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In Madagascar & Yemen |
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the many faces of |
Tan Wee Cheng, Singapore 
weecheng.com| Where have I been to ? |
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In Madagascar & Yemen |
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the many faces of |
| Where have I been to ? |
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Routes
Countries Maps - Click to see larger images |
"there are places in the world where one is mysteriously
magnified
on arrival or departure by the emotions of all those who have arrived
and
departed before...It is a sadness we do not experience today: our
journeys
no longer take years to complete, we know exactly where it is going,
and
our chances of coming back are so much greater." Cees Nooteboom
in Roads
To Santiago
More Travel Quotations below - click here I do not
consider myself a writer, but a traveller who happens to write. I am not a
hardship traveller, or at least no longer so. I hardly climb mountains;
I do
not camp in the outdoors these days; And I don’t do much
trekking. I am essentially
a city guy who enjoys café, shopping in flea markets, checking
out local
supermarkets and browsing in local bookstores. As
a keen observer of politics and economics, as well as a
history
bluff, I enjoy historical sites, political oddities, conversation into
local
issues and a back-of-the-envelope assessment of local business
opportunities. Even then, I
do occasional forays to the wilderness. I
do have a soft spot for historical sites or spectacular scenery located
in the
middle of nowhere, and would brave minor discomfort to visit such
places. I like remote or
difficult-to-reach places,
more for the journey there than for what’s to see at the end
point. However, I
would not do endurance treks to get there. If
I could, I would organize a quick and easy way to get
there. I tend
to travel on the budget, but have increasingly resorted to expensive
but fast
and comfortable ways of reaching exotic locations. As I get
older, I feel that comfort matters more. I have long abandoned staying
in
hostels – they are too noisy for me. I prefer nice boutique
hotels where I can
contemplate life, enjoy clean facilities, clear my emails and do some
work with
privacy. Sometimes, I even stay in expensive, exclusive places with
extraordinary setting that I wouldn’t dare contemplate when I
first began my
travels. I still enjoy interacting with
locals and other travellers. Hence I
would avoid expat enclaves and would just drop by travellers inns and
cafes from
time to time. When the term
“flashpacker”
appears, I thought that is the word to describe me, as well as many of
us who
began as backpackers but have since upgraded for quality experiences
and
aesthetics. In fact, I
am a regular chap who has a 9-to-5 job. I
am neither a full time writer nor a real nomad, though I
like the
spirit of being the latter. Perhaps, I
am merely a nomad wannabe. My passion
for travel means that I try my best to arrange my life around my
travels. I use
all my work vacations for travel, and I have also gone on extended
journeys between
jobs. I had taken two career breaks of one year each time to
travel. In my current job as a
university lecturer and business consultant, I am able to travel for as
much as
two months in mid-year and several weeks at the end of the year.
Freedom and
flexibility have become key in this stage of my life. Some people
wonder if I had spent too little time in the many countries and
territories I
have visited. The answer is, yes and no. Now look – I have been
travelling for
almost 2 decades now. If you have been
utilizing
all of your available work breaks solely to travel, you could certainly
cover a
lot of ground in 2 decades. When I first
began travelling in the early 1990s, yes, spurred by an urgent desire
to
experience a wide kaleidoscope of imagery and cultures, I rushed
through many
places. Over the
years, however, I have also learnt to appreciate the subtleties of
places and
cultures, especially ethnic minorities at the periphery of nations. I began to cultivate an interest in festivals
and local histories. In the last decade,
I have spent a lot of time in the places I visit - at least what could
be
considered a fair bit of time for someone who continues to have a
career beyond
writing and travel per se. Certainly, I
cannot go away for 3 months at a time like many continental Europeans
do
because of the peculiar work vacation system they benefit from. In fact, I often return to the countries I
have been, to visit regions I hadn’t gone to, or to experience
festivals and cuisines
that I did not in my earlier visits. I do not
spend two months in a small country. My
other commitments simply do not allow me to do so, especially when I am
not a
full-time travel writer or traveller. But
I do try to spend time to appreciate
aspects of places which are worth learning about, and my extensive
pre-journey
planning allows me to experience these things when I get there. Am I trying
to break any record? No, the record of
visiting the most number of countries has already been broken a long
time
ago. I keep track of the numbers partly
because
they are of statistical interest, and partly because of my interest in
nations
and places. The reality is, I often
return to places I have visited before and spend quite a bit of time in
such
places that do not increase my country count. In an era
where rising incomes have allowed many Asians to travel and see the
world, I
hope my experiences could be useful to them. Asian
travellers do have peculiar priorities and
preferences which
differ from those of Western travellers. I
hope that my travels would also provide them with some
ideas. Writing is neither my career nor a key source of income. My objective is to encourage independent travel. I do not consider my travels extraordinary. I take public transport, hardly treks or cross dangerous rivers and brave tall peaks. I even keep a regular job connected to neither writing nor travel. I hope all these encourage others to do the same. That is the essence of my writing and the key objective of this website. I have listed below the countries I have been to, with the year of visit and links to my travel reports (which were to only some of my trips). Have fun reading! For what I count as a country and what constitutes a visit, see my Country-Count Criteria page.
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| East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia &
Oceania
South East Asia: East Asia: Japan (2006) plus Okinawa (2010) North Korea (2004) ; South Korea (2003) ; Mongolia (2002) South Asia: Australasia: American Samoa (2010), Cook Islands (2010), Fiji (2010), Kiribati (2010), Nauru (2010), New Caledonia (2010), Norfolk Island (2010), Papua New Guinea (2010), Samoa (2010), Solomon Islands (2010), Tonga (2010), Tuvalu (2010), Vanuatu (2010), Wallis & Futuna (2010) |
| Central Asia, Middle East
& Africa
Central Asia: Middle East/North
Africa: Sub-Sahara Africa: |
| Europe
Central & Eastern:
Western Europe: |
| Places To Visit:
My Wish List wish me luck in lottery !
Parts of Russia (Tuva, Yakutiya, Kamchatka,
Altai, Northern Caucasus, Volga region) Algerian Sahara,
Equatorial
Guinea, Sao Tome
& Principe, Democratic Republic of The Congo, Angola
Northern and Central Brazil ; Falkland Islands India (Tamil Nadu, Hampi, Northeast, Sikkim and Buddhist monuments of India) Following parts of China: North-West/Silk Road, Guizhou, Tibet
Kachin State &
Eastern Shan State of Myanmar ; Parts of Thailand: Isan
South Island of New Zealand ; Canada's Nunavut & Yukon territories |
| Favourite Places |
|
Favourite Country/Regions - Libya - Thailand |
Favourite Large Cities (population
>1 million) - Cape Town - Esfahan - London -Taipei - Vancouver |
Favourite Small Cities/Towns
(population <1 million) - Thimphu (Bhutan) |
|
Unique "Small" Places/Sites
(Culture & Heritage) -exclude those already listed elsewhere - Dogon Country (Mali) - Ghadames (Libya) - Khoima (Nagaland, India) - Pushkar (India) - Wadi Hadramawt (Yemen) |
Unique
Places (Nature) |
Weird
Regimes - Adjara (Georgia) - Kosovo - Montenegro - North Korea - Somaliland - Srpska (Bosnian Serb Republic) - Transdniestria (Moldova) - Turkmenistan Epic Journeys - Baltic To The Black Sea - Inca Trail - Reunification Express (Vietnam) - Trans-Siberian Railway |
| Various quotations from
John Simpsons in A
Mad World, My Masters:
"Once we had a planet. Now… we’re left with a suburb." "There are three bad
times: the night before you leave for somewhere difficult, and you sit
with your lover or your family trying to behave entirely normally in
order to show how safe everything is going to be; the following
morning, when the car comes to take you to the airport; and the moment
when the plane touches down at your destination. Of
all these moments, the last is by far the worst. It
is also more unpleasant than anything you are likely to experience
later." "Even if you find yourself under long intensive shelling, which is the nastiest thing I know, or are attacked by an angry crowd, which is the second nastiest, it never quite matches that dreadful sense of foreboding when the plane jolts, the tyres scream, and the trip begins to unfold: the separation from the comfortable, safe, familiar world of an aircraft, the cold air, the uncertainty of standing in line at the immigration desk, defenceless against all the fears you have been suppressing. And of course if shelling, arrest, or angry crowds materialize – and they usually don’t – you are much too busy to worry about the outcome." "Serious traveling is never comfortable or safe, and is very rarely accompanied by champagne, unless, that is, you have brought your own. Serious traveling is difficult, and the enjoyment is in direct proportion to the degree of difficulty. By which I mean, it only starts to be really enjoyable once it’s over." |
| Icons of Travel |
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| Zhenghe | Ibn Battuta | Marco Polo | Lawrence of Arabia | Bruce Chatwin |
| Aspiring Nomad |
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| Kykkos Monastery, Troodos Mountains, Cyprus | Helsinki Bay, Finland | Georgian Military Highway, near the Russian/Chechen border | Train, Ukraine, near the Moldovan border | Torres del Paine National Park, Chile |
