Overland Budget Travel for the Over 30's

Overland from Europe to Asia was the original 1960's hippies travelling route. Along the way they invented that backpacking craze which has grown to a huge international phenomenon supporting many publishing empires and tour companies along the way - which I find kinda ironic! I didn't quite make the 1960's trail - being fully involved with primary school at the time and didn't hit the road until well into the 1980's.

At that time, in my mid-20's I was quite old compared to many I travelling with. Twenty years later I still travel and still refuse to go on package tours or stay in 4 star hotels (well not unless I really, really want to or someone else is paying that is!) and what I notice is that I am not the only over-40 year old in the hostel - and some of my fellow hostelers are definitely in the retirement age bracket!

When I recently travelled in Vietnam I found that I tended to stay in different places from the backpacker "ghettos" as advertised in the Lonely Planet guide but often ended up paying the same as for a lot less "hard sell" hassle that Vietnam is notorious for amongst budget travellers. The tricks I'd learnt the hard way when I first travelled seemd to have missed the newer backpackers - probably because they are bombared by easy pre-packaged options. In one case when getting off a backpacker bus we were the only 2 from about 40 or 50 on the bus that insisted on getting off in what was clearly was the centre of town - the guide was insisting that there was a "better place" to stop a little down the road (obviously the hotel that paid the best commission) but we followed the Vietnamanese off the bus and insisted on getting our bags as well. All of this took a good 5 minutes of arguement and during that time not one of the other backpackers made any move to get off! I just hope they didn't complain when they got stuck at the out of the way hotel of choice!