Jeg Elsker Danmark.

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(Translation: I love Denmark.)

If there ever was a statistic collected on how many times a person visits Denmark in their lifetime, I probably would be an outlier, at the FAR high side. Having visited the country four times over the past five years and meeting the PRINCE once while visiting (OKAY, I will stop bragging about it after this post, maybe), I think I can safely declare that Denmark is indeed my favourite country in the world.

Those who know me will know about my love for Denmark and suspect that I have a secret Danish boyfriend. But those who know me well, will know that I can just be weird that way.

Having said that, I don’t think I am THAT weird. There are so many things about the country that do not get the glory it deserves (although that’s partly the reason why I love it so much since it doesn’t get too much attention). Just like how a lot of people did not know that giant corporations such as Lego, Maersk and Carlsberg are from Denmark, here are the list of some cool things that I love from the Land of the Vikings, that you may or may not already know:

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A Mobile Debate.

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Warning: This post was started when I was under the influence of Long Island Ice Tea and finished after I completed 30 km cycle ride the morning after. Read at your own risk.

To get mobile SIM card with data plan or not to get during travels – that has been a constant debate that I have. After several trial and error, I have come to a conclusion.

My verdict: No. A basic SIM card would do. Having constant internet access during travel does more harm than good (except maybe when travelling solo).

With my stellar ability to get lost, you would think that having internet access on-the-go during travel is essential for my survival. Google Maps for one is like a heaven-sent tool for a direction idiot like me. It certainly makes travelling more convenient, but I would not call it a necessity.

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Aliwal Urban Art Festival.

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I love Singapore, particularly because of how easy it is to get from a place to another. The country is small enough that you can get from one end to another in less than two hours by the train. This feature is especially important since we only have one Saturday and one Sunday – weekends should comprise of more days in a week!

It came especially handy today when I felt like I had so many things to do and that many people to see. I had a friend to meet for brunch, two friends to meet for tea and a bunch more to meet for dinner. The amazing thing was that even with such a packed schedule in a day, I’m glad that I managed to sneak in some time to check out the Aliwal Urban Art Festival, thanks to Singapore’s small size and efficient transport system.

I wouldn’t say I understand much about art and music, but they have always sparked my curiosity. In Singapore, the art scene seems to sprawl in the underground known only by a handful and appreciated by even fewer people, which makes it even more intriguing.

Although I didn’t get to spend much time at the Arts Festival, it definitely was one of the highlights of my day. When I reached the Aliwal Arts Centre, I was greeted by the loud music of ‘I am David Sparkle’. Definitely not my staple kind of music, but it grew on me with every song they played.

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The drum set fell apart at one point in time!

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Awesome Scratch Map and Bieber.

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I love birthdays. I think it is such a happy thing to celebrate the day you were born into this beautiful world to meet all the awesome people you meet.

Especially when you meet people who know and understand you so well that they give you just the right present that you have been looking for. Anyone who knows me will know that if you buy something travel-related, you will never go very wrong. But if you get me a scratch map of Europe, that’s like hitting the bull’s eye. It’s the kind of gifts that when you unwrap them you will go, “Oooh, I have always wanted one of these!”

I have always had this fascination for maps. I don’t even know why since it’s not like I read them particularly well. I’m almost a map illiterate, but I suppose I do pretty alright for those high-level maps that just show a country’s borders and its major cities. There is something simply fascinating about knowing where in this big, big world I have been.

So you can imagine my excitement when I unwrapped my very first birthday present and found this!

Here comes my perfect reason to travel to Europe again.
Here comes my perfect reason to travel to Europe again.

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The Prince and I.

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One of the perks of being a part-time badminton journalist is that you get access to all the press conference rooms and speak to all the world-renowned badminton players. In most places, you get to sit at the best seats for free since you will be the one telling the whole world about how awesome the tournament is. For an avid badminton fan (okay, almost maniac) like me, it was more than I could have asked for.

But another less known perk of being a badminton journalist is that you get to meet other non-badminton famous people. Like the minister of sports. Or a prince.

Yes, you read it correctly, a P R I N C E. I still can’t believe it till this moment. I have met and spoken to a real life PRINCE. Even though it was more than a year ago, I’m still hyperventilating as I’m writing about it. It all happened so fast that I did not even have time to faint right there and then.

I was just doing my post badminton match ritual at Copenhagen Masters 2012 in well, Copenhagen. It always pretty much goes by this sequence: you sit and watch a badminton match, when a match finishes you run off to the press conference room to interview the players if they interest you, then you return to the media room to jot down the quotes into your computer and return to the stadium again to catch the next match and repeat the same steps.

But that day I decided to break the cycle. I guess it was because I was rather tired from running around the stadium, but after interviewing one of the players, I did not return immediately to the media room. Instead a few of us decided to just hang around after a press conference and rested our feet. It had been a long day.

Suddenly the door opened and a few important looking men came into the room.

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Myanmar: Good to know before you go.

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We all need a balance in our lives.

To me, one of the most important balances to have is being able to see all the important sights during travel while still having that element of surprise. It is the balance between the “Ohh, I’m glad to see this world-renowned structure” and “Wow, I did not know such beauty exist in this world!”.

If that makes sense.

There were a few times during my trip in Myanmar that I thought to myself “thank goodness my friend told me about this” or “I wish I had known this before”. In my sincere attempt to continue to be Myanmar tourism evangelist, I have compiled this list of good-to-know-before-you-go so you can maximise your trip without me spoiling much of the surprise the place beholds.

  1. Flip flops are the way to go. Forget about your sneakers or flats. By the end of my trip, I visited more than 30 temples and none of them allowed you to wear any footwear inside. Unless you have extremely patient friends who don’t mind to wait while you tie and untie your shoelaces and unless you want dirt-stained footwear as keepsakes from Myanmar, stick to the flip flops. One tip: bring a plastic bag to carry your flip flops around the temple since most places will ask for donation if you put your footwear at a cabinet outside the temple.
    Expect to see these signs everywhere in Myanmar (minus the monkeys)
    Expect to see these signs everywhere in Myanmar (minus the monkeys)

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Busy travelling?

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For my last-day-of-the-year and new year’s reading, a friend of mine (the same one who sent me the link that inspired my travelling solo post) gave me this interesting article, “Busy isn’t respectable anymore”.

Which got me thinking.

I certainly have been guilty of some of the notion of busyness that was mentioned in the article. However, if there was one accomplishment that I have achieved in 2013, it would be that the fact that I still feel I am living in Singapore despite travelling out almost every month to about 10 countries in a year. That I’m not too busy travelling to actually be in Singapore.

Which is such a contrast to how I felt in 2011. I did very frequent travelling back then as well, but I felt very distanced from what was happening here. That was why in 2012, I decided to travel much more sparingly and to have longer gaps in between. That seemed to work okay until nearing the end of the year when all hell broke loose. I felt so suffocated by the lack of travel that I decided to take off for a solo trip to Europe. (Now you see how the different pieces come together? All these travels are meant to be, really).

So being the overanalyser that I am, I tried to analyse what was so different last year (yes, 2013 is already last year) and 2011.

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My Top 10 Myanmar Moments.

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“This is Burma. It is quite unlike any place you know about.”

If I were as eloquent as Rudyard Kipling, that would probably be my default reply whenever someone ask how my recent trip to Myanmar was. But I am not. Instead, I always come up with a lame three-word sentence that goes along the lines of:

“Myanmar was incredible.”

(Or replace the word “incredible” with “awesome”, “beautiful”, “lovely” and other praising adjectives that do not really say anything.)

In return, I normally get raised eyebrows and somewhat non-subtle skepticism from my listeners.

I don’t blame them. After all, the country is a hidden South East Asian gem, only opening up its economy to the world in the last two years. It is still shrouded in mystery (although I guess the biggest mystery to most of my fellow South East Asians is why we want to visit the place in the first place since there is an unspoken rule of the closer a place to our place of birth, the less interesting it is).

Anyway, since I feel the need to make up for my verbal incapability in travel story-telling, I have resolved to turn into Myanmar tourism evangelist through writing to do the country some justice it so deserves. However, I am not going to bore anyone to death by putting my travel itinerary here. Instead, I am going to list down my 10  personal favourite moments during my 9-day travel to Mandalay, Bagan and Yangon.

Continue reading “My Top 10 Myanmar Moments.” →

Travelling solo, for introverts.

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This morning in the office, a friend of mine sent me a link on how to deal with introverts.

Contrary to popular belief, I have long established myself as an introvert. In travelling terms, this explains the reason why I find so much joy in taking long plane rides alone or even take off for a solo travel.

Don’t get me wrong, I love travelling with friends. Not only is it a lot of fun, but also having friends around has a lot of benefits, one of the obvious ones being that you have someone to help you snap the cool shots, especially if you are travelling with skillful photographer friends, you will not have to worry about not having that new profile picture on Facebook (and they won’t complain if you ask them to help you snap photos because hey, after all, you are helping them practise their photography skills).

But back to the point of travelling solo. I remember there was a point some time last year that I just ended up feeling so suffocated by following everyone else’s travel demands. In the end I booked a solo trip to Copenhagen and London on impulse at the expense of end-of-year travel to Vietnam with my friends.

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The End.

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We all lead very interesting lives. Otherwise we would all fall asleep throughout the day because of how boring things are.

Having said that, we can only appreciate it once we have time to take in the things around us, things that we have gone through. For me, a huge part of my life’s excitement comes from travelling, a habit I picked up since 2009 when I went to live abroad in Copenhagen.

But recently, another excitement, very much more tangible, came to my life.

On 1st December 2013, I purchased a beauty. I have yet to give her a name, but everyone who owns the same machine calls her Yoga Pro 2. It has got the most stunning display of 3200×1800 in resolution, a solid black inner body and a silver chassis. It is light, of mere 1.3 kg, a good battery life (though not the best I have to admit) and powerful processor.

But all that said, I’m not here to give a tech review of my newly acquired Ultrabook, which coincidentally, is one of my best buys of the year. (The other one was a meal at this Korean restaurant at my office called Bibigo which came with a free colourful drink and won me a trip for two to Seoul. But that’s another story altogether.) I am perfectly unqualified for that – the tech review, not the free trip winner.

Continue reading “The End.” →