Travel Bits: January 2020

Chanced and unplanned encounters during our travels.......

For most of our trips, we usually knew in advance where we were going and what we would be doing. But often, it would be the chanced and unplanned encounters that would come to define our travels turning these trips into unique ones that we would remember for years to come.

These would also be the trips that we would recall fondly to share with family and friends. They are the travel tales of our own little adventures.

Whether it was that friendly chat with a fellow traveller or a local, that chanced meeting that would turned a stranger into a friend. Or that moment in time captured in our cameras that would remained not just as mere digital mementos but lasting memories of our life. What were those travel moments of your's? I have had many.

Starting when I was first bitten by the travel bug as a twenty-something youngster, I had travelled to Japan on my first ever trip outside my home country on a work assignment. Then it was a trip to Nepal which was my first real vacation. Subsequent trips followed over the years. Many countries and many cities had since been visited, re-visited and to be re-visited again in the years ahead. And many more countries and cities to visit for the first time.

The author at a flower park, Cameron Highlands, Pahang, Malaysia (2018)

I had trekked parts of the Annapurna Region of Nepal, hiked in the Alps of Japan's Gifu Prefecture, bathed in  public onsens in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, drove on the lone roads of rural Western Australia, went caving in Malaysia, swam in waterfalls in Laos, explored ancient Angkor ruins in Cambodia, crawled in an actual Vietnam War-era tunnel (a tourist attraction today) near Ho Chi Minh City, lazed on the beautiful beaches of Indonesia and Thailand, attended a traditional wedding ceremony in India, sailed across the Baltic Sea on a ferry, experienced local farmers' markets in many European cities, played with snow on the snow-capped peaks of Switzerland, visited the famed and mythical Lock Ness in Scotland and prayed in the Church of the Annunciation in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth.

Weekend flea market, Ito, Izu Peninsula, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan (2017)

And there were the many UNESCO World Heritage Sites I had visited, too numerous to list in a single paragraph in this blog post.

Yet, I had barely scratched the surface of where to visit and what to experience. But all these trips would not mean a thing if there had not been those rare moments of unique experiences that were totally unplanned.

I remembered being locked out in the private balcony of my hotel room one of the nights in Bali without a single stitch of clothing on and with the mosquitoes around me on a feeding frenzy. And there was that time when I had alighted at the wrong bus stop on a lonesome country road in the mountains of Okuhida. Totally lost and helpless with nightfall fast approaching and temperature plunging. There was also that occasion when I discovered that my travelling partner and myself were the only human souls in a lonely hotel in a remote Japanese Island, coming close to living a real-life Bates Motel experience, fortunately without the scary or thrill parts.

During a work trip, I had an unplanned overnight stay in Los Angeles because of inclement weather and having to board and deplane a couple of times as the weather toggled between good and bad through the hours. Another work trip saw me stuck in London for several days because of a workers' strike against the airline that I was booked to travel with. Making the most out of this unplanned extended stay in the city, I went around visiting the home stadiums of all the major London-based football clubs in England's Premier League. Then there was that rather bizarre incident of finding my plane seat occupied when departing Toulouse for Paris, with the gentleman occupying the seat and myself both having valid air tickets issued to the same seat for the same flight! This was when I was on a trip to the southern French city to present a technical paper at an International Symposium.

Sometimes, the experiences were of my own making because of careless mistakes. On a train ride from Interlaken to Zurich, I realised that I had boarded the train on the wrong day! Also, there were the countless times when I had booked the wrong hotel because the property names were so similar and I had rushed through the online bookings when making the reservations.

There were also many occasions when I had to mentally and physically battled with my bladder on those long train and coach rides while travelling between cities and towns. In some of these fights, my bladder won and I had to produce a partially-filled water bottle from my backpack to ahem... relief that full bladder.

On the wild side, I have had the pleasure of an impromptu date with a wild Asian Water Monitor Lizard which came uninvited to be my companion for breakfast in Bali. Instead of freaking out, this turned out to be one of the best breakfast experience I have had in all my trips. 

Visited by a wild Asian Water Monitor Lizard (Varanus salvator) while having breakfast at the hotel, Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia (2015)

These were the things that I remembered most from my trips. And they continued to be conversation topics when I meet new friends. Life and travelling would be boring indeed without such experiences.  So fret not when things go a bit awry on your trips. Days, months and years later, these will transform into cherish experiences unique only to yourself. Millions may have visited that same city or landmark, but only you will have that one unique travel experience that nobody else will encounter.

Street peddler with her kid, Hoi An, Quang Nam Province, Vietnam (2018)