A story was brewing in Janet Brodie’s mind long before she decided to enter this year’s Palisadian-Post Travel Tales writing contest. It all started when Janet, 55, and her husband, Bruce, 56, learned that their two grown sons would not be coming home for Christmas in December 2002, which would’ve been the first Christmas the family spent apart. Jedediah and his girlfriend, Olga, were living in Thailand, conducting biology/ecology research in national parks, and Nathaniel and his girlfriend, Kelly, had been traveling in northern Thailand and Laos for two months. Instead of staying home in the Palisades, Janet and Bruce suggested another option: spending the holidays with the ‘kids’ in Southeast Asia. ‘We didn’t know if they would want us [at first], but they loved the idea,’ says Janet, a history professor at Claremont Graduate University. Thankfully, she took notes during their three-week trip through Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, thinking she would want to write an article and subit it to the Los Angeles Times travel section. After returning home, however, still in the post-September 11 climate, Janet found that the Times was featuring stories ‘close to home’ more than about far-off places. Luckily for the Post, she decided to submit her story for this year’s Travel Tales contest’and won! The editorial staff thoroughly enjoyed her unusual perspective of a parent ‘seeing the world through fresh eyes”the eyes of her backpacker sons who ‘have roamed the wilds of the world, happiest living as nomads,’ as she describes them in her story. Janet’s tongue-in-cheek tone charmed us and her careful details wet our pallets. At the beginning of the story, she tells us that she and Bruce, a clinical psychologist who works with adolescents, were willing to compromise some of their usual travel comforts and experience the more adventurous backpacker life their sons prefer to lead. This not only included rock climbing and driving a motorbike but also negotiating when it came to lodging and transportation. For example, the Brodies stayed in ‘guest houses,’ which Janet compares to pocket hotels with 10-12 rooms but no provision for food. They cost about $12 -$15 a night, making them more ‘upscale’ than the $2-$5 youth hostels the boys prefer when not with their parents. ‘The guest houses were modest but charming,’ says Janet, who had never been to Southeast Asia before this trip. ‘We found them immaculately clean with spotless tile floors because guests leave their shoes on the front porch.’ The Brodie Bunch spent Christmas Day at a climbing beach in southern Thailand and New Year’s in Laos, which turned out to be Janet’s favorite country on their trip. ‘I expected Angkor Wat [Cambodia] to be most striking but it was really Laos,’ she says. ‘Laos is a country that hasn’t changed in years’it’s like being in the 19th century.’ She was especially struck by the Laotian city of Luang Prabang, a UNESCO world heritage site where the ancient architecture has been preserved. Here, Janet saw women working on looms in their houses, families eating on the floor, people tending gardens and a line of saffron-robed monks walking in the mist. In her story, she describes a memorable afternoon when the kids led them to a Laotian market where a woman made their soup’with raw meat, vegetables and boiling broth’right in front of them. ‘The fact that [the kids] could show us so much really brought us together as a family,’ Janet says. ‘We’ve taken a lot of family trips but never had an experience like this.’ When Nathaniel, now 24, and Jedediah, now 28, were growing up, the Brodies did a lot of car camping in the States, including hiking and camping in Yosemite. They also camped through southern France when the boys were just 11 and 15 years old. Even in the Palisades, their Paseo Miramar home opens out onto the Santa Monica Mountains, right near one of the hiking trails. Janet also attributes her sons’ shared love of nature and the outdoors to their experiences as Boy Scouts in Troop 85. ‘I know that [Troop 85] was a big influence on the boys’they did major backpacking in the Sierras.’ Five years ago, Jedediah and Nathaniel spent three months backpacking through South America together. And just three years ago, they backpacked in South Africa where they worked so they could save money and travel. ‘They are well-bonded,’ says Janet. Asked what she and Bruce taught the kids during their Southeast Asia trip, Janet says, ‘[Without us there] they probably wouldn’t have spent as much time thinking about the history, like the French colonial past, going to museums and looking at the architecture.’ Janet, on the other hand, learned that when she revisits Southeast Asia, she would choose to travel by bus and tuk-tuk (a cross between a motorcycle and a rickshaw), and stay in guest houses. After the family vacation, Nathaniel and Kelly went on to Myanmar and India. Currently, they are headed to Alaska, where they will be working for the National Park Service to earn money before going into the Peace Corps in September. Jedediah, who is now engaged to Olga, is working on his doctorate in biology at the University of Montana. Janet, a North Dakota native, grew up in Oakland and has lived in the Palisades with her husband since 1981 in the house Bruce’s parents built in 1954. Janet commutes to Claremont about once a week, where she teaches U.S. history, specializing in environmental and women’s history. When we called Janet with the good news, she exclaimed, ‘You’re kidding! I’ve never won anything in my life!’ Her prize includes a two-night stay at the Inn at Playa del Rey, a bed-and-breakfast which is the sister property to the Channel Road Inn in Santa Monica Canyon.
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