My dad made me curious about the world before I fall in love with traveling

Since young, I always listen to my dad’s amazing travel stories. He traveled to many countries and had many amazing experiences. Due to that, he filled my childhood years with lotsa curiosity about the world and I have grown my love towards reading encyclopedia instead of fairy tale stories! During my late primary and secondary school years, whenever there was a USSR (Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading) session, I will always take out my geography text, encyclopedia or documentary journals to read. Probably that was the reason why I scored pretty well for Geography throughout my secondary school years! 🙂

My first step out of the little red dot (Singapore)

Singapore is a little red dot in the middle of South East Asia. Coming from a humble family, I did not have many chances to take an aeroplane to anywhere until I was secondary 1. Before that, I did many road trips to different parts of Malaysia; our neighbour which is linked by two causeways. In 1997, my first trip via flight was to Hong Kong, Macau & China (Shen Zhen, Guang Zhou, Gui Lin) for 2 weeks vacation with my parents. 🙂

My debut solo travel

After the trip to Hong Kong, I went to a few more places with my parents i.e. Australia & Taiwan for a couple of times. Till 2001 I was given an oversea internship opportunity and was sent to Hong Kong & China for half a year with an electronic distributor company. That was my first ever solo experience living abroad. Embraced loneliness, developed self reliance and being independent!  It was that internship that changed my life totally, I became more open to culture diversity, learnt to survive in a totally strange and unfamiliar environment; and be strong, courageous and independent in the harsh conditions when you have no other to rely on! That trip was my life turning point.

Fulfilling my travel passion

Just like many other, I started to travel independently to neighbouring countries during school days i.e. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan Hong Kong and etc… After I graduated from university in 2008, I entered into the workforce and became financial independent. I ventured to see countries further away from Singapore i.e. Europe and North America etc… After gaining more confidence, I embarked on more challenging trips to Africa, South America and becoming more and more adventurous i.e. Sky diving in Australia, Cliff diving in Philippines, Scuba diving in Thailand, Living in the wild in Tanzania, Parasailing in Thailand, Paragliding in South Africa and etc… Thinking and believing in my passion!

The Inheritance & The Uncanny Incident

In the past, I thought my dad is the person in my life who made me curious about the world but I am the one who pursued the travel passion! I was wrong! In fact, my dad was the one who passed his travel passion and bug to me. After traveling to many amazing places, one random fine day in 2012,  I went to dig out some of his past travel photos, because I miss him very much.

I had a panic attack when I flipped through my dad’s nostalgic traveling photo albums! Initially I was merely flipping and browsing through and later to my shocking discovery, I realised there were A LOT of similarities between our travel photos – it’s was kinda of a deja vu moment!

I didn’t have the chance to reference his traveling photos as he traveled during the 80s and 90s and I was only a little child back then! These are some of his photos I found from the albums and I randomly picked a few and made into a collage. You can see the uncanny similarities between our travels from here…

Speechless, panicked, shocked, amazed, astonished, thunderstruck or smashed with what I saw… What is the odd for this to happen? It was an amazing discovery and I was totally blown away! One of the photo taken at Berlin’s TV Tower was really classic. Back then, my dad took the photo when Germany was still split between East and West Germany and when i took that photo, Germany has merged and become the strongest economy in Europe! Most importantly, our pose, our angle and our photos were soooo similar! My heart immediately filled with sweetness and indebtedness!

Yea I’m really grateful that I discovered this in 2012! It really has touched my heart… I know my dad is the one who brought me to these amazing places and traveled with me around the world! He will always make sure I’m safe and that explained why I’m always blessed when I traveled around… the people I have met on my trips were all nice and amazing people!

I really miss him a lot!

My Dedication

I believe I inherited the travel hobby from my dad is for a reason, he wanted me to follow his footsteps and learn to be upright as him! My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.

To my dad: “Remembering you is easy, I do it everyday. Missing you is the heartache that never goes away. I love you dad”

This page is my dedication to my beloved father who lost his battle with sickness. I know he is with good hands now and became a guardian angel. who will bless the world with peace and harmony just as how he preached to many!

In memory of my beloved father! ~ 12 July 2009