Backpaking lifestyle
expatriate community based on utopian ideals.
The most determined of this study’s utopia-seekers, however, narrated firm self-concepts
and sought an external environment to match their culturally hybridised conceptions of self.
Jackie (English, 26) related that a place would need to be extraordinary for her to consider
‘emptying out her backpack once and for all.’ Thomas (English, 29), who since being
interviewed has settled on a remote Cambodian beach bungalow resort he purchased, depicted
his own un-tethering from the UK:
I’ve opted out of the society I grew up in. I’ve got nothing to go back to anywhere
in the world. I’ve got one bag of stuff in my friend’s house in Melbourne and my
rucksack in my hut. The purpose of this trip is to find somewhere to live like this
permanently.
Thomas’s mooring was an exception amongst the participants and begs the question of how
annaabi.ee 
