Category: Southeast Asia

Part of Asia but special

Homeless


“Anyway, home is where you feel at home. I’m still looking.”

Holly Golightly, Breakast at Tiffany’s

Same as Holly Golightly, I’m still searching for home.

“Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia” is the location where my passport was issued. It was the place where I sepnt 19 years growing up and learning about life.

If home is where your family is, I’ve been away since January 2, 2011. More than 10 months being away from the house where my family stays.

But if family is the only thing that makes a certain location home, then I’ve not been away for too long. I had two trips this year which allowed me to see my family. I met up with my parents and my sister in June in Xi’an and I was away in Japan with my mother in October.

Kota Kinabalu is not really home. I don’t really see a place where I’ve not been staying in for more than 2 months in a year as home.

Frankly, I’ve not seen anywhere as home for sometime now and see places where my bed is as temporary accomodation. Perhaps, like my friend D says, I should be a gypsy. 

Anway, here is a picture of the sky in front of my house back home. The rusty gate and mossy walls are still familiar.

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This post is part of BootsnAll’s 30 Days of Indie Travel project. Day 13: Home. 

The rest of my posts for the project can be found here.

2012 can’t come fast enough

This morning I realized that it is already the end of November but I haven’t finished writing this year’s new year resolutions!

It makes today’s prompt for BootsnAll’s 30 Days of Indie Travel blogging project even more funny. I haven’t made plans for my life but I’ve already made plans for travelling.

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(Image from my TripIt app. Here’s a review of the Web program.)

Aside from the Chinese New Year tickets, the flights for the rest of the trips were bought on offer and I’m dang proud of myself for that. 

Some of next year’s travel will be more challenging. For the two Vietnam trips, I’ll be going alone and I don’t speak Vietnamese.

But that also makes it more exciting because they’ll be like warm up for my RTW trip where I plan to visit many countries which I don’t speak the language.

Yogjakarta has been on my To Go list after I found out about the ancient Hindu temples nearby. I’ll be travelling with D, my travel buddy who I went to Bandung with a few years ago. (This trip also reminds me I need to visit Angkor Wat.)

The locations I’m going to are great for indie travelers because they aren’t really huge cities and you can cover a lot of the areas within a few days of wondering around.

Can’t wait for 2012 to come.

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This blog post is part of BootsnAll’s 30 Days of Indie Travel Project. Day 30 (last day!): 2012 TICKET

Where are you going in 2012?  Why is that place great for indie travelers? 

The rest of my posts for the project can be found here.

Open Monument Day conquered

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Armenian Church
Sitting in round chapel of the Armenian Church. D and I finished the 5 required stops of Open Monument Day. Received a pair of tickets for Already Famous, a local comedy featuring stereotypes of Malaysian.
Anyway, we went on a guided tour of Hajjah Fatima Mosque and Sultan Mosque with Alphonso (i think). It was a nice tour and it didn’t rain.
Sadly the Open Monument Day [in case anyone’s doing media monitoring] was badly organized. Although the concept is nice and makes you go around visiting different sites.
Details about the guided tour was only sent to me, not D. No one knew where the shuttle bus was supposed to stop. No one seem to know what all that stamps are about.
Sitting in this pretty church, I have sort of forgotten about the rain, bad organization and just feel at peace.
Amen.

Long live Vietnamese coffee

Vietkopi

The first time I had Vietnamese coffee was in My Tho, the hometown of N. Before the trip, I was already a coffee junkie, requiring one cup of coffee with milk each day or else I’ll feel a headache coming up.

Before the trip, I’ve read about Vietnamese coffee. Butter roasted, dripped through a metal filter into condensed milk. I figured it would taste the same as the regular coffee in Malaysia or Singapore since we use condensed milk too.

I waited for the cup of coffee to finish filtering and stirred in my condensed milk.

I lifted the cup and took a zip, then frowned. Continue reading “Long live Vietnamese coffee” →