Internetless explorer

I found a brief - you could almost say terse - email from the Man this morning. I presume he sent it from his phone at some point:

Hi
No internet (or towels or sheets or beds) in our trad house in the
country.

He's in Korea, and, having already passed through Seoul (pictured), he's not staying in a big city - or even a small town by the sounds of it.  I once spent a few interesting weeks in Korea myself, and remember enjoying similarly spartan accommodation.  But at least twenty-one years ago lack of internet wasn't any kind of an issue - the internet pretty much just wasn't at all.  When it came to communicating with home, public phones and handwritten letters had to suffice.   I travelled for several months and picked up occasional mail addressed to me at poste restantes.  Always so exciting!  Do they even have poste restantes anymore, I wonder?

Now we take it for granted that we can connect with anyone, at the touch of a button, wherever we may happen to be in the world - most of you reading this are several thousand miles away from where I am, after all.  It's wonderful in so many ways, but it does take some of the adventure out of travelling.  Perhaps it isn't such a bad thing once in a while to feel as far away as you really are, and not to be virtually back home even when you're not.

Having said that, the Man's been at an office today and we managed to exchange skype messages - he's seems to be ok.  He was just heading out for some kimchi.