Before we get started with the Myanmar entry, allowed us to share with you guys out there on the Myanmar Visa Application that we did earlier right in the heart of Kuala Lumpur. Yes! Malaysian who are wishing to enter and travelling to Myanmar shall apply and obtain a valid visa even though Myanmar is one of the ASEAN countries. Visa exemption was only given and permitted to these 6 countries which is Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines and Vietnam for a visits up to 14 days. And again, surprisingly, Malaysia was not one of it. Continue reading
# Travel Tips
Discomforts of travelling that we love to endure
Just got a chance to read the whole articles written by Anis Ibrahim on News Straits Times this morning as tweeted by our dear friends @febryfawzi (and this is definitely his informative blog trip to trip). I was lucky that I knew all this beautiful people’s since we have the same interest, passion and obviously we do almost the same thing which is TRAVEL. Haven’t got a chance to meet them personally, but I really love too! Been linger around with all this positive vibes! This article was extracted from NST dated 25 Nov 2012. And oh ya, the last 5 paragraphs is definitely what we I felt. If you get what i mean, you’ll definitely laugh, smile and agreed to every single words expressed by Anis on this article.
Sunrise over the crumbling temple – Woke up at 3am just to witness this in Angkor Wat, Siem Reap (CHECK), laugh and joke over cups of tea with complete strangers – Countless! The best part is that we’re still friends until now (CHECK) , climb the world’s highest mountain just because it happens to be there – Not the highest but managed to complete Mt. Penanjakan + Mt. Bromo recently just to see a sunrise. Sunrise lagik! (CHECK). The whole experience is totally amazing!
THE steps were so steep, my neck hurt just from looking up. The Swedish guy who had passed me earlier was climbing up on all fours, his skinny arms reaching out, looking very much like Spiderman from where I stood.
“It’s just a bunch of steps,” someone from my group remarked. “Really,” he added for extra effect.
I was on the Great Wall of China, attempting to hike for 10km from Jinshanling to Simatai, about three hours’ drive from Beijing.
The combination of slippery ice, an old wall and a bad back was not a good one.
Ten kilometres isn’t difficult on flat land but if you’re hiking up and down a steep wall in winter and you’ve already fallen a couple of times, you begin to wish that you had just stayed at home.
I completed the hike but throughout the entire walk, I kept asking myself the same thing over and over: “Tell me again why you’re doing this.”
It started out as a weary statement but as I went on, it became a taunt, a challenge for me to come up with a real answer. No one travelled this far to slip and fall on ice.
Fast forward seven years to 2012 and I found myself waiting in line at the Cambodian-Thai border. Compared to all the other overland crossings I had done, going into Thailand was the most difficult.
I’d already been queueing for five hours and missed my train to Bangkok, which meant that I had to look for a bus later.
Behind me were some Australians. It was an extremely hot day and I could hear them getting angry and asking each other whose brilliant idea was this, mate, and how, for cryin’ out loud, they should have just flown from Siem Reap to Bangkok.
My own thoughts weren’t too far away and yet I knew that experience wouldn’t be enough to put me off travelling.
If travelling puts us in such great discomfort, why do we keep doing it? Travel costs money, is often frustrating, risky and dangerous, and gives us food poisoning. So why do we still do it?
Zarah, a friend of mine, returned from Indonesia just a few days ago. The whole trip went well except for one incident that she won’t forget — her bus was involved in an accident and was badly damaged as a result.
Despite what happened, she’s already getting ready for another trip next week, this time to India. Life has to go on, she said.
“If something terrible was meant to happen to me during the accident, it would have. But it didn’t and until then, I’m going to keep on doing what makes me happy, which is travelling.”
I agree with her; travelling makes me happy too, as it does a lot of people, but there’s more to it than that.
As human beings, it is in our nature to want to know more. That was what the first explorers were — curious. Travellers like Ibn Battuta, Marco Polo and Xuanzang would not have left the comfort of their homes if they hadn’t been curious as to what lay beyond the sea or over the mountains.
We would have no maps or histories of the ancient world without these explorers.
And although there’s not much left of the world which hasn’t been explored, we’re still a curious lot to this day. We want to know what foreign lands look like and how other people live.
We travel thousands of kilometres to see the sun rise over a crumbling temple, laugh and joke over cups of tea with complete strangers and climb the world’s highest mountain just because it happens to be there.
That, I think, is why people still travel and will go on doing so no matter how heavy the bags and how arduous the journey.
We want to be able to tell ourselves, “I have been there and I have seen it, and now I know”.
Read more: Discomforts of travelling that we love to endure – Columnist – New Straits Timeshttp://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/discomforts-of-travelling-that-we-love-to-endure-1.176313#ixzz2FNfXPtJi
Credit to Anis Ibrahim for this beautiful write up.
Simply me,
Zara AB
The Province of Chroma
How to Remain Unchanged While You Travel
Assalammualaikum and Hi there!
The first time i came across this blog (http://www.fivefeetflat.net), i spent almost half a day browsing through all her (oh ya, she got a name – Anis Ibrahim) write-up. I got impressed with all her travel journey and plan. She even got that kind of personality and character with her from the way she wrote. How on earth I can exactly read and discover other people’s character just by reading their blog kan? Dah macam bomoh pulak. Yes, I didn’t get a chance to meet her up but i hope that my early judgement are true.
Till one day, I got attracted at one of her recent entry about “How to Remain Unchanged After You Travel”. The list is basically an impromptu advise on how to remain unchanged but I’ll rather put is this way. This is definitely what you’ll face through out your journey but in a vice versa option.
1. Don’t mingle with the locals. Don’t chat with that old lady selling flowers at the market or the 12-year-old selling postcards by the road. Be convinced that the only locals you need to speak to are your hotel receptionist and tour guide.
2. Don’t try any of the local food. Avoid the kebab in Istanbul, the noodles in Beijing and the Nasi Lemak in Kuala Lumpur. These are all evil foods because you don’t know what the heck is inside them. Stick to KFC, McDonald’s and pizza. And banana pancakes.
3. Don’t aim to learn anything about the local culture. Don’t make any plans to go to the theatre, visit a street market or attend a cooking class.
4. Don’t plan to make new friends on your trip. You might chat with the people you meet, but don’t ask anything about them, what they do, where they’re going or the people they love. Be preoccupied with updating your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
5. Don’t accept offers from strangers. Don’t accept tea from shopkeepers or dinner invites from concerned grandmothers you meet in the market. Don’t accept offers from men who want to give you a tour of the city. Everyone, but everyone, has bad intentions.
6. Don’t plan to learn something new every day. There is nothing more that you need to know about life and how beautiful it is.
7. Miss the opportunity to see a sunrise in a new country.
8. Avoid the poor areas of the town you’re in. Go only to the expensive shopping malls. You don’t need to see how the other half lives. You don’t need to be aware of poverty.
9. Mix only with your own kind. If you’re Asian, mix only with Asians who speak your language. If you speak English, hang out only with those who do. You haven’t got the time to expand your horizons or learn anything from anyone who is different from you.
10. Stay at home.
You can also read the same entry here (How to Remain Unchanged After You Travel). I definitely gonna take this as a travel tips. It’s not all about ‘been there and done that’ but what are the things that you’ll learn in travelling as i always believe in making every experience education. Besides, i always wanted to see and seek people at the other side of the globe with different religions, culture, belief and to know and learn their side of story.
Simply me,
Zara AB
The Province of Chroma
ZaraAB Travel 