Romantic Crush

I have a good friend from Germany and ever since he was a young boy, he was in love with Japan. He watched their animes, listened to their music, bought shirts from Japanese companies and learnt Japanese. Unsurprisingly, his life's dream was to travel to Japan. He was fascinated by the country and loved it unconditionally, even though he has never been there nor fully experienced its culture before. My boyfriend always told him that he's carrying an overly romantic idea of Japan.

I have that sort of crush too. I am absolutely smitten with San Francisco but I don't know anyone from there, I don't know of anything beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay. Still, I want to visit or stay there for a period of time. And I can trace this fascination and romantic crush to the blogs that I have been frequenting, like Blushing Ambition, that hail from the bay. Somehow, the pictures I see scream out everything that I love and want- Sun, creativity and that little magic that special places have, like Venice and Montreal. I have no idea when I will finally visit and if it really is as special of a place as I think it is. Nonetheless, it is nice to have a special place to hold in your heart and believe that it is absolutely magical and the place for you.

Via Blushing Ambition

Via Late Afternoon

I found this in a German supermarket. It's basically a frozen chinese meal of chicken with pineapple. The chinese words on the side however, begs to differ. It says that it is an undead bird.

Via Tumblr

How do you travel?

When one of my best friends travelled to Italy recently, he planned intensively for it. He read every travel guide, scoured TripAdvisor everyday and visited blogs, in order to find out which were the restaurants that he had to go, which hotels he would stay in and which attractions were a must-see. By the end of his planning, he had a clear itinerary and even knew what the opening hours of the restaurants were.

I, on the other hand, only bother to look through TripAdvisor to find the best accomodation and several top attractions, and then arrive in the country with a sketchy idea of where I want go and no clue of how to get there.

I wouldn't say my way is the best idea. Meals involve walking up and down a street, trying to decide on a restaurant and then finally getting annoyed with the process, choosing a random one and then left hoping that the food would taste good and authentically local. And several times, upon leaving the country and telling others about my trip, I'm made aware that I didn't go to places that I should have gone, and have to fend off indignant statements like how couldn't you have gone since it's the most famous place there.

But still, I like going to a country, with zero expectations and zero pressure to visit everything. I like going to a place, and be geniunely surprised by what I find. I like walking through the city, and upon an unplanned turn at a corner, see something that amazes me and I won't go " Oh, I read about that. It looks exactly like that photo I saw." And I like taking my time to go through a city, without rushing from attraction to attraction. And that's why I don't want to know if there is a statue that I HAVE to see, or a bridge that I SHOULD cross. If I don't know about it, I won't be pressured to visit it and can instead, use that time to slowly appreciate the city and its people.

But still, everytime it is time for a meal, I do kick myself for not doing more research on where are the best places.

How to not look like a Lonely Planet Host

Have you ever watched an episode of Lonely Planet/ Globe Trekkers? In fact, have you ever watched any travel show before? Am I wrong to say that they all dress like this?

Why? Why oh why must they always dress like this? Is it because it screams, "I am a serious traveller! I don't care about looking good! It's about feeling comfortable and seeing the world!"

Honestly, dressing well doesn't make you any less of a professional traveller and it doesn't have to mean forsaking comfort. And when travelling, we do not want to be immediately recognized as a tourist because we have the touristic uniform of looking frumpy. So in order to prove this point, I shall show what outfits are traveller-approriate and fashionista-friendly. In honor of the fact that my last holiday was in Phuket, Thailand. I shall begin with beach holidays.

As you can see, light and airy clothes are the way to go. Shorts are an absolute must and can be used to match any top. Sneakers help you survive those long hours of walking and with a nice dress, is night-club chic. And most of all, you don't look like a lonely-planet host.

Journey to the West

Have you ever been in this situation when you were on your holiday? You are sitting in a cafe or a pub, idly chatting with your friend, and the stranger next to you, turns and gives you a small smile and said ” A’right?” You start chatting with each other and he eventually asks, ” So where are you from?” You tell them and immediately, you notice from his eyes that the little wheels inside his brain are churning and the next thing that pops out of his mouth is a question about a stereotype about your culture, nationality, politics and identity.

As an Asian woman, travelling has opened my eyes to the burdens of nationality. I don’t necessarily mean that i encounter racism. But rather, I feel the responsibility and need to assert my national and cultural identity, something which I never feel when I am in my home country, and also the burden of fighting the stereotypes that people associate with this identity. For example, when I travel to Western countries, I know that some of the locals may be unable to tell which country I am from simply from my looks. So to them, I could be a job-stealing Chinese, a hardworking Asian nerd who studies in the local university or a Japanese girl who does cosplay. And because the East is so diverse and not everyone may have had the exposure and the education regarding this side of the world, stereotypes and hear-says form their basis of understanding about us.

This burden increases when I am travelling with my German boyfriend. No matter where we go, we get stared at with curious and judgemental eyes, and with the increasing trend of mail-ordered brides and the label attached to Asian girls who date Western men as money-hungry whores, it takes a lot of willpower to not get offended and take things personally.

And from personal experience, the misunderstandings and the lack of understanding will mean that I will be asked weird questions and have to be patient about it. When I am asked whether China’s weather is good because the questioner assumes that just because I am Chinese in heritage, I am Chinese by nationality, I have to patiently explain the difference and still retain my temper when I get ” so you are from China then?”. When I am told, in a surprised tone, that I speak really good English even though English is not the first language of the questioner either, I don’t interprete it as a judgement of Asian’s intellect and smile and say ‘Thank You’.

The stereotypes are not necessarily negative. But I feel uncomfortable that people have a pre-conceived notion about who I am and perhaps, more than anything, it is cultural patriotism; I don’t like the associations being made about how Asians behave and live. This probably has to do with our history. For the longest time, we were colonized and seen as lesser beings, and the effects of the past lives on to today. The region still feels that the West is judging us in various ways and this manifests itself in the constant nagging thought at the back of our mind in our everyday lives and during our travels, “Was that racist, or simply an honest question and fair judgement?”

But truthfully, the burden of nationality is not simply from having to deal with other’s stereotypes and judgements about me as derived from where I come from, it is also from my own stereotypes about other nationalities that make me not want to be associated with them.

Eiffel Tower, Paris

What she was doing, was not anything new. Somewhere, somehow, we have probably all met someone that offered a "Free hug" to strangers. But what was interesting was what happened around her. At the Eiffel Tower, armed military soldiers are stationed, patrolling the area alongside the many peddlers of minature Eiffel Tower keychains. For a brief moment, both the soldiers and the peddlers surrounded the girl for no apparent reason. Nothing changed. And just as suddenly, both groups dispersed and everything was left in its ordered, touristic calm.

Venice, Italy

The first sight that greeted us when we arrived at the alley that would lead us to our Bed and Breakfast was this. Three Italian men sitting at a café, strumming their guitars and singing out loud, intermixing it occasionally with casual conversation. It was a weekday afternoon and tourists were everywhere, rushing from one attraction to another, dressed unglamorously in sports shoes and shorts and frumpy from the sweltering, afternoon heat. These locals made all of us look like fools.