The Pinoy backpacker travels Asia

By Edsel-Thadeus O. Lorete, Contributor

10/25/2008

“We all see the world through our own tiny keyhole. When I look at my life, I realize that I have never been very much around.”

This was Jesse Wallace’s (Ethan Hawke) haunting opening line in Richard Linklater film Before Sunset, and it may well have been the perspective of Robert Alejandro, Jetro Rafael and Carlo Aquino and two other buddies when they quit their day jobs in order to go on a thrilling, three-month, P50,000-worth backpacking adventure covering nine exotic Asian destinations that started in Singapore and ended in Hong Kong.

“It all started with an accidental e-mail from TV director Carlo (Aquino). The e-mail claimed that for P45,000, it is possible for Filipinos to see and explore nine countries before they die. We thought it was a hoax, but learned later that Aquino, who was not a serial killer, was for real. We got in touch with him, and since we were burnt out from office work that time, we decided to resign and do the trip,” Rafael recounted.

What Filipinos do not know, except for those who have experienced living in an Asian country such as Thailand, Malaysia or Vietnam, is that it is possible and much more exciting to travel around Asia on a budget, something Alejandro and his traveling buddies learned by taking roads less traveled, or those preferred by Westerners fed up with the commercialization of tourism. One will discover that on foot, it is quite rewarding to see a country from a native’s perspective.

Bumpy road trip

Traveling by bus across Southeast Asia is conveniently cheaper for budget travelers. Trains are great options, too, but be prepared to add hours to your traveling time. Alejandro and his Pinoy backpacking group first went by bus from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. They took advantage of the five-hour travel, where they ended up staying in this 1914-built guest house, a typical inn with a restaurant on the first floor, offering clean rooms with shared lavatory above. Suggested visiting sites included Malaysia’s Cameron Highlands, Palau Pangkor, Georgetown and Penang with its the sumptuous street food, a blend of Malay-, Chinese- and Indian-influenced cuisine.

Another five-hour bus ride took them straight to Penang, where they chanced upon this beautiful French lady who shared snippets of this lovely Thai island near Myanmar. She was heading to the Thai border, which is frequented by visa runners, mostly white falangs (foreigners) seeking to renew their expired tourist visas on foot. Bus itineraries can be arranged with guesthouses to this area. It is, however, cheaper to pay the bus station a visit to get the better ticket deal. It is not ideal to take private van rides, especially those stretching out of Bangkok, because it is prone to vehicular accidents or road thefts, even with traveling foreign companions on board.

The bus ride from Penang to Bangkok is long and, in some parts, bumpy. Alejandro managed to spend time doing pencil drawings, the motif for his awesome travel book, The Sketching Backpacker. Bangkok is, ideally, the haven for backpackers starting or ending a long journey across Asia. Khao San Road, a long street that seems more like a hippie’s joint from afar, is the best tourist junction to learn the true essence of backpacking or, for the most part, learn Thai language. Most writers frequent this crowded part of Bangkok with the intention of exchanging travel notes, mostly tales not found in the pages of travel guide books.

Asians, particularly those working with humanitarian organizations across Northern Thailand, frequent Khao San for cheap beer and the most excellent company of freewheeling travelers, and for low-end board and lodging. It is frequented by Westerners and Europeans seeking a laidback social hub before catching a flight to Phuket or retiring in cool Chiang Mai. The more visible Asians are normally those waiting bars and restaurants. There’s hardly any Filipino except on busy weekends.

Similar faces

Alejandro’s backpacking troop took this as a ripe opportunity to make foreign friends, smiling strangers who are just as happy seeing familiar faces along their mixed travel routes. Traveling colleagues, mostly expatriates taking time off from work in Thailand, develop relationships from this type of social settings. Opportunities like these open backdoors, as well lead one to places or experiences that travel by word of mouth.

While probing Cambodia’s street Alejandro’s group chanced upon an unusual travelers’ joint that bakes and sells that controversial Happy Pizza, the term used for baked bread laced with marijuana. Two of Alejandro’s team ate the pizza. One got exceptionally dizzy and sick, as he was afflicted with asthma, and was rushed to a local hospital. He did not die, but the experience horrified the group. Local hospitals, particularly those in Thailand, China and Hong Kong should be avoided as they are staffed with mostly non-English speaking personnel. I was involved in one bus collision in Kanchanburi, which turned twice after hitting a vehicle carrying vegetables. One of my toes was bleeding after I used it to kick a rear bus window to get out. I wanted a suture, but the local hospital intern did not understand my request. It was only four hours later, with my foot bleeding and turning purple, when I was brought to Bangkok for proper treatment. I got my suture and my tetanus shot before midnight.

Prior to Vietnam, Alejandro’s group visited Luang Prabang and Vientiane in Laos, traveling across the historic Mekong River, the same waterway where an American swam to freedom a young pretty Lao in the 1970s. The group, like most travelers looking for a cheap travel deal and still enjoy splendid countryside scenery, declared Laos as a secondary haven for low cost travelers. This recount, including the group’s glorious visit to Camboadia’s Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, where they spent a great deal of time probing the Russian market and what’s left of the dreadful Tol Seng prison was reflected in the documented video Alejandro took and Jetro Rafael edited for their public workshop at TriNoma last week.

Although enchanted by the sight of the huge reclining Buddha in Thailand, what stunned these men more was the scope of the majestic Angkor Wat, that ancient walled city in Cambodia which historians believe was the first to record modern agricultural techniques to sustain rainwater irrigation against droughts. These accounts made them realize how important it is to be Asian or, for the most part, learn from the rich Asian heritage.

One backpacking adventure

When Alejandro, Rafael and Aquino concluded their backpacking itinerary in May of 2007, one thing was clear. It is possible for Filipinos to travel throughout Southeast Asia or Asia as a whole without spending a lot. They wondered, just as this writer did while trekking along Thailand’s Chao Phraya River (River of Kings) in the early 1990s, why there is hardly a Filipino backpacker traveling the region.

This compelled Alejandro and Rafael to set up the country’s first backpackers’ workshop in Metro Manila. “The objective is to inform Filipinos how being a simple backpacker allows them to see nine countries in Asia, even for a meager peso budget,” said Alejandro. The group spent P50,000 per head, a budget mainly used to pay for plane tickets (Manila to Singapore and Hong Kong to Manila). If you could spare a month to tour Southeast Asia, covering Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Macau and Hong Kong, such an amount would already give you a decent cultural journey.

In the last leg of their trip, the group was even able to pay Beijing, Macau and Hong Kong a visit. It is inspiring to know that a group of Filipinos is setting a new trend in regional travel. Everyone, indeed, deserves to travel.

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