Backpacking: Invinsibility of Youth and The Knowledge of Dying

Backpacking addict

I spent a lot of time backpacking on my own. Just me a backpack and whoever happenned to be around. I made friends, we travelled together, and then at different times we went separate ways. It’s how the backpacking trail works, you make connections, some last a day, some a few, some a lifetime, because what you shared were are only remembered by those people alone.

Last month a young man called Mark was killed in a plantation in Thailand. The headlines blazed, “young Scottish backpacker killed for phone.” and other rubbish stories filled with details of his family, his background, and where they lived etc. etc. I didn’t read or pay any attention to any of it because just a few months ago, a story like that hit so close to home that only cemented my belief that violence done to other people should not be packaged as entertainment, details are unneccessary and an a simple annoucement to inform those who care would more than suffice.

And because I didn’t read that story, I didn’t know that this 24 year old and I crossed path sometime in the past, maybe he knew who I was, although I definately did not know who he was as when you are a first former in secondary school, the ununiformed six formers factor much in one’s imagination. Mark was a student in my high school, he was a very good friend of a friend of mine, in fact, he’s was best friends with a friend of mine. If Mark stayed in Hong Kong, I would sure to know him and when I heard the news the other day, I felt I knew him a little bit more than the forgotten name in the paper.

It made me think of Anthony, an older friend of mine who was killed in the Philipines a few years ago. I bumped into his sister one day, and asked how he was, and she had to tell the news. Anthony was plagued with drug problems, something not actually that uncommon in the world I grew up in, as we are part of the golden triangle, because heroin in this city is cheaper than pot, because I went to an exclusive private school and drug dealers liked to target kids who have a lot of disposable income. Anthony was a nice guy. He was just screwed up. And like a lot of screwed up people that I grew up with, they were nice to me, and I didn’t really turn away because I think I was born open minded, and lacked the quality of judging people for what they did. So sometime during my college years, Anthony was killed because of a drug deal gone bad.

And then in April something terrible happenned to my friend’s dad in the Philipines, and last month a young man named Mark died. And it makes me wonder how safe south east asia actually is. How maybe as a rich backpacker trying to get off the beaten track, maybe not always doing the most sensible thing could get you killed, robbed and raped. None of which ever happenned to me, no matter how far deep I went into the jungle, the highlands, the mountains with me and my backpack and the group of friends I made along the way. And during all those years I wandered, I never felt unsafe, I never felt I was doing anything risky. I just went ahead seeking adventure, trusting all the right people, riding motorcycles, being shown around and gathered a wealth of stories that seemingly never cease, of meeting people who had never seen foreigners, playing with tigers, treking elephants and posing right next to sleeping crocodiles. People always said I was brave, or they couldn’t do what I did, and I could never understand why that was. I never ever understood how fearful my parents were, how my mother could not sleep at night, why everyone thought I should come home, when everthing was just so much fun and I was doing something that most people will never get a chance to do in their live time. For me it seems anyone could just do it, it doesn’t seem like a difficult thing. All you needed was an ability to save some money, a backpack and a lonely planet. But as I look back, you probably also needed a large dose of naivety, the invinsibility of youth, and a desperate need to seek something out of the ordinary.

And it wasn’t like I didn’t hear stories of people who died, robbed and raped. In places I was at, in places I was about to go to, but it always seemed to me that they did something really stupid, they did not have the confidence in themselves and looked like the part of the victim or went over their own heads. And when the combinations of those things happen, when the variables matched, something bad would happen but I was pretty sure that I was sensible enough not to experience it. Had a good enough street sense to avoid trouble before it started. In retrospect that is probably not true. I was over my head more times than I could count. I took unneccessary risks every day, I was completely and utterly clueless in fact. Sometimes I don’t even want to say what I did, because I can’t understand why I did it. It just seemed like a good idea at the time, and I simply truly believed I could handle it, and everything was going to be just fine. And it was, and it did because for the most part things always went well, people opened their doors to me. My innocence of what could possible go wrong invoked a level of protection and the simple fact good people prefered that I trusted them then someone else and it made them go out of their way to help me along. I suppose that is where the saying, “God does bless children and fools.” come from.

I was always such an anomalie, a young asian girl with an american accent, huge sunglasses, bright printed plastic skirts, blue nailvanish, silver jacket, bright plastic turtle shaped hair clips randomly hanging of her hair, with a teddy bear sticking out of her backpack and always always wide eyed and excited to do something new and jabbering away in the local language really badly. Maybe people just didn’t want to hurt something so cute and odd. Guides spent an extra two hours taking me further then I had paid for, families feeding me for the reason I always looked and probably was hungry, trekers letting me drive their off road vehicles in a country where women were not allowed to drive, people inviting me out and taking me to local places and sometimes not letting me pay because I wasn’t a client, I was a friend.

So I always got home. Thinner, tierd, changed but I always got home.

And for so so long it seemed perfectly expected that I got home. I never imagined any other way.

Eventually I learnt to fear. It took a castrophobic event that shook the world to do it to me. I knew by the time I caught a plane home, and saw all the american planes grounded and men holding machine guns guarding them that everything was different. I didn’t want to go anymore… It still had Sri Lanka and India to go, so I had to finish the year, But I probably will never go long haul in a developing world nation again. Two weeks maybe, somewhere with hotels, but probably never ever going deeper and further away from civilization, to places where foreigners were not often seen, people never seen a Chinese person before, where people didn’t even speak the national language but their local tongue. Those far off places will probably be forever closed off to me now, much like they never even existed for the majority of the world except through the National Geographic Channel. But I was there once. There are places in this world that doesn’t have electricity or water, people who have never had a coke, that have no idea how the rest of us live. They will live and die in their village, the furthest they will go is the four hour walk down the hill, and they would never have bought clothing from the store but instead wear the one outfit filled with silver, laced with beads that they were made the day their culture dictated. Those people didn’t see two buildings go down because those people have never seen a high rise before. I never envied them. I do not have any of the people who do not know are not corrupted idea, the noble savage is a bullshit concept created in the turn of the century as a discourse to exoticize the other. It’s not why i went. I went just because I could. Because it seemed opened to me, a choice for something different and original because I always wanted to see things for myself.

I remember my cousin said I was stupid and did not care about my family because I kept going away to dangerous places and I said you could be knocked down by a bus tomorrow. The likelyhood being slim and the chance of dying in those places of course bigger, but you know, in the end, one of us died in our sleep. My cousin Ryan, died because of a combination of medical factors, something to do with codine, hypertension and an enlarged heart. Accidental death. I am glad to hear he was asleep when it happenned, I am glad it was in his bed. I think it might be the way I would like to go eventually, granted I would like the event to be stayed as much as possible, but the fact I think of it, the fact I even admit or know it would happen in a real way and it matters is something different.

I remember my friend Scott saying, “I don’t know why I worry so much, what is there to lose? The worse case senario is that I embaress myself right?”

and I said, “No Scott, the day you have nothing to lose is the day you can say, the worse thing that could happen is I die, and I don’t care.”

“My god. I could never think that! Do you?”

“I used to. As long as I am doing something interesting that is.”

“you’re crazy.”

“No, I used to be. It’s all different now.”

“How come?”

“Age? September 11th? Used up all my good luck quota? Feel whoever is looking out for me is now tierd? I don’t know. Maybe I have seen enough.”

“You could never see enough of the world.”

“Yes, you can. You see one too many malnutritioned kids, one too many drunk alcoholics in the middle of nowhere because there is nothing to do. One too many people die of diseases that we don’t have anymore. Then you think. Maybe it’s time to fold it all up and coddle in first world comfort. Except that is, if you don’t get blown up.”

“Scary world we live in this day and age.”

“Yup. I am glad to have known it before.”