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How did we travel before smartphones, Google Maps, WhatsApp and instant online booking—and was it actually better?
In this nostalgic and frequently funny episode of Unravel Travel, Malcolm and David climb aboard a metaphorical TARDIS and return to the days when independent travel involved physical travel agents, paper maps, enormous guidebooks, travellers’ cheques and a considerable amount of guesswork.
The memories include a travel agent nearly booking the wrong Palma—or Parma—an overnight Italian train journey spent on the floor of the baggage carriage beside a dog, and the questionable wisdom of tearing unwanted countries out of a guidebook to save weight.
David recalls arriving in Burma, now Myanmar, for a month-long trip with unusable travellers’ cheques and only $100 in cash. With Western email services blocked, even telling the family they were safe required the help of an internet café owner, a borrowed email account and a message written in Dutch to prove they had not been kidnapped.
Malcolm remembers pagers, airmail letters and travelling around Singapore and the wider region before mobile internet. There are also tales of finding accommodation by walking the streets with your luggage, navigating unfamiliar bus routes by asking local passengers, and attempting to read an actual road map.
Of course, modern technology has not eliminated travel chaos entirely. A more recent Wizz Air flight produced two passengers with exactly the same allocated seat—proving that possession may still be nine-tenths of airline law.
Alongside the humour and inevitable digressions, Malcolm and David consider what has genuinely improved. Online booking, Google Maps, ATMs and WhatsApp make travel much easier—but have convenience and constant connectivity removed some of the spontaneity, human interaction and adventure?
A funny and affectionate look at travel before the internet, backpacking in Asia, old-fashioned European journeys and the remarkable ways independent travellers managed without an app for absolutely everything.
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Our theme music is Traveler's Blues by Jerzy Gorecki from Pixabay (with licence)
https://pixabay.com/users/jerzyg%C3%B3recki-2233926/
