“I was thinking of buying an I ♥ Brunei shirt but I don’t love Brunei so I didn’t”, said the tourist who I first met aboard the hotel mini-bus on our way to see the Regatta competition. True. Wearing one would make you a lying endorser. I have been holed up here for almost three months now and though I have made friends and somehow unwillingly settled in the way of life, I still could not say “love”… because “love”
If a picture paints a thousand words, I’m pretty sure this one shows a happy lady on her bike, wearing a smile to mask a grimace. A year and a half ago, I embarked on a challenge to finally learn how to bike at the age of 26. With the help of a friend who patiently taught me and who actually researched how to teach an adult to ride a bike, I was finally able to go around my neighborhood on
In an attempt to get my mojo back, I impulsively bought bus tickets from Brunei to Miri in Sarawak, Malaysia for this year’s Chinese New Year weekend. Rewind to one weekend before this. I spent the whole day locked up in the hotel room and in between wolfing down breakfast and grudgingly walking down the road to find dinner, I laid in bed doing utterly nothing, alternating between sleeping and mindlessly staring at the TV. The day ended with me
I am going to go ahead and self-diagnose. This must be how homesickness feels like. In the midst of this stump I’m in and instead of wallowing in this so-called sadness, I have resolved to turn things around and put this into good, and hopefully, constructive use. I will start by saying that the guy who first said “Be careful what you wish for” was a genius. You see, I have always wanted to experience working outside my home country,
Tired as we were from flying in late, we woke up to the first ring of the alarm and took the free breakfast from Saigon Backpackers Hostel. First we ventured into the backstreets near Pham Ngu Lao to find a decent foreign exchange but believe the travel forums when they tell you to go straight to the gold jewelry stores. They do not have neon-blinking lights with their published rates but they offer the best, so go ahead and ask. Armed