What do you call a backpacker who travels the globe in search of adventure, while also searching for free Wifi?
What do you call a backpacker who wraps a dirty towel around his laptop to protect it on the bumpy bus ride to Lijiang (Yunnan, PRC)?
What do you call a backpacker who is too busy updating Facebook to read tattered novels borrowed from her International Youth Hostel in Prague?
What do you call a backpacker who carries over a thousand dollars' worth of electronic equipment in his bag, but insists on bartering for another 20 cent discount for a t-shirt in Bali?
I call it a Macpacker.
I did my backpacking in my early 20s. The summer before my sophomore year in college I spent my days staring at gummi bears and my evenings in a community theatre. I worked at a factory in Creston, Iowa that made bears, worms, and other fun-shaped candy. I worked overtime whenever possible, saving money to pay for pizzas and other college essentials. After work, my co-workers and I comprised the core cast and crew for Little Shop of Horrors. It was great fun, but I knew I needed to get away from Iowa for awhile. The summer before my junior year was somewhat improved, as it began with a tour of Europe with my chorus. However, it ended like the previous year, with me staring at gummi bears. The only difference was that I did it in Germany. On my weekends, though, I wandered Europe's great cities - Berlin, Munich, Paris, and San Sebastian, Spain, where I stayed longer. I met some backpackers along the way and longed for the adventure.
When I arrived in Hong Kong six months later to begin a study abroad program, I already knew I would spend my summer far from gummi bears. I would be a backpacker and take my time crossing China. I might even visit Tibet. The thrill was not needing to plan ahead and just going with the flow. And I traveled light. I bought a cheap, sturdy backpack in Hong Kong, before continuing to school in Hangzhou. Once school was over, I filled that pack with only the essentials - shorts, socks, underwear, t-shirts, jacket, 35mm pocket camera, 5 rolls of film, Lonely Planet, a towel, and some toiletries. I shipped my gifts home and put all I needed on my shoulders. However, I knew that if I left anything behind, if I was robbed at a hostel, or if the whole pack slipped off the roof of a bus and fell into the Yangtze River, I would not be out much. I could replace everything for less than a hundred dollars, and I would only really miss the photos I had taken.
Because this was the early 90s, of course, the idea of carrying around a computer was beyond comprehension. This was a decade before MySpace and Facebook. There were no wifi hotspots. Hell, there were no internet cafes. I had only begun to use email a few months before, when I was assigned an address by my school. I didn't actually use it. The connection speed was so slow, especially in China, that it was more satisfying to write postcards and letters to friends and loved ones. The internet still chimed when establishing a connection!
When I traveled, I sat on my bag. I used it as a pillow. I stuffed it into spaces that it barely fit. I had it taken from me and strapped to the roof of the bus. It wore into my shoulders and made my back sweat. I loved it and hated it. But I never had anything truly precious in it. Nothing breakable, and nothing really valuable.
Backpacking to me still means throwing some basic (but easily replaceable) necessities in a bag and traveling without a set itinerary. It means eating banana pancakes and pizzas at the backpacker cafes that pop up on backpacker circuits. It means bookshelves full of novels that can be simply replaced with the one you just finished. And it means sharing precious information about must-sees, great deals, and rip-offs over beer and candle light with strangers from around the world. It is a social activity that involves meeting and (dis)trusting strangers and learning about unknown places.
When I see faces lit up by computer screens in the backpacker cafes of Bali and Hanoi, I cannot help but think that these Macpackers - Backpackers carrying around laptops and iPads - have a vastly different experience from what I had. Of course, I am just being nostalgic, but I think something fundamental shifts when a computer and a wifi connection enter the Backpacker world. One can maintain daily contact with home, preventing some of the sense of separation/liberation that I felt. One no longer has to rely as much on the travel advice of strangers and can instead look at online forums for news. I suppose it serves the same function, as a forum for the sharing of information. However, the method lacks an interpersonal element. Is there as much flirting, joking, swapping of horror stories, and sharing of childhood memories over another beer?
And personally, I constantly would be worried about my belongings being stolen. As soon as you pull out a laptop at a cafe, everyone around knows you are carrying something very valuable. I guess all those backpackers with expensive cameras used to feel that way. I still remember traveling a few weeks with a woman from France, whom I met in a cafe. Realizing I didn't have the money to visit Tibet, she convinced me to visit the Giant Buddha at Leshan instead. She had a professional Nikon camera, but she had scratched it and taped it to make it look old and damaged. One cannot do the same with a laptop.
Yes, something about travel is changing. Backpackers are becoming Macpackers, and it is significantly altering the technologies, expectations, and experiences of independent travel.
