Travel in the olden days....

Travellers could take their music wherever they wanted,
safe in the knowledge that no one else knew what they were listening to!

Anyone for Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda or Mario Bros?

I was looking on Facebook the other day and everyone was doing a quiz about the olden days and it got me thinking about the first time I went on a big trip overseas.

It isn't quite like today hey? When you left, you left knowing you would not speak or hear from anyone from home until you hit the next Post Office where your mail would be addressed 'Poste Restante'. Awaiting you were a bundle of aerogrammes with light blue flimsy paper with news from home that were read more than once!

There was no contingency for a emergency, except for a telegram that may find you if you said you were where you said you would be in your itineray. But who ever stuck to that?

It wasn't until a later trip that I acquired, with great expense to the management, a Sony Walkman and a few precious tapes I had recorded from my record collection before I left. Some medlies and some pure unadulterated albums. I remember I left it on a bus in Turkey...damn! Never saw that again.

I never did see too many people wandering around with a gameboy. Even on flights not many used them. We were all excited to be watching a communal movie that probably had not been released in Australia yet and we were the trailblazers seeing it on a plane. DVT socks were not even thought of for blood clots, and travel kits were part of the airline issue that we all got excited about. Which begs the question, why do we need all these fabulous gadgets now?

I thought the reason to head overseas on the big trip was to get away from everything and everyone you knew and immerse yourself in other cultures...that was why I did it anyway....