Update Dec 2024
What a year this has been.
Jan 2024 was backpacking through Vietnam on a rented Suzuki GD110 motorbike and boy I really missed having my own wheels.
There is a different feel of traveling when you dictate every stop and every break not needed to ask another person embarrassingly for another pee break or smoke break.
It re-defines the meaning of solo travel without having to consult another being before doing something. If solo backpacking is having the freedom to change plan suddenly and abruptly, solo motorbiking feels like an upgrade to that.
Feb 2024 was a good break for Chinese New Year while shopping and packing up stuff like crazy while I got the critical Visa run out of the way. I shopped for camping gears, packing organizers, trinkets for travels, spare parts, winter gear and never ending consideration of packing lighter or the constant inner struggle of buying good expensive riding gears vs cheeping out.
Mar 2024 - Apr 2024I started my journey up north lazing about Malaysia -> Thailand -> Cambodia -> Thailand -> Laos and this was like a warm up. Feeling the weight balance of the bike, camping a night or two to see if all the camp gears works in order. Re-packing and re-organizing the bike multiple times along the way to find the right place for the right item.
May 2024. This was the beginning going through China via Tibet & Xinjiang to Central Asia. A punishing ride indeed through China with so much challenges through crazy terrain. It was physically and mentally challenging yet it was only a beginning.
Jun 2024 - Aug 2024 was Central Asia. Such short time I had in Central Asia to really see it all but any longer and winter would cut off my route home. Only three months to see four very huge countries but luckily there was not much in between. Large empty barren landscape plight the countries so while it was huge, there was not much distraction for detours compared to South East Asia.
Sep 2024 - A short teaser of nine days through Russia and the rest spend traversing Mongolia. The thrill and the food with the landscape population so scarce and so close to winter that I dared not wander off the main route for more crazy adventure. At this point I no longer sought adventure for adventure was already at the door knocking. "Hello, Adventure here, are you ready to DIE ?"
Oct 2024 - Back in China crossing through a new route but through civilization and cultivation making the journey back home to South East Asia.
Nov 2024 - Oh Laos. I never really got a chance to see you properly last time since entering the country was always a chore with bikes and the borders. Plus there was also the long roads to get to new places. The long bad, crappy, mushy and un-ridable roads. If I knew where I got my courage to ride to Central Asia it would be you Laos. Laos was my training ground.
A little old route and a little new route this time round. Laos was more fun now that I had better confidence riding off-roads. Still I realized that off-road seeking is not my aim. I'll do it to get to a place but someone need to pay me to do off-road if there is an alternative good road three hours away.
Dec 2024 - This is where I am now ... Thailand. How the year 2024 came and gone so fast. What would 2025 have in stall for me I wonder.
Update Jan 2024
I'm travelling again!!. In a way I was suppose to be travelling in 2023 after leaving my job in May 2023 but somehow everything changed when Mom got a stroke just as I started off to ride China. Luckily I had not plan much this time round so the test trip quickly completed and ended while I shoveled my travel ideas to take care of mom.
By Nov 2023 mom was independentish with dad and I could dream again. Dreaming very quickly became a last minute plane ticket booking and somehow I was backpacking instead of riding.
This would be the 4th time I am doing a long trip, a trip where I have no income and constantly deplating money. The first trip had a idea to backpack europe and USA while the second was a continuation of the first but expended more places such as South America, Europe, Australia and India! The third was the begining of motorbiking South East Asia and from there I thought backpacking would be shelved and be a thing of a past since discovering the wonderful world of having one owns wheels.
I am glad I am backpacking again ... but then I still want to ride everywhere.
Update Apr 2022
I feel guilty in part .... for Borneo was one of the best road trip I had in the entire journey for this leg and seeing the hits on my blog recently since Malaysia opened up again where people were really searching for gems info for a road trip in Malaysia makes me regret a little not writing fast enough to cover Borneo for it was truly an amazing place to explore.
Naturally, the Borneo Leg was also one of those that I was so slack that my travel journal was mostly blank .... usually I have a rough journal written every 3-4 days of the travel that just rambles whatever goes off the head of what happen, unfiltered and utterly boring ... then from the unpolished version, I see how I could group them up, form a story and make it into a blog post.
Sometimes it works out ... coz some stories if rushed out early to the blog would have been incomplete for the extraodinary experience has yet to happened ... but thats also one of the baseless excuse I use for the slow drag on updating the blog. Needless to say ... the lack of a rough journal makes recalling events way more slower.
Rest assured .... I’m finally paying some attention to this Blog after a while .... and in a way, I feel that finishing the Borneo Leg would relinquish me to start planning for the next adventure. Travelling in the New Normal COVID-19 world ... that would be a whole new experience and red tape to cross which I am not sure if its even worth the effort. However ... for my sanity, it will happen eventually .... soon
Its that time again ... somehow I have a feet of forgetting to update this page, and every time I reminisce back to those amazing trips I did, It feels like a dream now and somehow this longing always boils down to around this time of the year ... Aug to Sep ...
The changing of seasons seams to have an impact to me for wanting to start a journey. Alas, COVID - 19 is truly not to be ignored as it has changed lives around the world and in a way perspectives of many people as well.
Never have I more truly appreciated the freedom of our time, being able to go anywhere you want, and explore oneself to the fullest. Life is indeed short if not to enjoy or experience or contemplate but yet many are bound to a herd mentality.
" Some things are just too big for one person to change yet it is the small changes that makes the differences "
Update Aug 2020
Times when after a long journey and for no reason at all while taking a random pit stop with Bluey at the petrol station, looking at locals having their own pit stop as well, asking their children if they want Ice-cream have a mini impact on the way I look at life from outside the window.
Timeline wise on the blog ... I have only managed to update up to Feb 2019 .... heck I am a year + behind .... so sorry for the wait thou I doubt anyone is really reading this beside close friends ... if you need info ... best advise I can give is to drop me a message .....
Then again all the info I'll be writing from here on out should be outdated, expired, no longer valid since COVID-19 has made travelling a whole new adventure of its own trying to circumvent the complex nature of inter - border / state travel.
Stay put, earn some money .. save up ... and hope that one day we can be on the road again without borders.
Update Aug 2019
Hence I am now in a bit of a pickle since most the time in my mind the stories I imagine while riding Bluey is the current adventure but the Blog is lagged behind for a few months now and virtually I am still in Thailand thou physically the Borneo leg has just started. Do I skip and post whenever I had a writing inspiration for whichever story comes to mind first or do I slug it out and try to write it in the choronological order which I have been doing for years.
The fastest way to update is to write both at the same time which means posting the recent exploration logs while once a while trying to recap months ago adventure and posting those once a while as I go along. I think this is best for me writing wise since I will somehow churn out more post but I know in the readers view it will be a little confusing. Forgive me for this and if you really need to read in the chronological order, refer to the chronological page which I will try to update frequently.
Update Sep 2017
It was time to do it right ... and not just the usual tour of the backpacker trail in SEA but slightly different with a motorbike .... ( I have decided on a motorbike )
Standard route is hard to avoid for they are the comfort stops and the ground stone to replenish before exploring the more secluded areas of SEA. I fill that this journey although closer to home will be much more challenging than the other ... when to leave, monsoons, visa, bike visa, overstaying issues, language, it just bogs me down. Feel like i am not even a veteran in travelling but then again i know that once i start the journey ... it'll be ok somehow
Will i be alone this time ? .... i doubt so ... so close to home i am sure some major pit stop will be hijacked by friends and family visiting by the cheap budget airlines. Motorbiking ... a convoy would be cool, and some fellow Malaysian has already hinted not to leave without telling them the plan.
One thing is for sure, i have set the target of departure for mid 2018, and as time passes and i get closer to the departure dates, the big picture slowly becomes more solid.
New Stuff ... i have set up an Instagram Account -
Its been a year +
Sometimes i see people with a pinch of salt. People are so passionate in the things they like. Music , work, hobbies, skills, taste, food, passion like a taste of identity. This is the world we seam to be living in now. Not accepting the norm nor attuning to the bland ....
Social media makes us show only the crazy best times of our life's that hypes it even more so that if you plan to do something ... make sure you are all 100% into it.
But I just want to be free ... for someone with itchy feet like me always looking for an excuse to travel and see the world i actually love to just sit in a small corner stone and watch the world skip by. How do you tell people you are passionate about Nothingness ... heck both words are even polar opposite i think ... you cant be one and the other at the same time.
Well i am still finding that special place .... till then enjoy my storytelling with a pinch of salt for it is very difficult to write about nothing ....
First Post
In the short period of me kick starting this blog i find it enjoyable to gather back thoughts that i could not write down into the journal due to traveling issues. In a way its like a self reflection of my time traveling alone for 6 months.
I am definitely addicted / hooked into traveling and just cant get enough of it.
The aim is to create a website where i would be able to leave details prints of my personnel view
(without crossing the line) during travel so as to update family and friends and entertain as much people who are willing to read this blog. "It sure beats telling the same story over and over again"
Hopefully when i finish writing the blog about 2011 - 2012 adventure i would have started my next BIG journey and continue feeding this website.
An adventure and not holiday would be the aim.
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