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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“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’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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Seemed like one of those days where I spend an awful amount of time on trains. The moment my irises were re-exposed to light it was in response to the repeated thuds on my train compartment door. Coffee and cheese sandwich shoved into my hand, the conductor declared “passport in forty minutes”. Inspect time. Five [...]
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Tick tock, goes the clock; one hour till sun thus rise. I was growing increasingly restless – one can only be explained as equilibrium counteracting my fatigue – foolishly, I somehow reckon in hindsight – from not going to sleep. For a reason, of course: I simply couldn’t trust myself to wake up early enough [...]
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One of the greatest joys of travel by land, I find, is bearing witness to the transition of cultures on fast-forward. No more perceptible can this observation be than by noticing the change of languages on signs plastered all over streets. Whereupon the scrawls of continuous rounded squiggles broke up and formed characters of complex, detached [...]
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Out of all the rickshaw drivers I’ve encountered in Penang, this older chap was perhaps the most eccentric of them all. But then, rickshaws in Penang were themselves conspicuous in eccentricism. They’re odd by appearance, if not practical in grabbing prospective customers’ attention, adorned with flowers and universally sheltered under the enormous, out-of-place umbrella, staging [...]
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