I have done hitchhiking in Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. And I took my 57 year old mom along with me. At first she would have no patience and was already annoyed the frist 15 minutes when it took us some time to stop a car in Thailand. But if I ask her again after taking normal buses (and tourist) in Vietnam, she simply says she likes hitchhiking more.
The craziest things can happen on the road. Hitchhiking in Laos is not always fun and easy at all. But in the end is still way better than taking buses. The big change is your mentality. Since you just simply have to wait until someone is willing to take you along, you have to be patient and never know for sure when you arrive at your next destination, it might be the next day. You might have to walk 6km straight with backpack in the sunburning heat, and as my mom: sweat so much your face is literally melting and you look like you just took a shower. If you come from a Belgian diet, you will definitely loose weight traveling like this. But on the other hand people like it so much to see an elderly traveling and have immediately compassion with you. Tuk tuk would say, you can not walk 3km, your mom should have a tuktuk. Or mom should not go on a hike in the jungle and stay in the hotel. But in Cambodia you might get some free tuktuks just simply because mom looks tired (the backpacks where getting heavier with all those souvenirs). There are plenty of reasons why people do not like to hitchhike. But most of them are very relative and a lot depends on the country and place. Since taking a bus in Nepal or a train in India can/very likely to be more uncomfortable and crazy then taking a ride in Thailand. The only way you skip all the adventure and craziness is when you simply take a flight. Every airport is basically the same everywhere in the world. They are like vacuum in-between zones where all the culture of the country where you are at is sucked out of the most. They are like transition zones that are sanitized from everything from the outside world. You go to the airport and leave the madness and take your plane and all of the sudden you are in a different madness on the other side of the world. Or maybe just a country that borders the previous one. Or within the same country. In any way I always feel the culture shock again. But if you take a bus/car/train over the border you notice the smaller details and differences. The nuances of the same thing. Since borders are bullshit in a way and have never been fixed for ever, the people are the same on the other as on the other side. Culture and the differences between cultures is more about the small nuances, it is about the local people and their habits, which also shifts and changes just as the borders. And this what you come across when you travel overland, and especially when you hitchhike. Off course you are not saving big amounts of money. And you have to wait until someone is kind and generous to take you along for free. But when you are not paying for the ride, you can not have wishes and expectations. You can only get surprised. That is the beauty of it. It gives the idea of being more free. Free from rules and expectations and free from the money. An opportunity to come across unexpected things and people. To see some things on the way. And it stops the illusion of wasting time while on transportation. What does it matter if you don’t make it fully to your destination? Go there the next day. You are free of fears of the unknown since it does not matter. There is always a solution. You skip certain discomfort by applying rules like hitchhike during the day, do not do it alone,… Me and my mom slept in a temple on a floor together, within a mosquito net to keep away mosquitos and other bugs like cockroaches. We slept in people houses, kind enough to offer us a free bed and a meal. But most of the time we made it to our destination on time and slept in hostels with a bed. And had some experiences on the way. We learned way more of the culture on the way by talking to people and witnessing things that you can not witness when traveling with tourist transportation. And if a 57 year old is not bothered with the discomforts of hitchhiking.. Most of the time it is more comfortable then a bus anyway, since we usually have more space to sit. And every once in a while we have a crazy transportation like a local agricultural truck where you get messy and dirty and have a lot of fun. We do not give people money for taking us along but I do bring more smiles on people faces when I hitchhike then those who simply take a bus. It is a rare sight to see a white young girl in the back of a pick up while her hair is going wild from the wind traveling with her mom with a funny hat, fully enjoying the ride with a broad smile. lees waarom we overnacht hebben bij een Khmu hilltribe - Day 20
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