When I was born, the price of mailing a letter was 3 cents, which it had been from 1932. (The inflation-adjusted price was around 25 cents.) When I was 10 years old (1958), it rose to 4 cents and then to 5 cents in 1963 and 6 cents in 1968. I was a stamp collector all when I was a kid and I remember the 3 cents stamps best of all. On the other hand, telephone calls were expensive when I was a kid. A 3-minute call from New York to L.A. in 1968 was $1.70 ($12 in today’s money), although it was a bit cheaper at night. Today I call my friend Toon in Amsterdam on WhatsApp and it’s free.
When I drove from Europe to India, I was in Asia for about 2 years. I communicated with my family via letters and post cards. I only spoke with them on the phone once— and it was the only time I stayed in a hotel. I was preparing to drive back to Europe and I decided to treat myself to a fancy hotel in Agra. I was out at the pool and an attendant brought me phone by accident, thinking I was someone else. I called my mom, said hi for a couple of minutes and hung up. It was only one of 3 or 4 calls I made in the 6 years I was abroad. But we could make do with what we had back then.
“Dear Mom, I sent you a kilo of top grade Moroccan kif from Madrid. When it comes take a little for yourself and call Andy and he’ll come over and give you $2,500. Send that to me immediately care of American Express in Vienna.” (By the way, kif, or kief, is kind of a cross between marijuana and hash, stronger than marijuana but not quite as dense as hash, a kind of cannabis concentrate. I went to the Rif Mountains in wild northeast Morocco to buy some and Martha smuggled it into Spain on per person.)
Anyway, I am so totally off topic. I was trying to set up a comparison between my trip in 1969 with Roland’s solo sojourn to the Philippines this month. He’s motorbiking around the Visayas, primarily Cebu, Bohol, Leyte, Negros, Apo. We text everyday and he sends me photos and complains about the air quality and the humidity. I feel like I’m on the trip with him, visiting relatively unspoiled beaches. He told me he thinks our species is going to have to devolve back into sea creatures to survive Climate Change. “Becoming water creatures again only possible way to survive,” he wrote from Cebu when he was still jetlagged.
He had a rough trip over via Seoul. "In Korea. All these Koreans are sick. Everyone on plane sneezing coughing. The guy sitting next to me on the plane was an old coot from Texas. He said 'Asians are the sickest people on the planet. Always sick. Nose pickers that's why. Guaranteed that is a major reason. Look at that lad-- snot coming down nose for 12 hours. Coughing sneezing. Clearly a COVID case. No wonder people stay home." Later Roland texted me again wrote, "Plane had no internet. Only COVID." He was fine when he got to Cebu. He didn’t leave the Manila airport, just flew directly south to Cebu. Smart.
He said no one takes credit cards so he has to touch the money, which he wrote is filthy, unlike the islands which he keeps describing as “a tropic paradise” quiet, beautiful and with spotty cell service. “Beautiful country. Truly unspoiled paradise, little infrastructure. This island, Bohol, is probably what Phuket was like 40 years ago… water color as stunning as anything Fiji or Tahiti offers. But very poor people.” He missed a Carpenters tribute show but did manager to see a Beatles cover band that he said were perfect.
He went to the tarsier sanctuary— tiny monkeys that only live there, on Bohol. But they’re nocturnal so the only ones he saw were sleeping. He was suprised that the Filipinos hadn't eaten them all. He also thought all the Filipinos would be speaking English. They don’t “and the ones who do, don’t make any sense.” One day he went with one of the expats he had met online swimming with whale sharks, only there were no whale sharks around. He managed to meet up expats he’d been communicating with online for a year, older retired Americans with young Filipana wives living in paradise, in the sticks on their Social Security and whatever meager savings they may have had.
His cell phone allowed him to send me photos everyday, which made it seem like I was there too. He didn't take this tarsier though.
Imagine all those millions of dirt-poor people living first-world lives. Imagine the spike in CO2 due to that? In fact, if the 6 billion poorest hapless humans could all live first-world lives, the planet would be at 420 ppm/CO2 and climate would be changing at even a faster pace.
but I digress.
"He told me he thinks our species is going to have to devolve back into sea creatures to survive Climate Change."
this goes waaaaaay back, but I once heard a "joke" when I was maybe 13.
It's been raining for 40 days and 40 nights. The rivers are all flooded. The lakes are all flooded. The ocean tides are at historic highs. The weather forecast is for…
Wow Roland, traveler extraordinaire. India here we come! Can’t e