HEY BOOMERS, DUST OFF YOUR BACKPACKS TRAVEL THE WORLD ON A LIMITED BUDGET HEY BOOMERS, DUST OFF YOUR BACKPACKS TRAVEL THE WORLD ON A LIMITED BUDGET Or AROUND THE WORLD ALONE ON SOCIAL SECURITY By LINDA J. BROWN A Hey Boomers Media Book 2011 Broadway Ave. Clearwater, Florida, 33755 Copyright 2008 by Linda J. Brown All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission First Edition, 2008 Visit our website at www.heyboomers.com Brown, Linda J. Hey Boomers, Dust Off Your Backpacks: Travel The World On A Limited Budget/ Linda J. Brown ISBN 978-0-9820049-5-1 1. Baby Boomers 2. Around The World Travel 3. Social Security 2. 4. Budget Travel 5. Backpacking/Hostelling 6. Senior Travel 3. 7 Traveler’s writings, American BISAC # TRV026050 To intrepid travelers of every century, no matter what their age. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS … v WHEN FEAR FELL AWAY … vii PREFACE … xi SLEEPING WITH GUYS HALF MY AGE … 1 SLOVENIA … 5 Ljubljana, Dreznica, Bled HUNGARY … 13 Heviz, Budapest BULGARIA … 25 Sofia, Varna SERBIA … 47 Belgrade SLOVAKIA … 51 Kezmarok POLAND … 57 Krakow, Auschwitz/Birkenau, Salt Mines, Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw CZECH REPUBLIC … 79 Prague i SLOVENIA … 89 Piran CROATIA … 93 Rovinj Rijeka BOSNIA … 99 Sarajevo CROATIA … 107 Dubrovnik MONTENEGRO … 111 Podgorica ALBANIA … 115 Shkoder, Tirana MACEDONIA … 125 Skopje TURKEY … 131 Istanbul, Cappadocia, Olympos Part II … 145 Egypt, India and Thailand EGYPT … 147 Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Nile River Felucca, Mt. Sinai, Cairo ii INDIA … 167 Mumbai, Pune, Osho Ashram, Goa, Panjim, Calangute Beach, Palolem Beach, Mysore, Ahmadabad, Udaipur, Narayan Seva Sansthan Hospital, Kali Puja, New Delhi, Agra, Taj Mahal, Old Delhi, Calcutta THAILAND … 259 Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Ethnic Hill Tribes: Li Su Village, Karen Village, Ko Payam Island, Phuket A LOVE LETTER TO THE BOOMERS … 275 WHEN FEAR FALLS AWAY FROM YOU … 277 A BRIEF SUMMARY OF COSTS … 279 ABOUT THE AUTHOR … 281 iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To Fawn Germer, my friend, mentor, and exercise buddy, who encouraged and counseled me about getting my work into print while we sweated through long fitness walks beside Clearwater Bay. She is my example of a successful author. To my editor, Lynn Stratton, who protected the world from knowing the wrong stuff about me and encouraged me to give more of the right stuff; to Teri Swift, my friend, neighbor and computer professional who converted the manuscript into print format, I am grateful for your expertise and for being available when I needed you both. To Deb Kunzie, of GarlicDzign, for designing my blogsite, heyboomers.com, which will tell the world about this book, I am glad our paths crossed. To my son, Randy Brown, whose knowledge about literature and art I completely respect, and who took care of home base while I went gallivanting; thanks for being there every step of the way in the writing, proofing, and cover design. To my sister, Ann Sargent, for a last-minute proofing and further correction suggestions for which I am very grateful. Thanks also to my friends, Renee Hardman and Polly Wylie, who kept up with my progress during bike rides and lunches over the years, and to the Kirkhams, now of Denver, Colorado: my daughter, Jennifer, son-in-law, Kevin, and grand-children, Riley, 10, and Molly, 8, who cheered me on and voted on things that needed deciding. v WHEN FEAR FELL AWAY We were descending the summit of Pyramid Peak near Aspen, Colorado, when I had my first—and final—face-to-face encounter with fear. I stared it down, and I haven’t heard from it since. It was August 1988, and I'd climbed this killer mountain three times before, never much thinking of its drastic reputation among mountaineers as the toughest and most dangerous of Colorado's “fourteeners,” the mountaineer’s term for any mountain over 14,000 feet. But the death of famed theoretical physicist Heinz Pagels, just the week before, was on my mind. At fifty, I was only a year older than he had been on that gorgeous July day when he hugged the same rock face and edged his right foot blindly around the curve to find a solid place on the narrow ledge. Pyramid is what’s called a "rotten" mountain, and it was his bad luck to find a rotten rock with that right foot. Thinking of him that day, I survived his ledge, but there was a scree-covered slope just ahead with my name on it Someone else in my party had already crossed an angled slab of granite and was waiting to grab my hand, once I'd taken several long steps necessary to traverse the sideways-slanting rock crossed by the trail. Then, I stopped short. There was nothing for four thousand feet to catch a plummeting body. Plus, tiny pebbles of scree littered that slick rock, and they could easily send my boot soles skidding. "I could die ten seconds from now," I heard a part of my mind whisper to myself, as fear found a wide open door into my heart. I felt his cold fingers along my spine and vii noticed how that affected the backs of my knees and put a stricture in my throat. For one split second, I even considered challenging my own belief that what one takes up the mountain, one must also carry down, including my own inexpert body. Then, I remembered the lesson of the labor room, twenty-five years before. My babies were born by natural childbirth and I went into labor fully trained to cooperate. Midpoint, and simply out of curiosity, I had experimented for one tiny moment to see what would happen if I stopped doing the breathing and relaxing exercises that I'd been taught. Wham—the pain hit hard. Now, I understood why those women down the hall were screaming and crying in such fear: They were unprepared, and so afraid that their bodies naturally clenched up and worked against them. There in that labor room bed I took charge of myself and resumed the exercises, and all went well. And, on this mountain, I took charge of myself again. Tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, said my mind, verbalizing the six steps required; using my hands to rehearse the placement of my feet. That launched my body across the open space and, in seconds, I was holding my friend's outstretched hand. Fear had lost its foothold and must have fallen into the abyss instead, because I haven’t seen him since. Over the next quarter-century, there were many opportunities for fear to return to my heart. I left my happy- go-lucky life in glorious Aspen to plan and lead group trips to the Soviet Union, taking Westerners to meet the people of that vast land when the Iron Curtain fell apart. Strange and dicey things happened all the time, but they gave me exhilaration and happiness instead of fear and worry. That sort of travel led to an appetite for more, and I began to roam viii the less-traveled places of the world, alone. Recently, I proved that I could safely wander across the entire Northern Hemisphere by myself, with only a backpack, for a year. Soon, I'll set out to do the same throughout the Southern Hemisphere. Even as I age along, I do not encounter that old rascal, Fear. My beloved mountain, Pyramid Peak in Colorado, took him away from me forever. ix PREFACE There’s a certain kind of story that pops up in our minds when we’re sitting around a campfire, or a dinner table, and someone says, “Let me tell you about the funniest bus trip I ever took . .” Or the wildest camel ride, or the strangest meal, or whatever. If you’re a veteran traveler too, then all of your own stories in those same categories will come to mind, ready for the telling when the first speaker is finished. Human beings have always been this way. It’s how we spent our evenings, back in the cave. And it’s often how we spend them today, if we ever take the time to sit around a fire. So, come now and gather around my campfire while I tell my tales. I call out to a vast population, the Baby Boomers, the oldest of whom are, at the very least, eight years younger than me. A few boomers began to tiptoe into early retirement at age 62, in February of 2008, but the greater majority must wait a few more years until they can draw full Social Security benefits. Boomers may not yet have comforting stories in their minds, as I do, with the strange vistas I’ve seen through the gauze of a government check, because they’re still among the uninitiated. I’m like an elderly warrior, securely under the protection of the Tribal Fund, who has returned to tell of good times possible on the other side of the great age divide. Boomers cannot yet go to learn the truth for themselves, and they may quake at the thought of seventh-decade bones lugging belongings along unlit back roads to strange beds and uncertain sanitation. Historically, that Tribal Fund has spelled an end to the happy-go-lucky life and a beginning of a long and dreaded decline into dotage. xi But, here am I, with genuine tales to the contrary. I’ve been Out There, and I’m going again. Let me tell you what it’s like to be socially secure under the most insecure of circumstances.