Breakdown

The unthinkable happened!

After a glorious (but apparently not very long) six months of service, our Acer 3820tg completely broke down on us. The initial diagnosis is that the motherboard is fried (from what? We know not).

Since we’re kinda at the outskirts for now and won’t be in major cities long enough to get the laptop fixed, it looks like we would be lugging the deadweight with us for a little while longer.

We’ve lost a bulk of our photos and some of our notes.

I’m typing this entry using the WordPress app on my Samsung Galaxy SII. Typing on a virtual keyboard for long posts takes a bit of getting used to and a much longer time.

I guess entries till/if we get the laptop fixed, updates might take longer to come through.

Confessions of a Blackburn Rovers Supporter

Here we are – the last match of the English Premier League season. The fate of my team has already been determined.

We’re going down.

A season of Championship (fancy name for “not good enough”) football beckons.

I know… this is supposed to be a travel blog, but bear with me through some of my fan boy rants, and I promise you, there’s a point I am trying to make.

My love affair with the Rovers started in 1993. I’d just watched my first Premier League game and I was hooked!

Despite not having any geographical links with East Lancashire (or any parts of England for that matter), I was excited by the club that Jack Walker had built.

Jack Walker (no relation to Johnny)(I think…) was a self-made steel tycoon who decided to put his considerable financial might into the rejuvenation of his home town of Blackburn. He believed that the self confidence of the dreary industrial town could be improved greatly if they have something to cheer for. Something like the revival of the town’s once-great football club. Wouldn’t it be great if a small-town club could challenge for the country’s top honours with legendary clubs such as Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal?

It sounded like a script right out of an underdog-made-good Hollywood movie, but they were still big words coming from a club that just barely avoided relegation from the Second Division.

Over the next few years, Uncle Jack put his money where his mouth was. He injected millions of his own money into the club he supported since he was a boy. He even managed to persuade ex-Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish into taking over as the club’s manager. Despite the club’s small fan base, top players and promising youngsters started joining the club. The man was playing a real life game of Championship Manager!

I wish I could say I started supporting the Rovers because of the passion of Jack Walker, but 12-year old me was actually more star struck by Kenny Dalglish and his garden-theme squad (We had a goalie called Flowers, a defender called May, a skipper called Sherwood and a star striker called Shearer)(Surely, someone else saw the connection!).

With Walker’s money, the Rovers went from strength to strength. They scraped through promotion to the newly formed Premier League via play offs, and proceeded to finish fourth and second in their first years in the new League.

On the final day of the 94/95 season, Rovers needed a win against Liverpool to secure the league title.

They lost.

In a dramatic turn of events, Manchester United failed to capitalise on Rovers’ loss, and drew at West Ham.

The fairytale was completed! Walker’s Blackburn became the second team to win the Premier League and the only provincial team to finish top since.

It was an awesome time to be a Blackburn fan!

The next few years were not that great.

Dalglish moved up to become Director of Football. Star players were bought up by richer clubs. A series of bad performances and worse managers meant Blackburn never reached the top again. In a dismal 98/99 season, the team finished in the bottom three of the league and was relegated into the (then) Division One. It was heartbreaking to see Walker’s face as the team played their last game in the Premier League for two years. Walker never saw his beloved team play in the top flight again. He passed away from cancer in 1999.

Uncle Jack

During this time, Blackburn slowly transformed from a team-money-bought to a team of industrious giant killers. They don’t have the most expensive players, or the most good looking starlets, but they certainly play with a lot of heart. The players would challenge for every ball and go in hard on every tackle (some would say too hard).

It was with this attitude that the team won promotion back to the Premier League. Even though they’ll hover in mid table obscurity throughout their return to the Premier League, they’ll pull off the occasional shock victory, even winning the League Cup through an impossible sequence of results.

It was a difficult time to be a Rovers fan. I had to scour obscure websites to find replays of the Division One matches. There were always taunts from fans of “big clubs” when I proudly announced my support for a team of “hooligans” and “second stringers”, but I was proud of the way the team carried themselves. Of course, the occasional upsets provided great entertainment for me when I could laugh at the “difference in quality” between Rovers and the billion-dollar branded clubs of prima donnas. It was a difficult time to be a Rovers supporter, but it was a good time as well.

Last season, Blackburn was bought over by Indian chicken tycoon, Venky’s. Their reign thus far would be marked by empty promises and their unwavering support to an ineffective manager. Under this regime, the once tight knit Rovers squad turned to shambles. Dedicated servants of the club turned mutinous: refusing to play any more matches until things changed. They were promptly sold off at ridiculously low prices.

Blackburn fans were labelled as hooligans by the national media for heckling the clueless manager who had not managed to earn the respect/love of anyone at the club.

A round headed buffoon with a head shaped like an orange.... Ricky Gervais' words, not mine...

It was a horrible time to be a Rovers fan. It’s like watching your best friend get into an accident in slow motion and not being able to do anything about it.

I promised a “point” to all this, so here it is:

While watching a match at a friend’s place recently, I was asked: “Why are you supporting this bozo of a team?”

For the first time in almost 20 years, I couldn’t answer.

Blackburn Rovers was in shambles. We have disinterested owners, an incompetent manager and a bunch of players whose hearts do not seem to be in it anymore. We played 90 minutes of football against Tottenham without A SINGLE SHOT AT GOAL! I’m sure Spurs had an impressive defence, but my point was that even a half hearted Nazri Nasir would’ve tried a shot from midfield given half the chance!

So to my friend’s question, I could only manage a half-assed answer of “Loyalty”.

But seriously where do you draw the line between Dedication and Blind Loyalty? I have a feeling that the only reason why I check the Blackburn club page these days was out of pure habit. It was a comfortable habit I have had for the longest time – one that I carried on with even when it doesn’t make sense to do so anymore.

I realize that this applies to many parts of life too. We do anything long enough and it would become a habit. It’s more comfortable to carry on with a bad habit than to break out of it. To break out of the cycle of bad behaviour, we have to first realize it’s not something we want anymore.

And sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: I’ll not be checking in on the Blackburn squad anymore. I’ll still be watching English football but I won’t be supporting any teams. I’m sure I’ll lapse and type in the url for the Blackburn fan page once in a while, but until something drastic happen, they’ll certainly not be in my “favourites”folder anymore.

Arte Et Labore!

Rice!

I know, I know, the last picture in the previous update looks like mere puddles of water. So, I guess you’ll just have to take my word that they are magnificent.

How magnificent?

Let’s just say that Jo woke up willingly at 5am to check out the sunrise over the terraces.

Nuff Said.

Yes… Jo is still wearing THAT jacket…

Anyway, this is gonna be one of those posts that will not have (too many) words. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

A sense of scale… see the puny human. Hulk Smash! (I HAD to do that!)

Spot the Lone Man again. It was starting to become one of our favorite activities

After seeing a few of the farmer dudes dancing along the terraces, I just had to try it out too. Surprise, surprise but it is… NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS!

A cherry blossom in the middle of the rice terrace was perfect for multiple shots with different filter

Yuan Yang at Sunrise

The clouds rolling in made the rice fields look more… magical

One More Time…

Yup, we have quite the crush on Yuan Yang.

Rejuvenation: +100 HP!

After three months in China, we were getting quite a nasty case of the travel fatigues.

We were told by other travelers earlier on that it would happen. We would be seeing new things and having new adventures every day, to a point where we would be numb to it all.

We just didn’t believe it would happen to us.

Initially, we thought it was just a case of “Not-Wanting-To-Get-On-That-Death-Trap-Of-A-Bus” to get us from place to place, but after a while, we realized we actively did not want to see another temple/monastery/museum/temple.

History be damned, but they were all starting to blend into each other and look the same to us. I know, I know – we have boogers for brains.

We tried to mitigate the jaded-ness with long(er) stays in Dali and Lijiang. It helped a bit that we were not just going from attraction to attraction and actually slowed down to live in a place for a while, but we were still finding it hard to be excited. We didn’t really want to go to a place just because it was “on the list” (yeah, we’re having a bit of the “We’re-Not-Like-Regular-Tourists” snobbery too).

Admittedly, some of us are a bit more jaded than the other(s)

It was with this attitude that we headed down to Yuan Yang (元阳), an eight-hour overnight bus ride from Kunming. To be honest, I almost called off the trip to Yuan Yang, because the only way to get from there to our next destination of XiShuangBana was another 17-hour feet-odor-infused bus ride.

And the whole reason for us to suffer this ordeal?

To look at rice.

I’m serious! Yuan Yang is famous for the terraces its villagers grow their rice on, and NOTHING ELSE.

But Jo decided we should push on anyway.

We arrived in fog-shrouded Yuan Yang at 5am in the morning. Understandably, I got a bit grumpy looking at the mist all around us. In my mind I was already listing out the number of ways I could tell Jo “I TOLD YOU SO!” for dragging us all the way down here.

I mean, how majestic can rice terraces be, right?

Let’s just say… I don’t know shit.

Like a balm for the weary explorer’s heart

That’s the thing about China – Just when we think we’ve seen everything it has to offer, it comes along and hits us in the guts with sights like this.

Long story short, our travel lethargy was soothed for a while, and for the first time in a week or so, we were actually excited about exploring again.

So… Great Success!

One For the Birds

Timing your travel dates is an essential skill for many experienced travelers.

So far, our track record includes us being in Munich for the Oktoberfest one week AFTER the festivities; leaving Berlin on the evening when the entire city of Berlin (and pretty much Germany) was in town celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and going to Vashist one week AFTER the Rohtang Pass was closed.

In other words, we are hardly the experts to go to when it comes to tips on timing your travel.

One thing we are apparently good at is blindly stumbling into flocks of migrating birds.

Kunming (昆明) is the capital and the transport hub for Yunnan, not just for humans but for Siberian seagulls (Kunming Red Beak Seagulls 昆明红嘴鸥) as well. The official story goes that the seagulls started appearing in Kunming in 1985. Wu Qingheng (吴庆恒), a local worker, would use a big portion of his meager salary to pay for food for these seagulls. The predatory leeches have been going back to Kunming every year since.

Every winter, the “City of Eternal Spring” would celebrate the return of the seagulls with festivities… it’s a good idea to let the birds know that the people of the city love them as much as the tonnes of tourists they bring along with them.

Wu eventually passed away in 1995, with (really!) six eggs to his name. The city honored his dedication (and his contributions to local tourism) with a bronze statue at Cui Hu Gardens (翠湖公园) for “Old Man Seagull” (海鸥老人) with the inscription “His spirit sets a model for man and nature living together in harmony”.

Enterprising locals honored his spirit by setting up stores selling overpriced bird feed.

At the fervent insistence of our hostel receptionist, we took a walk around Cui Hu to take a look at the birds. We are hardly bird lovers, so you can’t really blame our lack of enthusiasm. We just don’t understand the joy of looking at what is, essentially, a few rats with wings.

We saw the first of the birds as we were approaching the park, and they looked… nice…

A preview of things to come…

And more came…

And then it just got plain bat shit scary…

To be fair, it was a pretty spectacular sight watching them fly in formation, dipping down and swooping up as the numerous onlookers tossed pieces of bread in the air…

But I don’t think it speaks very much for my character, as I was humming this tune as we watched the birds fly by in front of us…

A Different Kind of Pain

Don’t tell anyone, but Jo and I are blessed with two not-so-secret mutant abilities that make us perfect for travelling.

1) We are able to fall asleep in almost any environment.

2) We are able to ride on most vehicles without getting motion sickness.

As a result of the combination of these two abilities, we are able to get a lot of our rest when we travel from point to point. It’s not unusual to see either (or both) of us happily snoring away as the people around us puke their guts out.

We’re simply not affected.

It’s one of the reasons why we planned a purely overland journey for our trip through China. We would take 15-hour bus rides, instead of 2-hour flights to get from one point to another. It saved us the money on a night of accommodation, and we’d normally wake up bright and bushy-tailed for a brand new day of adventures.

I know I’ve bitched about the questionable living conditions when travelling by train in China. Even though it was a bit of a challenge, we were still able to sleep through most of our 13-hour hard seater train ride from Zhangye to Xi’an. We just had to make sure one of us was awake at any one point in time to ward off incoming spit and other bodily fluid.

It was a great bonding experience. I know we are married, but it was only at the end of that train ride that I felt like I could truly trust Jo with anything.

Even so, it was definitely not the most ideal situation. That’s why I was kinda glad when we heard that one of the 18 Strange Things about Yunnan (云南十八怪) was that rail services in the province bring you out of the country but not from place to place within Yunnan itself (火车不通国内通国外).

This means that we would have to attempt most of this leg of our travel by buses!

You know those comfortable long-distance coaches you see on TV where a slightly rounded semi-famous comedian/actor was able to blissfully recline fully in his seat with a look on his face that would probably have looked more appropriate post-coitus?

That’s the complete opposite of what travelling on an overnight bus in China feels like.

I know… for a lot of you, reading this part of the story is probably like watching that slasher flick where the hot female “supporting actress” decides to go take a shower, or the token Asian guy decides that the best thing to do when being chased by a psycho killer is to run up to the attic where there is no way to escape.

Bad things are gonna happen.

And happen they did.

THIS was our first taste of overnight bus travel in China.

You think it doesn't look THAT bad? That's because you haven't smelled it yet

It was a full-blown assault on all our senses.

To top off being crammed in a space the size of a very grimy coffin stacked onto one another, we were treated to the smell of various feet that had just been liberated from shoes after what seems (or smells) like 100 years. The joy of this whole experienced would occasionally be punctuated by the lovely soundtrack of someone going SCCHIHAKOORRCCCHCCHHH *ptui* ONTO the limited space of the aisle between the beds.

The only thing that made the experience any more unpleasant was when our up/down/side neighbours decided that the incredibly valuable breathing space could be enhanced by their cigarette smoke.

Like I said, it was a total sensory experience.

================================================================

To answer the question a lot of you are probably asking…

Yes, we eventually managed to fall asleep on these buses too.

We are THAT good, but I am sure it stretched the limits of our mutant abilities. And I don’t think we’ll ever be the same again.

What We Labour For

Happy Labour Day, all.

I’ve decided to celebrate this day of labour by not doing much of it.

Below is an article I wrote for the Expeditionier waaaaay back (6 months ago) when we first started our journey. The original title for the article was “Why I Quit My Job To Travel The World Or (Some Would Believe) Why I Chose To Commit Financial Suicide”.

I am reprinting the article on this blog today because I think it is important to remember what we are labouring for (and also because I am too lazy to write anything today).

I stand by what I said that long term travel is not for everyone, but at the same time, I think it is sad to labour for labour’s sake. I like to believe everyone has a dream, and it is towards this end that we should labour.

It is just too easy to forget this goal when we get tangled up in the process of getting there.

So, here’s to working hard and loving what we work hard for.

Loving everyday!

================================================================

“Hi I’m Wei and I just quit my job of 10 years. I intend to spend the next year traveling around the world with my wife.”

You’d be surprised by the myriad of responses this ice-breaking statement managed to evoke. The wife and I are used to hearing the gasps of horror and the plain exclamation that we are committing financial suicide. Every once in a while, however, we would hear someone whisper, “I wish I could do what you guys are doing.”

While it’s easy to respond to that statement with a mightier-than-thou, “So why don’t you?”, it reminded me of the first time the idea took hold of me.

I woke up (too early) one morning, brushed my teeth, stared at the mirror and realized that if things carried on the way they were now, this is probably what I am going to be doing for the next 30 years of my life. I froze. I could literally feel the air rush out of my lungs, and without being overly dramatic, my (would-be) life flashed before my eyes. I found myself asking a question that was probably too complicated to be answered at five in the morning: “What am I doing all this for?”

I draw a decent salary. I work five days a week. Normally, I would reach home from work too tired (or lazy) to do much except surf the internet and watch a bit of television. I go to sleep. Rinse and repeat for all weekdays. I spend the weekends rushing through things I enjoy doing and catching up with friends. Whatever money and leave days I had, I saved up so I could go for my annual grand trip of two weeks where I could let myself go and just forget about work.

This was hardly the life I pictured myself living. Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten my dreams and all that I was passionate about. I needed a break from the routine to sort my thoughts out. It is difficult to think about what truly makes you happy when you are working 50- and 60-hour weeks, and it is easy to come up with excuses to not pursue what you really love to a point where you forget about them.

The question then was when could I take a break? I only have 21 days of leave a year, and even with the holidays added in, I could never be able to get away from the job for more than a month at a time. I needed more time than that.

The next decision was not that easy to make.

I was newly married, and the wife and I just bought a house that comes with a mortgage to pay off. We had spent the past few years (rather successfully) building our careers and we were both at a point where we were drawing pretty comfortable salaries. We could not possibly give all that up on a whim.

Yet, I know that we could not live the way we had before. But no matter how we looked at it, it was a zero-sum game to choose between pursuing the dream of traveling and continuing through with the rat race.

So we asked ourselves this question: “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

What’s the worst thing that could happen if we drop our career now and go for our travel? We would definitely lose our jobs and give up careers we have been building for some time now. We might not find jobs with comparable salaries when we got back from our trip.

Are these deal breakers? We decided that it really was not. We can get by living on half the salaries that we had been drawing. And the mortgage for the house could be supplemented by renting out a room or two in our current place. True, it would be a less comfortable existence, but we could still get by.

Comfort.... pbbffftttt.... over rated...

I was reminded of a quote from Fight Club: “Advertising has these people chasing cars and clothes they don’t need. Generations have been working in jobs they hate, just so they can buy what they don’t really need.”

So what’s the worst thing that could happen if we give up on the trip and continue with our current jobs? For me, I think I would slowly lose my mind going running through the same maze looking for the same cheese day after day.

And I guess since the idea had already taken root, we will always look back at this time and wonder: What if?

Once we broke it down like that, the choice was easy. The consequences of going for the trip far outweigh the price of not going (especially the part about me losing my mind).

For us... there are some things money just can't buy...

Here in Singapore, long-term travel and “gap years” are not popular. We come from a culture where it is “decent” to find a career, work for the organization your whole life and get a gold watch and an appreciation dinner when you retire 40 years later.

We still have well-meaning friends and family who are trying to talk us out of it, and others who simply dismissed our plan as plain stupid. We have learned to disregard them because this is something that we truly want to do, and also because it is hard to listen to advice from people who have not done this before.

At the end of the day, we know that long term travel is not for everybody. And when it comes to life changing decisions like these, it is best to know that this is what we really want to do and do what is best for us.

Check back with me on a year’s time on how well this decision is going.

For now, we are living free!