So a couple of weeks ago I was riding the skytrain (BTS) around Bangkok minding my own business when I overheard a conversation between a tour guide and 4 older (Like 60+ ) American tourists. I figured them for being just another group of package tourists - BIG MISTAKE.

Well..I answer one of the questions that their tour guide didn't know the answer too, and I end up having a brief couple minute conversation with one of the women. She realizes I am American. One - it turns out that she used to live in Seattle area too.

But here is the kicker...

Apparently she did a round the world trip in 1961. Whoa! 1961! Before Lonely Planet was even founded in the mid 70s!! This was her first time back in Bangkok since then. She made some comment like their being so few cars back then...

Too bad..I had to get off at a stop soon...it would have been so good to pick her brain. not sure where else she went...they were headed to Vietnam though - closed during her earlier RTW trip.

Since then I read the story recently of Tony & Maureen Wheeler's (Founders of Lonely Planet) first travels in SE Asia in the mid 1970s at the beginning of every LP SE Asia on Shoestring guide. Their descriptions of places compared to how I know them as I have visited them recently is fascinating.

So my question is:

Do you think (or know first hand) traveling around the world was easier or harder back then? Around 1961. Then compare to 1975. (is there much of a difference?)

I have actually come up with a list of 20 factors so far (Some make it harder, some easier)...but rather than "show all my cards" right now, I'd like to hear from some of you before posting my list.

Of course...there were world travelers like Magellan and friends, and people crossed the oceans on ships to emigrate, trade, whatever, etc...but I'm talking about the average world traveler as we know it today who flies and takes motor vehicles around, not by sail and horse.

Pan Am did a "round-the-world" flight in 1961, and it was all-jet by then. Actually it wasn't completely round the world as they weren't allowed to do the domestic leg across the USA from San Francisco to New York, but they interlined with other airlines for this.

A few people used to take it right round, stopping at various places. same airline all the way, ground staff who looked after you, airline, transfer and hotel arrangements more integrated than now (often custom coach transfers to the airport for each flight and an "arrangement" with a main hotel. Pan Am in particular owned Inter Continental Hotels at that time deliberately to offer an integrated approach.

Economy class was more spacious then, rather like Premier Economy (or whatever your airline calls it) nowadays. And many of the flights were only 50% occupied, if that. And First Class in comparison was not so luxurious, only seats (just bigger ones) rather than flat beds.

So yes, quite reasonable to do then.

I see travel as a continuum. First come the explorers, than the intrepid travelers, then the premium tourists, last the packaged tours. In the 70�s the Maldives were a massive undertaking, as was much of Indonesia. Now they�re in reach of those with $$$. Soon they will be budget destinations.

A lot less cars/vehicles.

Japan:

http://www.mlit.go.jp/road/road_e/stat/

1960 - 2.3 mln total passenger and freight vehicles vs (1997 latest data) 2005 - 70 million+, and 14 million+ motorcycles.

Taiwan - though it only goes back to 1993.
1993 - 2003 ; cars - 4 mln to 6 mln ; motorcycles - 7.9 mln to 12.4 mln

(I think Taiwan is the highest per capita motorcycle country in the world. Quite annoying actually. I'll be there in a month or so. There were a ****lod even before 1993 I can say that much)


Excerpts from this article:
------------------------

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...06/ai_n8906103


1996, the world motor vehicle fleet numbered nearly 700 million, including over 500 million cars. Only about 75 million of these cars, or 15%, were in Asia (World Bank 1998)

My comment - In 2005...what is the total amount...800 or 850 million? Only 9 years, but alot changes these days.


On this basis they projected China's car population to reach 36 million in the year 2010, noting that in South Korea "vehicle sales and all consumer durables exploded once per capita income reached approximately $3500 a year". Similarly, Dargay and Gately (1997) forecast by 2015 nearly 60 million cars in China and over 450 cars per 1000 population in Taiwan and South Korea. More generally, Japan has been implicitly used as a model for Asian industrialising countries, and in 1996 Japanese car ownership reached 374 per 1000 population (

--

China, for example, auto manufacturing has been designated as one of the five 'pillar' industries for development in the early twenty-first century, with the long-term goal of a car for 270 million (or 90%) of Chinese families (Smil 1997). Calder (1996) similarly argues that for China 'a long-range projection of 300 million cars on the road is not unreasonable'.

1960, the world's cars totalled only about 98 million. The countries of western Europe, the United States (US), Canada, and Australasia together owned 92% of this total, with nearly 63% in the US alone. Asia's share, however, was little more than 1% (United Nations (UN) 1997)

----

Motorcycles

Ownership of motorcycles in the poorer countries is usually several times higher than that for cars, while in Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand, it exceeds 100, and in Taiwan, 400 per 1000 population. For Australia the figure is only 16 per 1000 population (World Bank 1998)

Vietnam reference on motorcycles 82 million people, there are an estimated 12 million lightweight motorcycles
http://216.109.117.135/search/cache?...icp=1&.intl=us


Indonesia
The total number of vehicles (such as cars,buses,and trucks)
in Indonesia increased from over 12 million in 1995 to over 19
million in 2000 (see Fig.1)-motorcycles1 (which comprise 71
percent of the total vehicle fleet)alone accounted for 5 million
of this increase.Transportation consumes 12 million kiloliters
of gas oil,12 million kiloliters of premium,118 thousand
kiloliters of diesel oil,185 thousand kiloliters of fuel oil,and
749 thousand kiloliters of other types of fuel.
2
Source: Statistik Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia, 2000.

My comment - 19 million in 2000, so 1.4 million added per year? So at that rate or something close to it 25- 28 million now?? 18-19 million motorcycles now I'm guessing if the same 70% factor is applied. I think this might make Indonesia the #1 in total motorcycle ownership by country (Outside of China and India probably - don't have stats yet)......though still far behind Taiwan's per capita ownership.

I can vouch for how annoying all the motorcycles are. I was on Java in late 2003. It was crazy in cities outside Jakarta too.


----------------------------------------------

Many Asians would laugh at this below:

USA - New Hampshire Highest Motorcycle/capita in US at 5.7/100
57 / 1000 for comparison to per capita figures above.
http://nhpr.org/view_content/4874/



There is a better and smarter way:

Table 2 shows that car intensity is very low for the affluent city states of Singapore and Hong Kong. Further, Tokyo and Osaka have much lower car intensities than Japan overall...


www.carfree.com

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Personally...I think the world is slowly but surely being destroyed by our mania for metal. If not destroyed, then made far less pleasant than it could be. Which is tied to greed, fear, and ignorance. Let the bean counters keep
counting in their 4 walled offices!!

Again, depending on where you look more vehicles makes it easier and harder. Generally I will say harder - and far more annoying. There is a point at which more vehicles provides diminishing or outright negative overall returns.

You opened a bagfull of memories there

For me it was not 1961 but 1968 when I made my first RTW alone. Things have definitely changed.

Here are some of the advantages then:

Tickets were paper, in my case all open and in F. The tickets were not restricted, you could just go from one airline to another if you missed a flight, just had the ticket endorsed and off you went.
By a one night stopover, the hotel was paid by the airline.
The fares were probably higher then, but to tell you the truth, I find them dearer now.
There was no need to plan and set all dates in advance.
I used a travel agency called Wagons-lits Cook, probably the best travel agency of that time. They organized absolutely everything for you at no extra cost, they were living on commissions at that time.
Foreign cities were less crowded, less cars and traffic, tourists were rare and welcome.
Communications were by telex and telegramm, sometimes a phone call, so no one called you on a mobile and you were spared the " oh, you are in Hong Kong, how nice, how's the weather, could you bring me this and that while there?"
Letters were waiting for you at some destinations. It also was a must to stop at the American Express Travel Desk to get mail and TC's deposited there for you...
Hotels and ground transportation were much cheaper than now.

There is very little that was worse than today, maybe the following:
Travelling took more time, you needed more luggage as in many places suits and ties were a must for dinner as well as sometimes dinner jackets... There were no 24 hour laundry/dry cleaning service, except in HKG and Singapore.
Some islands in the Pacific were reachable only by boat or air service was only once a week... Phone calls and communications were much slower, in some places you had to "place" calls and 6 or 7 hours later you might have gotten a connection, but God was it fun.

Thanks for the great insights magexpect.

I'm always curious why this question doesn't get more answers. (I've posted on another message board to) Our world has changed so much in just 40 years - barely more than half a lifetime. Maybe it's too much data I'm throwing out.....I could rattle off more things, even one liners - maybe most are just too busy moving forward to reflect.

Humans have short memories.

Into more detail on something you mentioned - population:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/numbers.html

World population:

1950 - 2.55 bln
1960 - 3.02 bln
1974 - 3.9 bln
2005 - 6 bln or so

So 1961 about 1/2 as many people as today. Which depending on how you look at it makes travel easier or harder. Generally, I will say harder.

Depends on region too:

1950 / 2000

Asia 1.44 bln / 3.7 bln (Too much sex, or too little sex? - which is the greater reason. Answer not as easy as you think)

Africa 228k / 797k
Europe 546k / 727k (Not much of a factor)
LatinAmer/Carib - 166k / 523k
N. Amer - 221k / 481k
Oceania - 12k / 30k

Our perception of Earth was different.

The first photograph of Earth from space was in 1959/1960.

http://www1.nasa.gov/audience/foredu...rom_Space.html

http://www.earth.nasa.gov/history/tiros/tiros.html

I started travelling a in the mid-60s, and for me the biggest difference by FAR between then and now is the availability and accessibility of information. If I wanted information about a country or city, I'd need to write to that place's tourism bureau, and a week or so later (or more) I'd get some brochures and a map. Today, I spend 20 minutes online and get 100x times the information, including the invaluable opinions of others who have gone there. For flight info, I'd need to get ahold of the OAG, in a library or office, or collect the airlines' printed timetables. Again, a laborious chore.

Overall, there were far fewer flights, and the hub-and-spoke concept was unheard of. Flying to Asia or Australia was much more complicated, as the longer-range jets didn't begin service until the very late 60s/early 70s.

OTOH, you generally had a lot more flexibility, and the need for advance planning (esp for flights) was nothing like it is today. I recall a youth fare ticket from N America to Europe in 1970 allowed me to fly back from any western European city to any eastern city in the US or Canada, on virtually any airline (except Icelandic or the airlines of the then-Communist bloc).

Also no issues getting frequent flyer seats: no such thing existed!

You don't have to go back 40 years to see amazing differences in travel. I've been traveling to Asia for only 8-9 years and it is shocking how different things are now. In Beijing for example, not long ago there used to be a sea of bicycles on the streets, and now there is hardly a bike in sight. Everyone drives or takes a bus. And they finally have E-tickets here. Yea!

In the middle east, things have changed at an even faster rate.

Back in 1961 I doubt many American families left their own states to go on vacation. Disneyland was only a few years old, and I somestic air travel was too expensive for most familes.

Beaches had not yet been invented, either.

Washington DC was never a destination for vacationing families. Ever.

National Parks like Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon and others were empty. No visitors.

In fact, there were no roads connecting any of these far-flung places, either.



Seriously, I'm sure that some people had never left the state of their birth - but deregulated airfare and the settlement of Orlando didn't mark the beginning of interstate vacation travel. Not by a longshot.