Travels With the Real Oz: Way Back When

In the spring of 1959, Oz West, a recent college graduate in civil engineering, turned down several job interviews and decided instead to buy a ticket to Hawaii to help them celebrate statehood. Little did he know that simple trip would become a six-year enterprise, visiting 44 countries in the Far East, Australia, Southeast Asia, the Near East, Japan, Korea, an Europe, traveling over 60,000 miles before returning to the States, living with the locals, having adventures, and making lifelong friends. Here is his chronicle of that voyage, taken "WayBack When." That, Oz maintains, was the right time to see the world.