The Banana Pancake Trail

I’m three days into my six-week escape and I already feel different. I’m smiling more. I am taking care of myself. I am reading an actual book, taking walks, cooking healthy food, doing yoga, contrast therapy, viewing everything with wide eyes. One could say I’ve activated my Bali brain.

No matter how your life flows day to day, there is a world operating outside of it that never sleeps, never wanes, never ceases to satisfy the longings of a nomadic cult. Long ago I learned about the “banana pancake trail.” The term arose in the ’70s to describe the bohemian backpacker revolution and was further popularized by my former colleague Joe Cummings’s guidebooks in Southeast Asia.

Joe was the author of Lonely Planet’s survival guides to Thailand in the early ’80s and he moonlighted for us as a subject matter expert and tour guide. Often considered the bible for travel in the region, his books became indispensable for the budget travel crowd that developed around Khao San Road in Bangkok. The pancake refers to the ubiquitous banana pancake, or roti gluay, served from carts to ravenous farangs. It is cheap, wildly tasty, and filling. The perfect fodder after a night of debauchery, or a morning of temple hopping.

The term evolved and became popular shorthand for the well-worn paths backpackers followed while traveling cheaply throughout Southeast Asia, and ultimately, globally. Soon you would see banana pancakes offered in places that had no business selling them. You’d see them in Nepal, Switzerland, and Argentina. Anywhere backpackers roamed, there would be banana pancakes, catering to the throngs flocking to their shores.

But it’s the underlying culture that’s fascinating. With relative global peace, relaxed borders, solid transportation, evolving infrastructure, and a restless population of experience-craved hippies in the ’60s and ’70s, backpack travel became a viable way to bounce around the globe with very little money, especially in exotic and developing regions. If the currency was weak but the culture was strong, the formula lent itself to a saturation of invading seekers.

I got my first taste of the banana pancake trail when I started my career in adventure travel in the early ’90s. I landed a job with an adventure operator and was tasked with going to Vietnam to scout new experiences. It was a wildly exciting prospect because sanctions had not yet been lifted in the postwar restructuring of U.S.-Vietnam relations. I was heading into relatively uncharted waters.

Joe Cummings was one of the few Westerners who preceded me, aside from a smattering of French and Russian tourists, remnants of occupiers past. Joe had spent the previous years doing what he does, researching a Vietnam guidebook for Lonely Planet. Until then, Vietnam was just a small section in an outdated guidebook covering Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. There just wasn’t much demand. Yet.

Joe was kind enough to send me an advance copy of the new book before it was published. I tucked it into my bag and set off on one of the greatest adventures of my life. I was to spend a month scouting from Hanoi to Saigon, identifying potential experiences and partners for our offerings. It was my first trip in Asia.

As a 24-year-old, this was the peak of my travel life thus far. I had studied abroad in Italy, worked on an archaeological site in Israel for a summer, and racked up some passport stamps, but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to encounter in Vietnam. It was truly the Wild Wild East. I have so many epic stories from that trip that you’ll either have to patiently wait for me to write them all, or ply me with food and drink and ask me to spin a yarn.

But for today’s story, I’m focused on the connection between that guidebook and the banana pancake trail. Focus, Adam…

There weren’t many others traveling in Vietnam in 1993. But when I collided with others, there was inevitably a download of who, what, where, when, why, and how. Information was precious, and the guidebooks were so limited as to be nearly useless. Thanks to Joe, I had a bombshell in my bag (oof, too soon?).

The first time I pulled out Joe’s pre-published book, sitting in a café in Hanoi, a group of French travelers began luring and glaring from across the room. One of their curious entourage approached me reverently and asked, “Is that real?” Then he waved over his friends. “Where did you get that?” followed quickly by, “Can we borrow it?”

This began a series of encounters throughout my trip. Almost like Frodo with the ring, my Precious became legend, and people began seeking out the American who possessed the Rosetta Stone of Vietnam travel. In train stations, Russians photocopied sections. On boat rides, the errant European scribbled notes during the limited time they had with my bible.

While there was no banana pancake trail in Vietnam before the fated release of the book in 1993, it was clear what it took to make one, and how it was coming. Joe’s power was prodigious given the limited real estate he had on those pages. One mention of a hostel or restaurant could mean years of bookings until the next printing. The internet had not yet democratized travel opinions. Joe’s words were canon.

That landmark trip to Asia was followed by many more over the course of my dozen years in the adventure travel industry. I came to know the banana pancake trail well – enough to design itineraries for my wealthy clients to avoid it at all costs. They were seeking a private slice of paradise, a luxury backpackers rarely can afford. I straddled both worlds, enjoying my perks of complimentary nights at some of the world’s best hotels, while still connecting with nomads in cafés and on adventures along the trail.

Back to Bali… there are few places in the world that illustrate the impact of tourism so vividly, with deep-worn backpacker trails, layers of luxury travel, masses of Aussie miners letting off steam in drunken beach crawls, and a rich culture of deep and unique local traditions that remain unswerving in the face of all the development and distractions.

Bali is something to everyone, and you just sort of tolerate what’s not for you. Flying into the place, much like when I arrive in any major Mexican beach town, there are so many different varieties of travelers afoot. You may catch the eye of one of your own kind amidst the sea of screaming children and backward-baseball-cap bros. A subtle acknowledgment – you’ll likely see them again at sunset on the beach or in the yoga studio.

As I sit on Monkey Forest Road finishing off my protein smoothie, which one could argue the matcha variety has become the banana pancake of the modern digital-wellness-fitness nomad, there is a never-ending stream of traveler humanity converging and intermingling that has been non-stop in some form for sixty years. Incense burns on Balinese ritual offerings laying on the sidewalk. A bubbly group of girls poses for Instagram shots as a Lululemon-clad yogini scurries past on her way to the Yoga Barn. She was in my yin class yesterday. A guy with a shaved head in a tank top carrying an open beer ducks into bar.

As I mentioned, I’m only three days in, yet I’m back in that place – familiar and satisfying. I’m here for my slice. My mind is drawn home, where my business is humming without me – our clients are taking out our gear, sweating in our sauna, and buying snacks in our shop. I was there a blink ago, yet it seems so far away. All it takes is a few really long flights, a desire for experience, a willingness to seek out your tribe, and just like that, you’re back on the banana pancake trail.