1 month ago
10
January 15, 2026 — 5:00am
Oh, the good old days, when we survived without Aperol spritz and macaroons. A time when flavoured milk and Pizza Shapes seemed sophisticated. The age before smug Instagrammers in breezy linens constantly reminded us how wrinkled we’ve become.
Travel in the 1990s was something else. We could saunter past the Mona Lisa without battling bullet-proof glass and onlookers 10-tourists deep – 25,000 of them each day, these days.
When I lived in hardscrabble China in the early 1990s, domestic tourism was inconsequential, and I had the Great Wall and Terracotta Army to myself. Over a five-day May Day long weekend in May 2025, sleek new China recorded 314 million domestic trips.
As an empathetic human being I’m delighted that the Chinese and Indians and Brazilians are now everywhere, enjoying the world as much as I do. As a traveller, not so much. What happened to the subdued Japanese tour groups of the 1990s?
Sure, there were large numbers of tourists around in 1990, when 400 million international arrivals were recorded worldwide. But now it’s three times that number. We’re obliged to purchase sightseeing tickets in advance, select a time slot, battle crowds and dodge selfie sticks.
The selfie stick took the world by storm in 2014. Social media also arrived in the 2000s. Digital cameras were only emerging in the 1990s. Before that, we took fewer photos, struck fewer poses and felt no need to record everything, least of all ourselves.
The mobile phone too became widespread in the mid-2000s. How much of the world do we now miss while scrolling and clicking? What did we do with our time before that? Watched a sunset surely, talked to somebody, lived more in the moment.
Feeling connected is a good thing, but so too was the 1990s sense of freedom on the road. Social connection was a holiday fling, a new travel mate, the post-office clerk, the old ladies in train stations spruiking rooms.
The new millennium was when mass international travel and communication took off for everyone. Tiger Air and Jetstar took Australians overseas for low prices from the 2000s, although budget airlines already filled European skies.
So here’s what I think, and see if you agree: the 1990s was a sweet spot in which travel became easier and cheaper and yet the world wasn’t yet trampled by hen parties, sunburnt boozers and social-media poseurs.
And oh, how wonderfully ill-informed and unprepared we were in foreign lands.
We didn’t know what time the train departed until we were in the station. We couldn’t decipher foreign words and menu items. We couldn’t find our hotel, supposing we’d even booked one. We had to cash traveller’s cheques (usage peaked in 1995) or be penniless. We struggled to decipher paper maps.
But was it bad to be baffled? No. We used our brains. We interacted with locals. We had fewer choices, but less dithering and less dissatisfaction. Surprises weren’t always good, but they were memorable. We were more confident and flexible travellers.
Now we blindly follow the instructions of Google, TripAdvisor and GPS. Everything is prearranged; everything is known. The sense of achievement is lost and the enchantment gone. Is travel truly an adventure any more, or is it about the anticipated?
Things are getting more same-same. Every airport and high street, certainly. Fewer tuk-tuks and jeepneys. Trains that whoosh rather than clickety-clack. International food everywhere. Sleek hotels with vast pools, whale-song wellness centres and Aesop toiletries.
Maybe it’s us rather than the times that have changed. Our spending power has increased, our tolerance for the road’s roughness and our stamina decreased.
But can’t I feel a little nostalgic about those little plastic shampoo bottles that seemed the height of luxury? The rickety old hotels with Fawlty Towers waiters? The happiest I’ve ever been in a “hotel” was a week spent in a hut on the beach near Cherating in Malaysia, befriended by goats. That was in 1990.
Admittedly, remembering the 1990s means remembering being young. Was travel really better, or are we just nostalgic? We certainly complain more as we age. We don’t roll as well with the punches of delayed flights and unobliging waiters.
And yes, travel before the internet age had challenges that we overlook as we reminisce, misty eyed. But sometimes I think we should give up the phone, get out the postcards, and travel more as if it’s the 1990s all over again.
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