As the plane bore low above the ground beneath, shroud of moonlessness bolstered the legion speckles of neon white, intertwined with veins of amber and ruby; while hovering alarmingly close over Saigon, the landing was akin to slicing onto a field of gems and diamonds. My excitement was pulsing to the luminous electrification. I’d be [...]
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There’s something rather contradictory about Beijing. On one front, its striving crusade towards modernity, contemporary building rise above structures of antiquity as readily as the bulldozers dispatched to erase outdatedness, just as the synthetic-clad populace trample over forgotten buried relics; yet the sentiment for preservation prevails and spares enough historical sites to be deemed celebrators [...]
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As invulnerability goes, for a potentially injury-prone two-month stint in Southeast Asia, all I managed was a petit scratch on my knee against a seabed coral. I chuckled to said statement before a more concerned crowd, contemplated its irony – as blood streamed out of my upper lip and teeth, crimson staining the bundles of [...]
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Curiously, amongst pitstops at landmark-dubbed pagodas and temples, my trishaw driver swivelled into a narrow alley and pulled up behind the sinophilic archway. In his somewhat patronising tourist-ushering tone, one I grew accustomed to after cruising the old quarters of Vietnam’s Imperial city, Hue, he instructively implored me to get on my feet and go “take picture”. Sheepishly, like [...]
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I must have wondered for hours if any of the windows on the train would budge. After all, there wasn’t much else to do on the way to Hue – other than soring snoozes on a stiff bed and reiterating to my berth-mate, a heavily pregnant woman, that I don’t speak Vietnamese despite my Asian [...]
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“Hopelessly lost” didn’t quite describe my ill-fated quest to find my hostel in Kuala Lumpur. The innocent-seeming prelude unfolded shortly after I parted ways with two German travellers and a Buddhist monk; where exactly I may identify in hindsight, yet at the time I could only describe my arrival from Penang as being dropped off [...]
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The atmosphere had escalated in intensity since the near-desolation in Saigon’s train station a few hours ago. Stammering motorbikes, like working bees returning to the hive, zipped by in their swarms offloading volumes of cargo, some precariously balanced on vehicles that were actually smaller in size. In comparison, the movement of people were more ant-like; [...]
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I was wondering what my aunt referred to in her usual childlike exclamation, about a fountain inside Singapore’s Changi Airport. Just as she lamented that the “fountain” was gone, I noticed the array of drooling bulbs suspended on the other side of the departure hall. “Is that it over there?” I remarked. The sheer revelation [...]
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Nostrils-full of incense, religiously pungent yet sweetly aromatic; vibrations of percussion, pulsing through the ground and onto my feet; squeals of the nadaswaram – an Indian wind instrument akin to a horn – whizzing like sharp but oddly melodic jabs into my ears; then, peeking through the threshold, sheer vibrance of frescoed hue and painted [...]
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I’m back on the hunt for coffee spectacularity again. Judging by the wave of artisan café culture happening in Hong Kong, much to my delight the last time I was in my birthplace where I witnessed the latest metropolitan hype, I could only imagine spotting fruits of a parallel trend in the sister city and [...]
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