These 20th century travel icons have disappeared, but I'll never forget

Technology may have made travel more efficient, but there is still plenty to be nostalgic about.

Who remembers paper airline tickets? I’d forgotten all about them till I was digging in a drawer recently and found a faded memory of 20th-century travel. The emotions I felt as I held it in my hand! That bittersweet sensation of handing over all my hard-earned cash for a flimsy book of paper coupons printed with secret codes that could only be understood by people in the airline industry. I would clutch that precious thing tight like a Wonka golden ticket. It was my key to the world. God help me if I lost it.

And then suddenly, in 2008, they simply ceased to exist. They were a hassle, for sure, but I can’t help feeling a little nostalgic. As with many of the trappings of old-school travel, what they lacked in convenience they made up for in character-building experiences.

On my first trip overseas I took all the essentials. A money belt (I still have one) and a fat wad of travellers’ cheques, because there was no safer or more convoluted way of accessing cash overseas. Like almost everything in the olden days, getting money involved a complex strategy. Carrying huge amounts of cash was inadvisable. So instead there were fancy cheques that required a functioning bank and willing staff to convert them into actual dollars. Or rupees. Or zlotys. Whatever. Getting your hands on ready funds could take at least half a day. Now there are apps and online banking and ATMs and pay-wave purchases. What a world.

I have similar poignant recollections of booking train tickets via India’s mind-numbing railway bureaucracy (allow at least one whole day). And buying Lonely Planet guidebooks to scour hotel listings and then picking up the phone to make a booking, racking up outrageous IDD call charges in the process. The best bit? Arriving bone-tired at your destination in the dead of night to find the hotel has no record of your reservation and you have nowhere to stay.

Communications, generally, were medieval as recently as the 1990s. I can still remember having to book a Christmas trunk call a day in advance, then fronting up at the appointed hour to a glass-walled booth and waiting patiently until an actual human operator would patch the call through to Australia.

I have poignant recollections of buying Lonely Planet guidebooks to scour hotel listings.

Other things that were painful but necessary rites of passage:

● Reconfirming flights. Often in person. And if you forgot to do it, or couldn’t get through to the airline, good luck getting on that plane.

● Fronting up to embassies and consulates to plead your case and hand over cash for a visa. All those lost hours spent slumped in plastic chairs under flickering fluorescent lights waiting for your number to ding up on the digital queue. E-visas are a genius invention.

I’m old enough to remember when it was A-okay to smoke on flights. Picture: Alamy.

I’m old enough to remember when it was A-okay to smoke on flights and airlines thought it made sense to divide single cabins into smoking and non-smoking sections. We were all smokers back then.

I miss disembarking ferries in Mediterranean ports and being met by locals clasping signs saying “Room for rent”, then following total strangers to their homes and leaving as lifelong friends. The ritual’s largely been killed off by the internet and EU regulations, but I was pleased to see recently that it persists at the beach resort of Ksamil in Albania.

American Express coined the catchphrase “Don’t Leave Home Without It” for their travellers’ cheques, but there are so many other packing essentials, most now obsolete, that I associate with that era. Among them: water-purification tablets (bottled water was a luxury). Reef oil (remember sunburn?). And my Sony Sports Walkman radio-cassette player for music-on-the-go. So modern.

American Express coined the catchphrase “Don’t Leave Home Without It” for their travellers’ cheques.  

I miss being able to walk through an airport without running the gauntlet of duty free. And going through security without having to disrobe and dehydrate and unshoe and unsheathe every electrical item. And being able, on very special occasions, to go into the cockpit for take-off or landing. I think the last time I had the thrilling privilege was on a Fiji Airways flight in the late ’90s when I sat with the pilots as the plane soared above the Pacific archipelago bound for LA. Obviously that practice ended a few years later.

Perhaps the thing I miss the most is mail. Emails and instant messages are nice but nothing beats the joy of turning up to poste restante at the Bombay Amex office after two months offline to find 42 – 42! – letters waiting for me. Just one of the joys of travel that’s been lost to us forever.

STRANGER THINGS

One thing I still cherish in this age of mass travel is arriving somewhere so remote that I’m treated like an alien from outer space. Granted, I’m funny looking, but being the odd one out is always a buzz.

Originally published as These 20th century travel icons have disappeared, but I'll never forget