Empires and Dance: Redux

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For the most part, this wrap up blog entry covers my extended travels in November and December. For a summary of my travels between July and October, refer to my Intermezzo entry.

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Homeward Bound

To get home, I took the Intercity bus from National Park Village to Manukau (an Auckland suburb near the airport) and then I took the public bus to the airport. I was four hours early but not by choice. I had to wait 30 minutes for checkin to open. After checking in, I made my way to the Strata Lounge and wolfed down dinner and drank a lot of liquids. I was hungry and dehydrated after the long bus journey as I try not to eat and drink when I am at the mercy of bus drivers' schedules.

I flew on Hawaiian Airlines' A330 service from Auckland to Honolulu. Even though I don’t fly Hawaiian much on their long hauls, I thought stepping onto a Hawaiian Airlines flight would be a comforting reminder of home. Somehow, it seemed wierd and alien, partly because their business class seats are custom designed and not off the shelf (so there wasn’t any familiar hardware to latch on to), and partly because they changed their uniforms since I last flew on them. So here I was, once again, still stepping into the unfamiliar. Regardless, I do love being told to turn left when I board an airplane! When I reached my seat, I placed my passport on the center console while I put my stuff away. In addition to having to accustom myself to a new environment, I was on high alert as my seatmate looked dodgy. True to (perceived) form, he slid his hand over my passport and took it. I glared at him and demanded it back. He claimed he thought that was his passport. He then moved to another seat - it looked as if he knew his seatmate there. I didn't know what the heck was going on but I was relieved he moved away. I would not have been able to sleep otherwise. After takeoff, I turned my seat into bed mode and slept. I had to be woken up for breakfast. Somewhere over the Pacific, I flew my one millionth mile.

Landing into Honolulu, I had to walk a long way to customs and immigration. At the Global Entry kiosk, I saw dodgy guy and his travel companion ahead of me. At the inspection station (an immigration officer takes a quick look at you and your documents after the machine reads them), they held up the entire line. From what I could make out, only one of them had Global Entry and they were trying to get the other one through the Global Entry line. WTF? An immigration officer from another booth motioned me over. I was so glad to see the last of dodgy guy.

Jeff swung by to get me not long after. At home, I had a happy reunion with the kitties... all six of them. Sigh, we really need a catio; I'll pull the trigger when I start my next job. It did take some time for the two kittens - the latest additions - to warm up to me, though, as I have only been a fleeting presence in their young lives. But, before long, they were all purrs again.

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Empires and Dance: Redux

Travel round, I travel round, Decadence and pleasure towns, Tragedies, luxuries, statues, parks, galleries.

- I Travel by Simple Minds, from their Empires and Dance album.

In my last entry, I mentioned that my wanderlust began in New Zealand. I went there in 1986 on a school trip. During that trip, we mostly stayed in hostels and motor lodges. In the common areas at the lodges, I interacted with other people traveling through NZ, and it blew my mind to think that young adults not much older than I could just up and go for several months, traveling wherever their whims took them. Growing up in Singapore in the 1980s, people tended to travel on package tours because of concerns over safety or simply not knowing how to navigate a foreign country. I had been on a few package tours by then, and it never occurred to me to travel independently. I was a nerdy, sheltered upper middle class kid who wasn't particularly streetwise, but despite this I had a fiercely independent streak. I chafed at being herded around and being told what to do or what to think. That didn’t always go down well in straight laced Singapore.

My conversations with the young travelers in NZ awakened in me a longing to explore the big world out there. I also mentioned in my last blog that radio in Singapore was sterile and boring. In NZ, I purchased Simple Minds' Empires and Dance (among other albums not easily available in Singapore), and at the hostels I discovered cassette tapes by bands that got zero airtime in Singapore, including The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen, etc. Apart from being in a new physical environment, realizing that there was exciting music out there made me want to explore the world more. Empires and Dance - with its themes of travel, cities, transport, finding oneself in unfamiliar environments, alienation, etc. - became my soundtrack for New Zealand and eventually for my life as I moved from country to country and explored more and more of the world.

While I was serving my military service and later on in university, I took baby steps by traveling to Malaysia and Indonesia. Most of the trips were with friends, but I eventually began to take solo trips. I learned how to read and navigate new environments, and slowly but surely my streetsmarts and my confidence grew despite sticking out like a sore thumb everywhere I went. After university, I would have loved to take a gap year, but I didn't have the money to do so, and it just wasn't something Singaporeans did. It didn't help that Singapore didn't participate in the working holiday visa program - I would totally have done it if it had been available, social convention be damned. So, I did the next best thing: I took a headlong plunge into a whole new world when I accepted a job that would send me on expatriate postings. This was the respectable option. After a few years - and assignments to Bangkok and Manchester - I left that job and settled in Los Angeles and then Honolulu. My world has become so much larger and so much more interesting and colorful since that fateful school trip to NZ. So, it is appropriate that I end my Midlife Crisis Flashpacking Trip in the place where it all began.

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The Highs and Lows

Unlike the first part of the Midlife Crisis Flashpacking Trip, there weren't any really great highs or horrible lows this part of the trip. Everything went surprisingly smoothly with only minor hiccups along the way. I'm not sure if this is luck or if it is testament to my experience as a traveler.

If I had to choose some high points, they would be:


• Australia: Hanging out with my friends, and watching cricket for the first time. It was a very enjoyable cultural experience.
• Laos: Making new friends on the slow boat, tubing in Vang Vieng, and going off the beaten path to explore the Plain of Jars and Laos' sad history with UXO.
• New Zealand: The Tongariro Alpine Crossing.
• Singapore: Being with family and friends.
• Thailand: I love my former home. Just being there, doing mundane things like eating noodles from a sidewalk vendor, were enough to elicit a stupid smile on my face.


There were no real lows, except maybe feeling disgusted at disrespectful tourists in Luang Prabang. But, this was nowhere near the lows I experienced during the earlier part of my travels, particularly in Flores.

I've made some great friends along the way, particularly in Myanmar and Laos. I love interacting with other people who travel like I do. We share a common brand of cray cray that people who don't travel like we do have a hard time understanding.

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By The Numbers

Flights:


• Amount spent on airfare, including taxes and upgrades: $844 + 142,500 miles. I was already going to qualify for Platinum status with AAmerican with my planned travel for the remainder of 2017, and the extra miles would not get me to the next tier had I paid for them. So, I figured I might as well redeem my miles.
• Miles flown: 21,842
• Segments flown: 14
• Segments flown by class of travel: Business (6); Economy (8).
• Airlines flown: Air New Zealand (1); Bangkok Airways (2); Cathay Pacific (1); Hawaiian Airlines (1); Japan Air Lines (2); Lao Aviation (1); Malaysia Airlines (4); Thai Airways (2).
• Types of aircraft flown: ATR72 (2); A320 (1); A330 (1); B737 (4); B777 (4); B787 (2).



As mentioned earlier, these flights put me at 1,000,000 lifetime flight miles. I use openflights.org to track my flights. You can view my profile and flight record here.

Money:

Approximate amounts spent, broken down by country, in USD. I loosened my pursestrings a little as I was reasonably sure I would land a job soon after my return. Includes accommodation (except where noted), excludes airfares.


• Singapore: $392, or $56/day. Excludes accommodation as I stayed with my parents. I ate like a pig there.
• Hong Kong: $55 + 23,000 Amex points for the airport hotel.
• Thailand: $255, or $51/day. I'm familiar with Thailand and so I know how to live cheaply there!
• Laos: $890, or $59/day. This came as a surprise as I mostly ate street food. The figures were skewed by a splurge on a nice hotel for one night.
• Australia: $481, or $60/day, + 41,000 Amex points for hotels. I stayed with friends so costs were low.
• New Zealand: $577, or $115/day.



Fitness Tracker:


• Average Number of Steps Per Day: 13,466
• Most Steps Taken in Any One Day: 41,933, on the day I hiked the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.



Planes, Trains, Automobiles

Modes of transport used:


• Australia: airplane, car (friends' and rental), public bus, subway, tram.
• Cuba: taxi, tourist bus.
• Hong Kong: cable car, ferry, public bus, subway, tram.
• Indonesia: airplane, bemo, boat, car (private hire), motorbike, public bus, shared ride van.
• Japan: intercity train, subway.
• Laos: airplane, boat, car (private hire), sawngthaew, shared ride van, taxi.
• Myanmar: airplane, boat, car (private hire), e-bike, horse drawn cart, motorbike, songthaew, taxi, train, uber.
• New Zealand: car (by hitchhiking), public bus, shared ride van.
• Singapore: car (friends', family members'), public bus, subway, taxi, uber.
• Thailand: airplane, airport buggy (thanks to my first class award ticket), canal taxi (i.e., boat), pickup truck, public bus, sawngthaew, shared ride van, subway.



Pokemon Go:


• I caught three of the four regional Pokemon: Farfetch'd (caught in Shinjuku, Tokyo. This critter eluded me during prior layovers in Tokyo and Hong Kong); Heracross (caught in Havana on one of the rare occassions my sucky SIM card worked); and Kanghaskhan (found all over Australia).
• Pokegyms visited: Australia (187); Guam (2); Hong Kong (19): Indonesia (33); Japan (47); Laos (28); Malaysia (2); Myanmar (18); New Zealand (24); Singapore (117); Thailand (23); US Mainland (2).



Souvenirs purchased: two spoons and a t-shirt, all related to UXO, purchased in Laos.

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What's Next?

Before I set off in July, I contemplated switching careers to pursue something I really loved, but it would involve going back to school, and it would also require me to start at the bottom of a new career ladder. I decided this wasn't something I was willing to do. Besides, the Republican tax con bill which is on the verge of being passed would severely disincentivize pursuing graduate studies. So, I decided to stick with my current path.

I didn't leave my last job under the most positive of circumstances. Two days after my return, I went for spin class and I realized something was different - I was working out because I wanted to work out, and not because I needed to channel my negative energy somewhere. When I went for sushi with my former boss (not from my last workplace but a prior one), he said that it took him over a year to let go of what had happened to him in that workplace, and that having to work immediately after being laid off from that job did not help his mental state. So, I definitely did the right thing by removing myself from a work environment. I feel as if I have let go of what happened to me, and I am ready to move on.

One of the reasons why I extended the Midlife Crisis Flashpacking Trip was because I developed a strong job lead while I was home in October. I've had a few discussions with various people in that organization, and I am cautiously optimistic a job will come out of that. A second strong lead for a temp position developed while I was in Australia. I am stalling that lead for now.

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So, with this, I end one of the most amazing, life changing experiences I have ever embarked on. Thank you for following my adventures. I plan to do this again. Until the next time, here's a quote from travel writer Bill Bryson that succinctly sums up how I view travel.

"But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses."

Amen to that.

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Photos

Coming Home To Kitties
On the front of the picture is Alex. She is 13 years old. We lost her brother Sal to cancer in 2013. Behind her is Radar. After we lost Sal, Radar came into our lives as a kitten. He looks a lot like Sal and behaves like him too, down to scooping food out of his bowl with his paws. Alex and Radar bonded right away. We like to think that Sal somehow made his way back to us through Radar.

Thank You, Aotearoa
I am so grateful for the opportunity to hike the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.

One Million Miles
Somewhere between Auckland and Honolulu, I flew my one millionth mile. Here is what one million miles looks like, as mapped by openflights.org.

Where It All Began...
This was the 17-year old me in Auckland in 1986, wearing my school uniform. Told you I was a nerdy kid.

...Graduating To Solo Travel...
One of my solo trips, with my 24-year old self at the summit of Mt. Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo in 1993. I climbed the mountain with a couple of Brits and a German guy, and I traveled with some of them over the next two weeks. I was young enough to stay in dorms and be able to function with little sleep. Those days are long over. By the way, notice the jacket I'm wearing? I bought it in 1988 during my military service. Now look at the next pic...

... and Coming Full Circle
My 48-year old self at the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. The jacket I'm wearing here is the same as the one I'm wearing in the previous pic. I still fit in it! I'm not sure why I packed this jacket for this trip since I have newer ones, but there was something comforting about having this jacket with me.

The Highs - Tubing in Vang Vieng, Laos
Me stumbling out of the Nam Song River to one of the bars on the tubing route. This was one of the most fun days I have ever had traveling. Photo credit: E. B-Doyle

The Highs - Thailand... Just Being There
I love my former home. Something as mundane as riding a sawngthaew or sitting at a street side noodle stand just makes me smile like a maniac.

The Highs - My First Cricket Match
My visit to Adelaide coincided with the Ashes Test at the Adelaide Bowl. Pictured here is England bowling, Australia batting. I was surprised how much I enjoyed cricket; I was expecting to be bored.

Comments

[alex waring]

Thank you!
Thank you for allowing me to join you on this most epic of adventures, I'm sure a life-changing experience indeed. Your travels have been inspiring, and your writing very honest and heartfelt. I appreciate very much your sharing of your journey here, a journey in many different senses of the word. I wish you all the very best in your next chapter as it opens up for you. I look forward to reading about your future travels that you plan to do.

[Siewch]

Thank You For Your Well Wishes
And all the best to you too, Alex. I look forward to reading about your upcoming travels to Korea and Japan, and your jaunts around London... I miss my former home. Happy New Year!

[alex waring]

Thanks!
Thank you! And a Happy New Year to you too :)