Saturday, December 01, 2007

An Avid Traveller

When I was at the uni, I had SO many email friends. One of them was a 50-year-old Taiwanese who was an avid world traveller. I don't remember anymore how we got in touch with each other, but one day he wrote me an email and offering to pay me to accompany him on his travels. He said that to make sure that I would feel safe with him, he would be willing to meet me first. When he wrote that, he was already in Jakarta, so he took the train to Bandung to meet me. I forgot whether I declined the offer already since the beginning or not, but since he had never visited Bandung, I said I'd love to meet him (I also wanted to practice my spoken English).

My friends and I met him at the train station, then we took him to some tourist attractions. We talked quite a bit and he was a very nice man. However, since back then I was still studying at the university, I couldn't possibly take the offer (couldn't take a long leave from the university). Plus I didn't really like taking up such an offer since I'd feel that I owed him SO much. We had fun touring Bandung with him, though. ;-D

Since he has no wife or kids and he's been saving so much money all these years, he can travel as much as he wants to. Wanna know how many countries he has been to so far? FIFTY!!! Yes, you heard me right. He travels twice a year and each trip takes approximately 3 months.

He has visited London, Amsterdam, Prague, Barcelona, Singapore, India, Finland, Switzerland, Ireland, Brazil, Austria, Peru, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Venezuela, Greece, Denmark, France, Guatemala, Canada, Chile, USA, Cuba, El Salvador, Hungary, Honduras, Mexico, Monaco, Japan, Korea, Nicaragua, Turkey, and so many more places!

Right now he's looking for a travelling companion. He plans on going to these places next:
Tibet, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, Malaysia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Morocco, Egypt and some off-beaten tracks in China. If you're interested, I can introduce him to you! ;-D

One thing which I think is important in travelling (other than fund) is health. If you're not healthy, then it'd be tough to travel, don't you think so?

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