of traveler. Moreover, in Thailand and Japan being a backpacker is also quite popular among teenagers, for example, once I imagined myself carried my stuffs on my back and were surrounded by strangers in a distant place because being backpacker is not a boring mainstream style, but the cool one.

Backpacking, once, was recognized as a subculture like hippie’s culture that contrast to mainstream one, this may be true in the past 10-20 year context, however, in present day, as you may have seen a lot of backpackers which leads to an increasing number of well-organizing travel spots, hostels, restaurants, cheap local buses, all these facilities had been provided to serve backpackers’ demand, I may say that the culture of backpacking (in Thai we call ‘Indy’ or be independent) are mainstreaming by commercialization. So backpacking is no longer be a subculture in this sense, however the term of subculture or Indy are used in marketing term instead of the former term.

Then, my another curiosity which follow up this is why is teenager one of cliché of being backpacker? Apart from sense of being  Indy and cool, be a backpacker also gives extraordinary experience of discover, especially self-discovering through process of self-reliance and struggle. This could be assumed that why teenagers tend to be backpacker than people with a different ages. Self-discover is one of a significant step of teenagers who face of the coming of age, the transition from childhood to adulthood. To understand yourself, in this term means that you have to put yourself in different context in which surrounding by strangers. However, entering to adulthood doesn't mean that you have to fully understand yourself, but you also have to keep some spaces to understand and adapt to other peoples. Many of bestselling travel book in Thai language are stories of the writer's self- conscious which is too romantic for me and useless because it's all about them (or people in these days obsess with them self too much?)

However, each travel has its own purpose which has been altered by period of time as changing value of backpacking which has different sense from the past, especially , with technological change, you may not expect the world to be 'the lonely planet' anymore.

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Reference

Kennedy, M. (2014, March 19). Human bones found in Cambodia could be missing backpacker Eddie Gibson. The Guardian UK-News. Retrieved March 20, 2014 from http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/19/human-bones-cambodia-missing-backpacker-eddie-gibson