Note From The Author

Life has a funny way of making you pay for everything it gives you. Luckily, it also rewards you for the things it takes away. This journal is an online imprint of my happiness: the joy of travel. Travel is the thing everybody deserves, yearns for, and saves money for. The fulfilment it brings gives Technicolor to what was once perceived as black and white, radically turning everything before you into high definition.

At the start of the year, I decided to get rid of my shadow, pack my bags and travel. Although a lot of my adventures were purely work-related, a recent misadventure (I ended up very sick and hospitalized because of overwork and stress) reminded me how short life is. Indeed, anything done in extreme is bad for the health. For a while, I was feeling tired and jaded about how my work makes it a necessity for me to go back and forth to airports a lot. When you're on the road, air and seas too long and frequent the same places over and over again, the spark of wonder fades and travel can feel like a long, dour journey – a detour from a good, comfortable sleep that I could have enjoyed back home.

But no matter how many times I tell myself that I don’t ever want to see another airport for the next ten years, travel always has a way of pulling me back to that long and winding road. Similar to the feeling when one is in love, travel is the only thing that makes me look forward to something.

When people turn to travel, they are usually at a spiritual crossroads and are searching for something. Is it possible they’ve stumbled on a journey that leads toward greater fulfilment? Even if they cannot cope with the demands of everyday life, are reluctant to accept more traditional means of therapeutic help, or have difficulty adjusting to society or suffer from personal problems, travel fills a void and answers questions other disciplines fail to answer. It is also the safest form of rebound for those mending a broken heart.

So to all of you: Go out and travel. Do something you’ve never done before. Go someplace you’ve never been, where you don’t know the language, the customs, geography, the culture, the terrain, and even the weather. Challenge yourself to do an adventure you thought were beyond you. Stop planning and start doing. Make new discoveries. I promise you, the joy of travel will be your path to growth and happiness from here on.

@ the Marina Bay Sands
Singapore (August 25, 2010)