The Hippie Trail......

[theblether]

I noticed a comment on the Hand To Mouth thread about the amount of farangs who were living like that back in the 60's / 70's. It got me thinking about the kind of people who would have been wandering about SE Asia at that time and it occurred to me that there must have been a fair few Hippies, however!! when I had a look at the original Hippie Trail it seemed to terminate in Northern India / Nepal.

Where was the Thai / SE Asia Hippie Trail? Did any of you guys go on it? and outside of Pai, where is the current Hippie Trail?.

[David48]

Man ... like you, I was born in the 60's.

Some will drop by and share their youth soon I hope ... I really like listening to the old-timers regal their youth (no disrespect meant by that)

Images and memories like this?

[rgs2001uk]

Never mind all this plastic hippie <deleted>, the stones etc.

Lay back fire one up and set your controls for the heart of the sun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewxNZVDDph4

Lemmy playing like a God.

[Jingthing]

My authentic hippie memories -- the only thing of interest to hippies about Thailand back then was Thai Stick. Not that Thai Stick was chopped liver though.

No, not talking about rice noodles.

Much more interest in India and amazingly Afghanistan.

Edited February 18, 2013 by Jingthing

[rgs2001uk]

Ok Haiverer, the hippie trail went from, The Burns Howff, to the Scotia Bar, to Lauders Bar, or not neccasarily in than order

[pattayadingo]

Never mind all this plastic hippie <deleted>, the stones etc.

Lay back fire one up and set your controls for the heart of the sun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewxNZVDDph4

Lemmy playing like a God.

Lemmy and the lads were so poor they used to cadge cups of tea in the Mountain Grill cafe......

Now where did I put that LP?

Great music IMHO.

[smokie36]

LP.....I'm diggin' oot mah 78's man!

[kennedy]

Never mind all this plastic hippie <deleted>, the stones etc.

Lay back fire one up and set your controls for the heart of the sun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewxNZVDDph4

Lemmy playing like a God.

Lemmy and the lads were so poor they used to cadge cups of tea in the Mountain Grill cafe......

Now where did I put that LP?

Great music IMHO.

X 2 smoking a dubie

[katana]

Psychedelia and 60's influence did reach Thailand in the 1960s.

Ream Daranoi - Fai Yen from the album "The Sound of Siam - Leftfield Luk Thung, Jazz and Molam from Thailand 1964 -1975".

Thai Beat A Go-Go Vol 2 -[20]- The Surapon Alias Fox - Nang Maew Pee (The Ghost Of Catwoman)

Edited February 18, 2013 by katana

[weegee]

If you can remember the sixtys....you werent really there!!!!!!!!!

"The Who"....People try to put us down....just because we get around.....

[craigt3365]

My authentic hippie memories -- the only thing of interest to hippies about Thailand back then was Thai Stick. Not that Thai Stick was chopped liver though.

No, not talking about rice noodles.

Much more interest in India and amazingly Afghanistan.

I visited "freak street" in Nepal about 10 years ago. Still a few long hairs walking around, but pretty commercialized now. Haven't been to Goa, but would like to just to check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail

The hippie trail was the journey taken by hippies and others in the 1960s and 1970s from Europe overland to and from southern Asia, mainly India and Nepal.

Can't remember the author, but he's quite famous and took a trip from the UK to Afghanistan in a VW van back in the 60's. I've read excerpts. Sounded like an amazing trip. Something that obviously could not be replicated now.

[villagefarang]

I didn’t arrive in Bangkok until 1975, not yet 21years old. While the girls all wore bell bottoms and platform shoes all I noticed about the foreign guys was there were a lot of US military still around. Didn’t see any hippies per say.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Man ... like you, I was born in the 60's.

Some will drop by and share their youth soon I hope ... I really like listening to the old-timers regal their youth (no disrespect meant by that)

Images and memories like this?

Nice picture! Little strange to see that they made cocktail buses in dull gray colors back then.

[Scottythai]

New age hippy trail. Khao San road then the bus down to Koh Phangan Had Rin

[weegee]

the Blether....memories are flooding back of the sixties, since reading your post.

No Matter where we all were, and what we were doing, you would have to agree, that was definitely the best era to be in...

The "Nimbin Hippies" were the most creative in my area...to a point where it became a tourist attraction.

[phuturatica]

I wasn't even born in the 60s! But I'm sure I would have had a blast!

[IMA_FARANG]

Depending on the direction you were going the route was from Europe to Iran, then Afghanistan, maybe to Nepal and India.

Burma was pretty much closed off to backpackes so you had to splurge for a flight into Thailand.

Or from Aussie to Europe if you liked that direction.

There was a big beach thing in Phuket ... sleeping in a hut on the beach for a couple of dollars a night.... 5 or 6 to a palm thatched hut with no electricity except a few hours a night and no air conditioning of course.

Barbecued fish on the beach from the local fishermen.

From there down to Malaysia by train and through Malaysia to Singapore.

Hopefully you still had the money for a flight from Singapore to Bali, Indonesia, or Austrailia if you had parents to bankroll you.

Used to be Aussie girls in Singapore who were willing to accompany anyone that looked interesting enough for a week or so. The cost was a one way t icket to Aussie land.

I never did it, but my friend John was from a wealthy family in Beverly Hills, California. They bankrolled him for two years travel on the Hippie Trail.

John was nobody's fool .... he learned everthing he could about Indonesia .... and later opened a high-so shop in Beverly hills selling high quality Batik and jewelry from Indonesia and Southeast Asia to very rich people at 300 to 500 percent more than he bought it in Asia.

The last time I saw him there were two Bentlys and a Rolls parked in his garage.But I rhink he went bust later in the 90's

Not all long haired hippie backpackers were dumb, just unlucky later.

I was born in 1946 ... but my family was poor.

[jocko]

Man ... like you, I was born in the 60's.

Some will drop by and share their youth soon I hope ... I really like listening to the old-timers regal their youth (no disrespect meant by that)

Images and memories like this?

Nice picture! Little strange to see that they made cocktail buses in dull gray colors back then.

I think Thai Airways are still using that plane.

There was a program on UK TV a few years ago about a guy who started the bus trips for backpacker he just bought old bus's and started a business taken people around what was to become the Hippy trail is was interesting and of course many problems but all part of the adventure.

From what I have read it was the r&r visits for the troops from the Vietnam war that kick started the tourist industry in Thailand I remember a few years back there was a black and white film clip on utube taken in a bar somewhere in Thailand you could hear the jukebox playing the Supremes and the young Thai women looking like them sadly it's not on utube anymore but it was good stuff.

[jocko]

Depending on the direction you were going the route was from Europe to Iran, then Afghanistan, maybe to Nepal and India.

Burma was pretty much closed off to backpackes so you had to splurge for a flight into Thailand.

Or from Aussie to Europe if you liked that direction.

There was a big beach thing in Phuket ... sleeping in a hut on the beach for a couple of dollars a night.... 5 or 6 to a palm thatched hut with no electricity except a few hours a night and no air conditioning of course.

Barbecued fish on the beach from the local fishermen.

From there down to Malaysia by train and through Malaysia to Singapore.

Hopefully you still had the money for a flight from Singapore to Bali, Indonesia, or Austrailia if you had parents to bankroll you.

Used to be Aussie girls in Singapore who were willing to accompany anyone that looked interesting enough for a week or so. The cost was a one way t icket to Aussie land.

I never did it, but my friend John was from a wealthy family in Beverly Hills, California. They bankrolled him for two years travel on the Hippie Trail.

John was nobody's fool .... he learned everthing he could about Indonesia .... and later opened a high-so shop in Beverly hills selling high quality Batik and jewelry from Indonesia and Southeast Asia to very rich people at 300 to 500 percent more than he bought it in Asia.

The last time I saw him there were two Bentlys and a Rolls parked in his garage.But I rhink he went bust later in the 90's

Not all long haired hippie backpackers were dumb, just unlucky later.

I was born in 1946 ... but my family was poor.

What years are you posting about?

[chiangmaikelly]

I wanted to be a hippie soldier like the guy in the photo but my CO gave me five bucks (MPC actually) a week to get a haircut at the Dragon Ladies haircut and boom boom and massage emporium. So I took the path of least resistance and got a haircut and my fatigues custom tailored and starched and ironed and changed them three times a day.

[HeavyDrinker]

Nowadays the media call it 'The Banana Pancake Trail' and that tends to encompass any destination found in the 'highlights' sections of the SEAsia Lonely Planet and Rough Guide books; for example watching telly and having your hair braided on KSRd, being obnoxious in Pai, getting mind-numbingly drunk and drowning on the river in Vang Vieng, having a Viet Nam 'war experience' in Saigon, painting yourself purple and jumping around a lot to loud techno on a Southern Thai beach etc.

All jolly good fun no doubt but not the sort of thing for us dignified expats. If I hear any word of TV members doing any of the above I shall have to report them to the committee.

[angiud]

New age hippy trail. Khao San road then the bus down to Koh Phangan Had Rin

Sadly until 20 to 10 years ago

[poanoi]

There was quite a few hippies in sihanookville smokin pot,

Cambodia is the place for that

[angiud]

Around 1973 I was, young student after my baccalaureate at Istanbul, close to Sultanahmet, at the already famous Pudding Shop. Area from where the "Magic Bus" departed, once full, to Afghanistan and to India and Nepal. I was too poor to afford a trip like that and only looked with envy at the hippies waiting, sometimes a week, the bus was full and ready to leave.

Magic Bus Istanbul 1976 by Rory MacLean, on Flickr

Graham Bourne, driver for the original Magic Bus Company, outside the Pudding Shop in Istanbul. Bourne said, 'Bozo the bus was fine old plodder that never gave me any trouble. I miss the freedom she provided.'

photographer: Graham Bourne 1976 (on loan to the Asia Overland Hippie Trail Archive)

[harrry]

In the days of the hippy trail people who traveled did so with the intention of mixing with local people and trying to relate to their lives. A few of them like Tony Wheeler did so to make a profit. Now the young people on their adventure clutching copies of the BBC owned Lonely Planet guide spend all their time in commercially oriented ventures such as diving and jet ski riding with as little contact with the locals as possible.

Edited February 19, 2013 by harrry

[rene123]

Did the true "hippies" even know HOW to find their way out of California? I doubt if most could even afford the price of a plane ticket.

[bobbin]

Well blether, there are still a few originals kicking around...

In 1970 I flew from Canada to Bombay. I traveled with a friend who had recently returned from London, where he had heard the early stories of the overland route to India. I was 18 years old and spent the next 7 years bouncing around India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Every winter season I spent in Goa, attending the original full-moon parties on Anjuna Beach.

As someone noted, Burma only allowed 7 day visas in those times and no overland connection to India. Travel from India to Thailand was done by air, and I first flew into Don Muang airport in 1971. They used buses to transport passengers from the aircraft to the terminal. I returned to Thailand a few times over the next years. It was so modern compared to the countries in which I was spending my youth! Supermarkets, modern cars and fashions. Lovely girls, not many farang who weren't embassy people or American servicemen on R and R. As for the GI's, we were about the same age but our lives were so different! Nobody was shooting at me, even in Afghanistan! The heyday of the Atlantis hotel. I first formulated the idea of retiring in Thailand. I left the hippie paradise (already slipping away) in 1977 to return to Canada and joined the rat-race, but Thailand was always on my mind.

I returned to Thailand for holidays a few times in the '90's to see if I still thought it a good idea to retire here. In 2001, I did just that.

Now I have spent almost 1/3 of my life in this part of the world and live, apart from more luxuries, very much as I did 40 years ago....

[harrry]

Did the true "hippies" even know HOW to find their way out of California? I doubt if most could even afford the price of a plane ticket.

If they could't find their way out of California they would never have made it here. Though Uncle Sam gave a few of them free rides here. Many tried to maintain contqct with home by using smoke signals as they were into limited technology.

Edited February 19, 2013 by harrry

[chiangmaikelly]

Did the true "hippies" even know HOW to find their way out of California? I doubt if most could even afford the price of a plane ticket.

Boy you are young. The movement started on the East coast of the US with Beatniks and then moved to the West coast. Try reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The New York Times called The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test "not simply the best book on hippies… [but also] the essential book. You also might want to read, " Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers"

The youth of the 1960's were the only generation in North America to actually do something beyond sit on their bums and sponge off of mom and dad. Stopping the war in Vietnam, Civil rights movement, 2nd wave Feminism, gay rights, Hispanic and Chicano movement to name a few. Actually one might say every generation before and after the Hippies were lost.

[theblether]

@harrry. So true, it's comical and a little bit sad to see the constant stream of backpackers wandering around the streets with their noses pressed into Lonely Planet. Most of the places they arrive in are farang ghettos, so they ain't getting any taste of Thailand at all.