Me. And Me Now is an extraordinary travel memoir about the early 1970s' "hippie trail" across Asia - a story not just of exotic places but an emerging era for the world's youth marked by unprecedented freedoms, escapism and experimentation. Author Alan Samson, a retired journalist and journalism lecturer from New Zealand, was in his early 20s when he began a two-year adventure along the trail, from Singapore to the jungles of Borneo, Bali to Burma, war-torn Cambodia to the majestic Himalayas, spiritual India to hippie-haven Afghanistan. His story captures the essence of the times, the places and the politics, as well as epitomising the "big adventure" for a young foreigner seeking to learn more about the world and, through that, himself. As Vietnam and other regional conflicts escalated into the 1970s, the whole region was on a knife's edge. And with fledgling television exponentially increasing its reach around the world, many of the conflicts began to be noticed in living rooms to an extent that could barely have been imagined even a few years earlier. Unsurprisingly, these years also saw a burgeoning of idealism among the world's youth, they too becoming the news as the cameras focused on enthusiastic anti-war demonstrations as far afield as America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Whether Americans dodging compulsory draft call-ups, or numerous others from all over the so-called West taking advantage of personal freedoms emerged out of the "swinging sixties", the result was a mass migration of young travellers. Wandering what became known as the "hippie trail", beginning from the southern hemisphere or the northern, but invariably landing in South and Southeast Asia, many styled themselves as "hippies" or "freaks". Even if they did not label themselves in that manner, their apparent loose lifestyles cemented the perception within astounded local populations. Caught up in the maelstrom, the author pursued the path of the many, tramping war zones, immersing himself in the region's religions, at the same time eating and smoking his way along the trail as far as Afghanistan before sickness had him abruptly homeward bound. For anyone wanting to understand the times and the context of a turbulent but exhilarating era, this articulate, one-man account of search and discovery, is a must read.
