For the longest time, I thought if I were ever to tell my story, I would have to start at the beginning.
Where I was born. How I grew up. The decisions I made. The places I travelled. The people I met.
It seemed like the logical way to make sense of a life.
The older I’ve become, the more I’ve realised that isn’t how we remember our lives at all.
We remember them through questions.
When did I become so afraid of getting things wrong?
When did I stop trusting people so easily?
Why did I spend years travelling the world with no real plan other than to see what was possible?
What does home really mean?
How much of the person I am today was built by choice, and how much was built by survival?
The answers aren’t found in one moment. They’re scattered across years. In conversations I still think about. In cities that changed me. In relationships that quietly rewrote how I saw the world. In decisions that made perfect sense at the time and only revealed their meaning much later.
Somewhere along the way, I lived out of a backpack. I built a career I never imagined I’d have. I found a partner who became my home. I also lost parts of myself that I’m still trying to understand.
Those stories now live in old photographs, Instagram posts with sepia filters, and whatever memories time has allowed me to keep.
I used to have a Facebook page that documented almost every step of my travels. Every country, every detour, every little moment I thought I’d never forget.
Years later, it was hacked, and I lost it all.
I’m turning 39 in a couple of weeks.
It feels like the right time to look back.
Not at a timeline of milestones, but at the moments that quietly shaped who I became.
Some were ordinary.
Some changed everything.
Many only revealed their meaning years later.
Over the next year, I want to see how much of that life I can remember.
Maybe, in the process of remembering who I was, I’ll better understand who I’ve become.
Or maybe I’ll find a way to reclaim the parts of myself I thought I’d lost along the way.
I recently came across an IG reel that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
In it, a daughter calls her traditional asian mum to share that she’s doing well. She’s successful now, earning a good income, and you can feel what she’s hoping for before her mum even responds. She isn’t looking for money or approval. She’s looking for recognition. After years of working hard, she simply wants to hear her mum say, “I’m proud of you.”
Instead, her mum replies that she doesn’t care how much money she earns because she’s never asked her daughter for money. What she really wants, she says, is for her to settle down.
As the conversation continues, the daughter becomes increasingly emotional. Eventually, she breaks down in tears.
I felt for her.
I don’t think she was trying to show off her success. I think she wanted to share a milestone with the person whose opinion mattered most. When that moment of validation never came, it must have felt as though none of her achievements were enough.
The comments reflected that sentiment almost immediately. Thousands of people shared stories of growing up with Asian parents who rarely expressed pride, who constantly moved the goalposts, or who seemed more concerned about marriage than anything else their children had accomplished.
I understood why the video resonated.
But after sitting with it for a while, I realised it had left me thinking about someone else.
Her mum.
Not because I thought the daughter was wrong to feel hurt. Hurt is hurt, and no one gets to tell another person how they should feel. But I couldn’t help wondering whether the mother had been understood in the way the internet had decided she had.
A one minute video is a remarkably small window into a relationship that has existed for decades. We don’t know what sacrifices that mother has made, how she has loved her daughter over the years, or whether this conversation reflects a lifelong pattern or simply one disappointing phone call. Yet within hours, thousands of strangers had reached the same conclusion about who she was.
Perhaps that’s the nature of social media. It rewards stories that are easy to understand. Someone is right. Someone is wrong. Someone is the hero. Someone is the villain.
Real families are rarely that tidy.
Maybe I reacted differently because it reminded me of my own relationship with my mum.
I’ve been with my partner for eight years. He’s my family in every sense of the word. Yet even after all this time, his place in my life has remained largely unacknowledged by my parents.
I came out to them when I was 18, but that’s a story for another time. Years later, I mentioned my partner in passing. They simply stayed silent. There were no questions, no objections, no conversation. We just never spoke about him again.
Growing up, both my mum and dad would occasionally say things like, “Don’t do this kind of thing,” or “Don’t do bad things,” whenever the topic of being gay came up. They never really explained what they meant, and I never asked. I simply grew up knowing they believed it was wrong.
What I never understood was why.
Years passed before I finally found the courage to ask my mum.
To my surprise, she was willing to have the conversation. I had spent years imagining an argument, convinced it would end in conflict. Instead, she listened. She explained. And for the first time, so did I.
I expected her answer to revolve around morality or religion. Instead, what I heard was fear.
She… was afraid.
She spoke about how difficult she imagined life would be for a gay person. She worried that people would discriminate against me, judge me, and make life harder simply because of who I was. She couldn’t fully understand that being gay isn’t something you choose or something you can simply wish away. But beneath all of that misunderstanding was something I hadn’t expected to find.
A mother trying to protect her son.
What struck me most was the contradiction she was carrying.
Like many traditional Asian parents, she has always hoped I would settle down with someone. To her, having a partner to walk through life’s hardest moments with is one of life’s greatest securities.
Yet because I’m gay, she would rather I build a successful career and spend my life alone than be with someone I love if it meant exposing myself to discrimination.
It’s an impossible contradiction.
The very thing she has always wanted for me, companionship, is also the very thing she fears most because of what the world might do to me.
The very loneliness she hoped to spare me from became the future she was willing to accept because she believed the alternative would hurt even more.
That conversation didn’t change my views about being gay.
It changed my understanding of my mum.
I realised she wasn’t rejecting my happiness. She was afraid of my suffering.
Those aren’t the same thing.
Understanding that didn’t erase the pain. There are still conversations we struggle to have, and there are still parts of my life I wish I could share more openly with my family. But it reminded me that love and fear are often tangled together, especially in the people who raised us.
When I think back to that video now, I wonder whether the daughter heard, “Your achievements don’t matter,” while her mum was trying, however imperfectly, to say, “I’ve never worried about your ability to earn a living. I’ve worried about whether you’ll have someone beside you when life becomes difficult.”
Perhaps both walked away feeling unseen.
And perhaps that’s the tragedy of so many parent-child relationships, even beyond asian families.
We’re often speaking about completely different things, convinced we’re having the same conversation.
As I was thrown off the motorbike, the first thought that crossed my mind was, “Oh shit.”
In the few seconds that followed, I felt like a human rag doll. Helpless in my predicament, I was certain this was going to be the end of me.
I didn’t have time to contemplate anything, not even death. The force of the collision hurled me across the road before I landed in an open drain by the roadside.
There was no dramatic moment where my entire life flashed before my eyes.
Only a quiet acknowledgement and resignation of what I thought was about to come.
It was a complete and utter shit of a situation.
The wind was knocked out of me when I landed in the drain. I remember an immense pain ricocheting through my body as I lay curled up in a foetal position on the muddy ground of the concrete ditch. Above me was the evening sky, painted in beautiful hues with scattered white clouds.
The next few moments passed in a blur.
Locals gathered around, and a couple of them came over to check on me, asking questions in Balinese that I couldn’t understand. I remember feeling pain shoot through my body as they carefully tried to move me. My shirt was soaked in blood from the deep wounds on my hip. My legs were covered in blood too.
Slowly, and very painfully, they lifted me out of the drain and placed me onto the back of a pickup truck, presumably belonging to one of the kind locals. In broken English, someone told me I was being taken to the hospital.
I whispered a quiet “thank you” to the man.
A tear finally escaped from the corner of my eye.
I was thankful to be alive.
And thankful to the strangers who didn’t hesitate to come to my aid.
To cut a long story short, I arrived at the A&E of a private hospital looking like something straight out of ER, complete with a stretcher, blood and all.
Because of the language barrier and the fact that I didn’t have my insurance documents on me (although I was insured), it took more than ten hours after I arrived before I was finally wheeled into the operating theatre.
The emotional climax came the next day when my worried parents arrived to find me bruised from head to toe, but thankfully stitched back together. Despite the severity of the accident, I had escaped with only flesh wounds. No broken bones. No internal bleeding.
Two days later, at my parents’ insistence, I was flown back to Singapore for further assessment and treatment.
Never would I have imagined myself going through something like this, yet here I am, with the scars to prove it.
I’ve always tried to live each day as though it were my last, but this close encounter with death has taken that philosophy to an entirely different level.
Should I be more afraid to venture out into the world again because of this accident?
I don’t think so.
Trauma? Not if I can help it.
Ugly scars?
Just new stories to tell.
There were many lessons to take away from this experience. My faith in humanity was certainly restored by all the kind Samaritans who rushed to my rescue.
But fear was definitely not one of those lessons.
If anything, the accident has given me even more courage to venture further and to live life more fully than ever before.
After all, as Kelly Clarkson once sang, “What doesn’t kill you (literally) makes you stronger.”
So here’s to a richer life, richer experiences, and many more adventures ahead.
Yesterday was the first time in a year that I cried my eyes out for no apparent reason.
Well, it wasn’t really for no reason. It just began with me not knowing what the hell I was sobbing about.
I was all ready to head out for a party. Hair done, clothes on, shoes laced up and everything. Then, all of a sudden, a huge wave of unexplainable dread and sadness swept over me like a tropical flash flood. Caught completely off guard, my tears started falling uncontrollably, and try as I might, I couldn’t stop them. I was sobbing like a baby in the middle of my room.
Instinctively, I closed my door so my parents wouldn’t hear me.
I was an absolute mess, a complete contrast to the composed version of myself just seconds before. My mind tried to make sense of it all as my body’s need to cry completely took over.
What is wrong with me?
Ever since I came back, I’d been feeling a growing emptiness in my heart. I felt lost.
I thought it was because I couldn’t adapt back to life here. I thought it was because I had fallen in love with other lands and people overseas. I even thought I had somehow become too good for this place.
I thought, I thought, and I thought.
I gave myself countless reasons to justify my inability to be happy here. And as I did, the void in my heart only grew larger.
Slowly, I changed.
I became more insecure, fearful, whiny and complacent. I also found myself indulging in unhealthy distractions, trying to fill a void that I didn’t even realise I was creating. I was going down a rabbit hole built from my own lies and excuses.
Then, in the middle of all that sobbing, it hit me.
If I really am the traveller of the world I like to think I am, shouldn’t adapting and assimilating into changing cultures be part of the journey? My own country included?
I had been lying to myself.
I had been running away.
Beneath the glammed up image of a seemingly carefree vagabond, exploring the world whenever and wherever he pleased, was a scared little boy running away from home. Running away from reality.
All the armour I had spent so long building while travelling amounted to nothing the moment I returned home.
I had been preparing for the wrong battle all along.
Perhaps I did discover something important while travelling. Perhaps it was life changing. Perhaps even inspiring.
But I realised that discovery does not equate to understanding.
I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the beauty of everything I had learnt and experienced because there was still a clot in my heart.
A clot I had never removed before I left Singapore.
I was still hurting from my previous relationship.
Not because I hadn’t gotten over the person. I had.
But I hadn’t gotten over the breakup itself.
I was still grieving the loss of all the hopes and dreams that had become inseparably tied to that relationship. I had invested so much into it. I was ready to settle down. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with it. I was ready to die with it.
When it all ended, I shut down.
I thought I had moved on, but what I had really done was lock everything away somewhere deep in my heart under the guise of false bravado.
It had been quietly simmering throughout all of 2014.
Last night, it finally came to a boil.
As my final tear fell and the streams on my face became stains, I knew what I had to do.
It was time for me to step back into the light.
“Until you get comfortable with being alone, you’ll never know if you’re choosing someone out of love or loneliness…”
As with any place we visit, it is the people we meet along the way who make it unforgettable.
While I can take photographs of the beautiful places I’ve been and bring them home with me, it is the friends I make along the journey who keep me connected to this great, big and amazing world I am trekking through.
Japan took my breath away.
Seeing Mt Fuji was amazing. Spending ten days on a meditation retreat in the mountains of Kyoto was amazing. Walking through the colourful streets of Tokyo was amazing. Sitting on warm toilet seats was amazing. Visiting beautiful temples with histories dating back hundreds of years was amazing. Barbecuing meat on a rooftop in the cold was amazing. Watching snowflakes fall from the sky for the very first time in my life was amazing.
But none of those experiences could compare to the people I met and befriended.
The people were priceless.
In a country known for its incredibly accommodating and kind people, making friends was as simple as offering a smile to a complete stranger.
Literally.
I am so grateful for everyone I was fortunate enough to meet during my one month there. The love, kindness and compassion they showed so freely not only restored my faith in humanity, but also inspired me and taught me how to truly live.
Without all the complications that life throws at us every day, I learnt that love should come naturally from within us, not out of obligation or because of the influences around us.
I learnt to see with my heart, not just my mind.
I learnt to embrace the present, instead of being weighed down by my past or worrying endlessly about my future.
While the backpack I carry on this journey may be heavy, the spiritual fruits I have gathered along the way have brought a surreal lightness to my feet, urging me to keep running towards this great adventure, hungry for more unforgettable encounters and more lessons waiting to be learnt.
I completed my 10 day meditation retreat at a meditation centre located in Hinokiyama, one of the many beautiful snow capped mountains overlooking the peaceful countryside on the outskirts of Kyoto, Japan.
And as promised, here’s my update on what happened.
The retreat, a Vipassana meditation course to be exact, teaches an untainted form of meditation said to have been passed down directly from the Buddha himself. It is the very technique believed to have helped him attain enlightenment over 2,500 years ago.
“Vipassana”, a Sanskrit word, literally means “insight into the true nature of reality.”
Sounds pretty deep, doesn’t it?
I thought so too.
The course was recommended by a close friend back in Singapore, who had attended one in Cambodia before I left on my travels. Having never done anything like it before, I was intrigued and decided to sign up for the next available course. There are Vipassana centres all over the world, but I chose Japan because I thought there was something rather romantic about doing it there.
Looking back, that probably wasn’t the best reason.
I went in with just one expectation.
To enjoy some proper quiet time alone, away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.
I also thought it would be a good personal challenge to spend ten days completely free from technology, while observing the course’s mandatory vow of noble silence.
Little did I know that those would turn out to be the easiest parts of the experience.
Getting to the centre took an entire day’s journey by train and bus from Tokyo. By the time I stepped off the shuttle bus, the sky had already turned a deep shade of blue. Towering pine trees surrounded a small cluster of quaint wooden buildings nestled quietly among the mountains.
It looked like something straight out of a fairy tale.
Standing there in the cold evening air, I felt a mixture of awe and anticipation.
What would the next ten days be like?
I took a deep breath and hoped for the best.
To cut a very long story short…
The ten days were mentally and physically exhausting.
Life at the centre was simple.
Meditate.
Eat.
Sleep.
For a city boy like me, it was torture.
We woke up at 4 a.m. every morning and went to bed at 9 p.m. We spent hours sitting perfectly still in meditation. Meals were simple vegetarian Japanese food at 6.30 a.m. and 11 a.m., followed only by fruit at 5 p.m.
It was challenging in every sense of the word.
The one thing I genuinely looked forward to each day was the evening discourse.
Every night, we watched video lessons by S. N. Goenka, the teacher who helped reintroduce Vipassana meditation to the world. He explained the practice with so much warmth, humour and clarity that I found myself sitting up straight and paying close attention every single evening.
Although…
I have to admit that was partly because it was the most exciting thing that happened all day.
As the days slowly passed, something began to change within me.
I didn’t notice it at first.
But eventually, it became impossible to ignore.
I went into the retreat as someone carrying a chip on my shoulder.
I came out realising that I didn’t need the world to change for me to be happy.
I learnt about the impermanence of everything and the importance of accepting reality as it is.
I learnt how to let go.
I learnt to seek understanding through experience instead of blindly accepting what others told me.
Most importantly, I learnt that true happiness doesn’t come from the constantly changing world around us, but from the equanimity of our own mind.
In short…
It was life changing.
Trying to fully explain everything I learnt during those ten days wouldn’t do this practice any justice.
It is something that simply has to be experienced.
If you ever have the opportunity, I would genuinely encourage you to take that leap of faith.
Don’t dismiss it because it sounds too spiritual or too abstract.
I can personally vouch for its authenticity, provided you approach it with sincerity.
Despite its origins, I don’t see Vipassana as a Buddhist practice or even a religious one.
To me, it is a universal way of understanding reality, cultivating compassion, and ultimately learning how to love not only those around us, but ourselves as well.
All in all, I feel incredibly grateful to have experienced this retreat and to have been given the opportunity to begin this journey of self discovery and self love.
Have I reached my destination?
Not even close.
But I know I’ve taken the first step.
And for now, the only thing that matters is the path that lies ahead.
So this is the last week on my job and I am starting to feel really overwhelmed. Excitement and fear are all melting together, creating shocks of nervous energy across my whole body. While my heart tells me I will be alright and that I can do this, my logical mind still keep sending out a flashing red alert, warning me a big change is about to happen, the biggest in my life yet. This is really happening!!!
Though I have been mentally armoring myself for this expected onslaught of emotions since a month ago, I know now that one can never really be truly prepared for this kind of thing. It feels as if a thousand butterflies are now fluttering in my stomach, making me extremely nauseous. With a little more than a month left now, I am beginning to see my “jigsaw puzzle” fitting in piece by piece with all the gathering of necessities, packing, selling, researching and saving up… and it is making this journey become more and more real each day. I find myself constantly thinking how reckless and crazy I actually am, to travel indefinitely, alone and with barely an itinerary to save myself. Thousands of thoughts started to creep up my mind to tell me why I shouldn’t do this. Thoughts of not having enough money, encountering dangers on the road, loneliness, helplessness, hunger, culture shock, falling sick…
I can barely breathe now.
I know I need to get a hold of myself, I know I owe it to myself to go. I know I need to remind myself WHY I am going. I know I need to remind myself why I am LEAVING.
Thank God for membership cards, credit card rebates and amazingly supportive parents/friends, because every cent saved is every cent more for me to survive that much longer on my journey! (I think I have been saying that a lot lately)
Recently, I finally bought myself the Osprey Farpoint 70 backpack (comes with a lifetime international warranty which goes to show how confident Osprey is, about their products) that I have been eyeing and researching on for a while, and a few other travel necessities along the way.
I was ecstatic to find out that with my “Passion” card, I could get a 10% off for my backpack if I buy it from “Sports Connection”, the only group of stores in Singapore that I know of that carries and distributes Osprey travel backpacks (FYI, my infatuation with Osprey is a very personal thing and might be very different for one individual to another). Also, because I have already collected rebates from my Citibank credit card, I managed to throw in a couple of add ons, namely a money belt and a check in bag (so your backpack won’t get ruthlessly scratched or torn when you check them in at trains, ferries, buses or airports) at only an additional cost of 9 bucks in total. How cool is that?
I made a trip down to the army market at beach road as well (where they sell travel ware and backpacks at wholesale prices) and bought myself a few stuff, like a strong LED torch with a rechargeable battery and charger, a travel medical pack (both of which my dad offered to pay for because I was extremely apprehensive about the prices, being the penny-pinching person I have become. Love you dad!), an inflatable pillow for desperate no-pillow situations, a pair of ear plugs for noisy nights when I need to sleep, a marker for me to write signs on cardboards to indicate the places I wanna go when I hitchhike and a good black pen for general and lasting usage. Total amount of money spent for everything – another 9 bucks. Yay!
~
To many budget-conscious travelers around, I understand first-hand that seeing your money ringing off the bell from the cash register might not be the best feeling in the world. It pains me too but i knew I had to consciously remind myself that the things I am buying (after proper research that is) are actually worthy and practical investments to splurge on. While it is good to always be prudent with your spending, there is a need to know that there are certain things that one should absolutely not scrimp on, for practicality sake.
For every good investment you make, the money you’ve spent actually goes a long way to help you curb back on unnecessary expenditure to replace or repair in the future. I’ve learnt that you don’t always have to go for the best (unless you can afford it), but somewhere around mid range might just be good enough. The decision to purchase certain items also heavily depends on the type of trip you are making, the countries that you are planning to travel to, which seasons of the year and the length of time you are going for. Chances are if you paid too little for them, they probably won’t last very long and if you paid too much, your heart may break when they get lost, stolen or damaged while you are on the road. Therefore, striking the right balance is very important.
A general rule of thumb that I have been following is to always do a good amount of research (quantitative and qualitative) and weighing out the pros and cons before taking the money out of my wallet. I also tend to ask myself three self-imposed golden questions. Do I need it? Are there alternatives? Are the alternatives something that I can live with? Ultimately, making a purchase is a very personal decision and only you can make the final call.
So happy shopping for those who are also preparing the same journey as me and if you need help, feel free to let me know! Will be more than willing to offer my penny-worth. 🙂
Since I started preparing for my journey, I have met so many amazing individuals who has thoroughly blessed me in ways that I wouldn’t have imagined possible. Being brought up in a society where distrust is the name of the game, where kindness came from government campaigns rather than a generous spirit and the meaning of life is calculated in cents and dollars, it never occurred to me that I would ever meet people like that. These people, who gave so generously of themselves and loved so genuinely without expecting any returns at all. You guys have inspired me.
I just want to use this space today, to thank a few of these amazing people who has changed the way I viewed the world.
V, you wanted to blessed my journey so much so that you actually offered to top up my travel fund although I didn’t even ask for it (much less thought about it), all because you has done this before and know how hard it can be. I didn’t ask how much not because it didn’t matter, but because your thoughts behind it meant so much more. My greatest gratitude. You’ve not only helped me make this journey that much longer, but you have also proven to me that the world is a much kinder place than what most people made it out to be. Now because of what you have done for me, I will be consciously lending a hand to help bless others along the road and to people who will make this journey after me, as much as I possibly can.
B, thank you so much for providing me the account to your Kobo app so that my journey ahead will not simply be just counting the fingers on my hands when I have absolutely nothing to do. Your advice on working as I am traveling is invaluable and I will definitely need to seek you out for more advice along the way! I feel a lot less lonely, knowing that there are fellow Singaporeans around who are doing the same thing. Not only that, but you also managed to have your partner and two dogs travel along with you while you do what you love. You are tremendously inspiring. I have become a little more braver, and a little more motivated to follow through with my plans because of you. Thank you so much once again.
C, We haven’t spoken in awhile and I didn’t know you moved away to work. Thank you for offering your home to me and allowing me stay as long as I like, as and when I travel to the place you’re at. You didn’t even stop there. You offered to pay me as well, just to help you around with housework. I would have done it for free anyway because I am already thankful to have a roof over my head and to have an amazing friend like you. When I have my own place in the future, wherever it may be, I too will open my place for others seeking a roof over their heads, a good rest for the night and a warm, full meal.
J, despite the fact that we haven’t met, you are still one of the most superbly inspiring individual I’ve ever come to know. You doing the same thing as me is amazing. You being around the same age as me is even more so! I approached you via Facebook when i first saw your journey on the couchsurfing website as well as your Facebook page. You were quick to reply, with such openness to share whatever that you have experienced and learnt to someone you barely knew. Your courage inspired me to no end. Your motivation to follow through despite all circumstances has proven to me that all things are possible. . It is nice to have a fellow companion on a journey, even if we are not in the same country. Perhaps one day we will cross paths and be able to share our experiences together more candidly in person.
To my parents who despite being so worried about me, supported my journey anyway, You guys even went to the point of buying my laptop and camera at a price that no one would ever pay for, just to help me raise funds before I leave and at the same time, still allow me to have convenient access to ‘loan’ them. The love that you guys have for me is so special and I feel incredibly lucky to be your son . I promise you guys that I will take good care of myself and keep you guys posted as much possible. I love you both so so much. Without the both of you, I wouldn’t be who I am today. Big hugs mum and dad…
As I was researching as usual just now, I was hit with a sudden and random rush of thoughts that took my surprise and got me in a super pensive mood…
What will life be like when i start this journey? What will life be like after the journey ends? Will I be the same person when i come back? What kind of person would I be like if I become different from now? Will the experiences that I have during my travel changed me in drastic ways? Will I be able to adapt back to my old life? Will everything have move on around me anyway?
While it is easy to say that I should stop expecting and just live through it, it is still humanly impossible to not think or imagine what it would be like…
Can’t wait to stop daydreaming and truly live the journey I am planning right now! 69 more days and counting down…. >.<
Jars of Thoughts 