CNN ranked Singaporeans as the 2nd coolest nationality. Maybe because are the only Asians whose English is their first language, thus can easily chat up with foreign travelers and CNN reporters about how cool Singaporeans are.
Given my traveling preference, I should find ‘unauthentic’ Singapore utterly boring with its super clean, over polish images and ubiquitous ads claiming to the best, the only, the largest, the first in every category. Strangely though I grew to like this “snobbish” little child-turn-giant. Singapore didn’t look nor behaved like my view of an Asian country and Asian people.
Everybody said that I was traveling the world. I think not. Traveling the world, to me, is bumping from one place to another, crossing continents and visiting at many countries as possible, many of which were randomly selected.
I’m not traveling the world as I am going home, a long way home in deed. The 1st home means where I came from before, and where my parents lived. The last home is where I live now. And if it worked out and I crossed to Vietnam from China, the title would be “Home, Home and Home.” It takes so long because I wanted go overland as much as possible. If I had more time, instead of flying in and out of Australia, I would to do it by ships.
When I planned my 6-month off, the second destination (the first was Siberia) I wanted to be was Tibet. I concocted a plan how I would spend a month or perhaps two there, roaming the highland, staying with local Tibetans, tended goats or sheep, then trekking to North India. Yeah you can tell this plan has the smell of Brad Pitt’s Seven Years in Tibet all over it. But more than just a pure adventure, I wanted to be in this deeply spiritual and religious land to relearn Buddhism.
Half of the story behind the Great Walls of China isn’t in China. Even when you have a very good tour guide, read lots of books and watch lots of films, you still get half of the story. To fully understand and visualize the origin of this wonder of the world, you need to go to the other side and meet the descendants of the people who once terrorized not only China but also half of the world.
I visited Mongolia in the 21st the century, the era under rapid urbanization and unprecedented development and progress in technology, yet I felt like walking in the past: people wearing traditional costumes, herding their animals on horseback, living in tents and moving about with their animals.
Traveling on the Trans-Siberian trains through the longest rail track in the world is an experience of a lifetime. Everybody has heard of the word Siberia, but only some have an idea where it is, and only a few want to get there.
Siberia is more of a concept than a place, unless you live there. Some might imagine danger when they think of Siberia. After all, Siberia is a former hang-out for exiles and convicts, an ice-cold place in a remote part of communist Russia full of Russian mafias.
I ran away from Kuala Lumpur’s and Singapore’s shopping arena like a contagious disease because I contracted it BIG time during my entire time Hong Kong, a seven-day being a hedonist in a place where people seemed to live, eat and shop.
Do you know that your electronic existence and that of everyone else rests on my eBay sellers’ shipping labels which I threw into the trash bins without a second glance?
I had an eBay account which I hardly used until I moved to the Czech Republic (CZ). Having only 10 million people, a relatively small market, businesses in CZ can’t be that competitive. Prices here were much higher compared to what I used to pay in the USA and richer Western European countries like UK or Germany that hs a bigger population and more developed economy.
What life is like in a city which inspired a famous Chinese saying “Born/marry in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou and die in Liuzhou?”
Chinese believed that the most beautiful men and women were born in Suzhou, the best cuisine and food culture concentrated in Guangzhou, the best wood to make coffins which preserved your bodies long after you die grew in Liuzhou and Hangzhou, well-endowed with great natural beauty, offered great living condition.
I guess I won’t eat sushi in China then because I don’t want to be smacked, slapped, kicked for being taken as a Japanese sympathizer. It was tough these days being Japanese or have anything to do with Japanese in China.
A group of Japanese expats was beaten up in Shanghai. These Japanese were having a meal with their Chinese colleagues when a mob performed a Jackie Chan style of attack on them, which put them in the hospital. In Xian, a local Chinese, real Chinese, not half Chinese, not foreign-born, got his head busted during an anti-Japan protest as he tried to keep a Chinese mob from damaging his Toyota. A few Japanese businesses had to put up signs showing their support for China.
Shanghai wasn’t my cup of tea. I hated it, and it didn’t like me either. Saying the city huge is an understatement. With 23 million, Shanghai is the largest city by population in the world. Combine that with big streets, vehicles, the heat and a massive influx of Chinese tourists flocking to Shanghai during China’s National Day period which lasted one whole week, Shanghai should not top anybody’s vacation list, but somehow it did. Like the other tourists, I had to see one of two cities (Beijing was the other) China was known for, but unlike them, I wanted to know about the city long before I even heard of China. Blame inconsiderate neighbors cranking up their stereo volume or TV stations broadcasting singers dressed in Shanghai dresses crooning the love-lorn, cheesy, classic Chinese song “Blood Spilled Over Shanghai’s Harbor.”
My name is Cindy, also rhymes with travel junkie. A friend said I was probably a gipsy in my previous life. One of my many secret missions in life is to convert you to run off every once in awhile.
