Written February 1, 2017.

I am not a travel expert — far from it.

Though my studies have been embedded in geography, in every situation where I am in charge of navigation and maps, I can guarantee you a bastardly fantastic time… at a place opposite of intended destination.

Fine, so I am a terrible guide. But I’ll never complain, and I am always ecstatic on the balls of my feet. I’ve ventured the likes of Sydney, Cairns, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Bali, Flores, Jakarta, Manila, Malacca, Barcelona, London, Tokyo, Singapore — but I’ve made a poor effort in documenting the adventures. (of course the list was just to show off).

My camera roll is littered with thousands of travel photos never published and an oasis of thoughts never shared!

Thus, I’ve decided once and for all to document my future travels and mishaps.

The backyard behind the house was a plethora of fantastical sceneries — anything I could conjure in my imagination. Exploring came naturally when I was in diapers. I had a small backpack with a plane stitched on the front (thanks Royal Brunei, here’s your plug), and I was always prancing around pretending I had something urgent to discover. When all the children wrote “lawyer”, “doctor” or “teacher” as their ambitions, I remember adamantly filling in my gap as “explorer”. Of course, I really had no idea what I was talking about. I was the cross-eyed kid with saliva at the corners of my mouth. I just knew I slept with Nat Geo magazines, felt overwhelmed by blown up photos of mountains and jungles, ate beetles and millipedes, and was constantly scolded for cutting up travel articles.

I’ve been unbearably homesick at the corner of my room, bawling my eyes out in old New Cross Gate of London, but I’ve also felt life-changing euphoria gazing down upon the mosaic of houses atop Mt. Montjuic. I’ve feared for my mortality watching tropical storm-clouds rain down in torrents during Typhoon Noul in Biñan, but I’ve also sat in the deepest contentment at Sydney harbor, reminiscing baby days when I dreamt of coming down to ‘Nemo’s home’. I’ve embraced loneliness at ungodly hours of the morning along Chapel Street, but I’ve also been brought tenfold of love from the Indian siblings, the Portuguese game-hunter and people who are more fish than human, aboard the vessels in the middle of the Great Barrier. Many of my experiences in trodding these unfamiliar nooks and crannies have taught me something vital; either something beautiful will take place, or something absolutely horrifying will. But I get to decide what to take away from it afterwards. I remember a very enlightening line said by a resident of Yakutia, one of the world’s coldest corners:

“After all, there is no such thing as bad weather; there is just weather and your attitude towards it.”

The beauty in getting muddled in problems and sticky situations is that they force you to react either constructively or destructively. It’s a blessing that they don’t teach you these things in school. They don’t create manuals in handling emotions and crafting the perfect responses to haphazard situations, though many travel guidebooks try as much as they can to assist every step of your adventure (I love you so very muchm Ian Wright — but you didn’t tell me London didn’t have belacan!).

The conclusion is my favorite part. When everything finally piles up, the grains of your travel shapes, erodes, builds and softly moulds you into the beautiful being that you are now.