"Still, another day in paradise.." yuet29's Profile

I have no time to update my page properly, it has been since Dec 2008 till now!! But would like to share with you some of the travels that I have done in the previous year.

So after Philippines, I went back to Penang to celebrate Chinese New Year 2009, then depart again on the road. This time it has taken a long time (until now, still on the road)..

VT from Canada (Mimi) visited me in Penang after Chinese New Year 2009, we went to Kaki Bukit together, a very nice chinese town in the province of Perlis, border with Thailand. We then travel together to Hatyai before she continue her journey to Ko Pangan and I continued my trip to Bangkok. It was then until now..

Thailand - Laos (2 weeks) - China (5 months) - Pakistan (2.5 months) - Iran (1 month) - Afghanistan (8 days) - Iran (2 weeks) - Turkey (10 days) - Syria (35 days) - Lebanon (2 weeks) - Syria (5 weeks) - Jordan (2 weeks) - Egypt (1.5 months)

And now is the excited part. I was thinking of going back to Malaysia soon by going to Nepal then India then Malaysia, but out of a sudden I bought a ticket to Manchester :S

so I am on the way to a region that never listed in my travel plan before! And because I am on shoestring, had decided that I shall hitchhiking and couchsurfing and sleeping wild this time, which still left me the question on how to get food and how to get money to online..

Am at Egypt now.. 2 weeks later it is a brand new traveling style that I am going to adopt. Nervous and excited. I wonder how far one can go, always.

Till the next story revealed!

----------------------------------------------
Finally it comes to the end of 2008. And I am now in the Quezon City, Manila, Philippines.

Attended Manila VT Christmas party last night, and the most repeated sentence by me was ‘I wasn’t that active in VT since few years ago’, and yet by chance I attended the event. After the party, I decided that I shall start changing my VT homepage since it has been expired for years.

There are so many things happened in the year of 2008, yet nothing is really hard, heavy or harsh. In year 2008, I finally free from the study loan debt after more than 2 years working life without day and night, using few months to save a little, quit my job on the 1st of April, start attending farewell gatherings since I had been in Singapore for 7 years, shave for Cancer Children Foundation on 7th July and left Singapore right on that night. For good, yes.

I went back to Penang and start traveling since 5th of Aug. Myanmar, Philippines. It isn’t really a long travel as I did drop by home once a while. You know, I am still in SEA, and I will be back home (again) this Wednesday and help up my mum with the preparation for Chinese New Year. Last minute decision though, the initial plan was to go from Mindanao to Sandakan to Sulawesi to Papua, but the plan dropped because I suffered from severe seasick in the Visayas, Philippines, so I am on my way home.

Well some said I shall save more before I quit my job. I really hope I can, but I believe the best time in life is from 25 to 30, and I have spent most of the time sitting down inside a cement building in front of a computer screen and selling my life to pay back the debt. I wonder what’s life for, and there is not much time left before 30, so I am forced to move. I may go back to the same routine life half a year later after running out of saving, who knows; I may not like long term traveling, who knows; but I gotta live without commitment at least once in my life.

Oh by the way I always check with myself if I will regret if I don’t do this or that, I realized that I will regret and hate myself for the rest of my life if I don’t quit my job and start travel now. You know, you don’t want to hate yourself because you are going to stay with it until the end of the day, so I listen to it.

Anyway the meaning of traveling has changed so much over the past few years, partly due to the change of belief in life. I was once a free thinker and now still a free thinker; but I was once very keen in doing good and empathetic but now a student of Zhuang Tzu’s, who believes that "good order results spontaneously when things are let alone." In fact I changed from someone who loves traveling because of the knowledge, freedom and adventurous to someone who hates traveling because the act changes the value of the locals and harm the nature, it violates the teaching of “things should be let alone”. Yes you hear me correctly, I hate travelers.

But still I am traveling, for I still have curiosity in human being (yes I am selfish). Like last night we met Claus from Denmark and he was chatting with Monina and i-s-a about other VTers and made me surprised that gosh! These people spent so much time checking out other VTer’s life. It is weird to me, yet just another kind of people on the planet. And I still love mountain more than sea; I still travel alone, still with little budget; And yes, my mother did not respond aggressively when I told her I decided to quit. She gave me the life and the full right to choose my way =)

I am thankful for everything, for always able to be here and now, for always looking younger than my age, for having courage and determination to do what I want to do, for always meeting kind soul on the journey, for the good or bad weather, for always having choices, for the lucky and unlucky, for able to wake up in the morning and live another day, in the deteriorated, but yet still, a paradise.