… gave us morning coffee to perk us up.
… landed us at the metro right outside Moulin Rouge.
… afforded us a view of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, pristinely waiting on a hilltop.
… sent us carousel horses to ride.
… showed us Paris.
… made sure we could always find the light, to lead us home in the darkest night.
… sold us the cheapest and most delicious warm nutella-banana crepes.
… tempted us with churros even though we filled ourselves out twice over.
I missed a call when I went to pee and on my return, found that I was spammed with a slew of BlackBerry messages asking me to wake up, don’t sleep, reply and basically, I couldn’t sleep even if I wanted to. My dear friends made sure of that.
On calling back the aforementioned said person, she asked me excitedly if I have anything on tomorrow and if I’ll go Penang with them. Take note that they gave me exactly 12 hours notice. It so happened that a girl who was to go on the trip tomorrow backed out but the accommodation and air ticket was already paid for. Therefore, I just have to pay SGD 60 for “administrative purposes” and top up the difference for the then purchased ticket and the current price which is SGD 48 to go. And so after some deliberation, I agreed even though I envisaged a relaxing weekend just lazing in bed for prolonged period. This was to be the last trip, at least for quite awhile for the travelling group, as 2 of our friends are going back to Canada.
I packed some clothes and a few toiletries and left the rest to them to make the name change with Tiger Airways. We had to make any name change 4 hours in advance but it was already 10+ in the evening and Tiger Airways call centre had already closed for the day. Their opening hour is at 9 a.m. which means we definitely couldn’t make the name change in time for the flight due at 9.50 a.m. So a little disappointed after all the worked-up hype, I unpacked everything again.
In the midst, my friends called again.
This time, they told me in more words than I am going to explain here that they would really enjoy my company and would like me to join them which means they are going to get a new ticket for me and topped up the SGD 100 difference. I was feeling really embarrassed and offered to pay them back but they wouldn’t hear of it. And so the ticket had been booked, things finalized and I am going to Penang in a few hours. It touched me no end about the things that good friends would do for you and for the pleasure of your company. I am glad to have such friends by me and this entry is testimony that I am very grateful indeed.
As the four of us were sitting in Teadot the night before National Day, chilling and talking animatedly and me, being very contented with my icy Oolong tea, our friend, Greta brought up a valid concern that might affect the September travel plans.
What if you guys quarrel during the trip? Travelling together could either make or break a friendship, the latter most common.
I can’t say that she does not have a point there. It’s not a question about any of our amicability but rather, a variation in priorities and a different set of expectations of the cities we are about to visit. For example, I am most eager to check out museums, validate the things I’ve read about so much in books and watched in movies, Brandon wants to see some “moving” things, Pauline wants to see things that we cannot see elsewhere (and Mickey Mouse) and I don’t even know what Chris wants! So given all these, naturally, we will gravitate towards places of interest and ideas that appeal to our expectations the most but might not necessarily excite our travel partners. Then there is the fortnight of what I call “intensive living together” that we have never done so before. Some might not like the toothbrushes placed on the left but on the right, some prefer to call it a night early but some would rather think the nights as forever young so the point is that just the smallest things can give rise to dissatisfaction. Usually it is a snowball effect that gradually builds up till it unleashes in a torrential flow and that is the point of no return.
The good thing is as we sat discussing, we came up with a plan. We can create little notes that speak of our excitement to travel together to see the cities we love, we can put down encouraging words for each other, we can write down the good points of each other, we can print photos of our happier moments and have them all in a pouch. The pouch is synonymous with Harmony and Friendship. Whenever anyone of us feels hot-headed, we will slip our fingers into the recesses of the pouch to draw up something positive to cool ourselves down.
Each slip of a paper spells ‘Compromise’.
(Click for bigger image)
Maybe I just have to accept that I’ll never be a gung-ho traveller.
Photo is credited to a random search in Google, bringing up nostyle’s flickr image.
One week in Beijing and I feel like the proverbial local. It was a good trip, as any vacation that does not involve work should be but as always, there were highlights and downsides to them. I’ll probably blog about the Beijing trip in segments since there are many stories to tell and history to relate and part 1 would talk about the infamous sanitary conditions of the city’s toilets.
I visited Beijing 12 years ago on the school’s Chinese Orchestra tour (how cool is that! I forgot I used to be vaguely musically inclined) and Beijing has had some quite horrifying toilet stories which I can attest for. The toilets then were all squatters and most had no doors. You will be lucky if there are any partitions at all in between you and your neighbours. Even if there is, the walls separating each “cubicle” were only waist-level high so you can choose to converse with your neighbours if you so wish or exhibit disturbing voyeuristic tendency. There was no proper flushing system so most of the time you find yourself hovering over a nauseatingly deep pit which contained the “essence” of your predecessors. However, ever since the right to host Olympics 2008 had been awarded to the city of Beijing, the Chinese government took the honour very seriously and launched a campaign to renovate all public toilets to “acceptable” levels. You can be sure that the 57 million yuan investment did not go down the hill. Almost all the toilets at conspicuous places e.g. shopping centres and places of interest are now clean and dry. There is still some room for improvement to reach the level of comfort I am used to in Singapore but going to a public toilet in Beijing is no longer a sensory war or as what I call it, a “mind-over-body” experience.
Most public toilets do have doors and their partitions now reach well over my head, covering me totally. If you plan on making some cursory toilet visits in Beijing just to say you’ve been there and done that, please do still bring your own stash of toilet paper. The toilet paper dispenser is located in a central location but generally unavailable in each and every cubicle and they do run out. There is still a very unfair proportion of squatters over the seated toilets since the Chinese prefer the squatters for hygiene purposes (they prefer minimal body contact) so be prepared to roll up your trousers or wear skirts for that matter. Oh and though there are now doors, some of the Beijing’s citizens are still accustomed to the open concept. My travel partner, Eileen saw two women squatting in their half-naked glory with doors wide open, texting away on their mobile phones and came out of the toilet, reeled in shock. So what does it say? The purpose of having doors is lost on those who are used to the ways of the past.
A short excerpt from an article about Beijing’s toilets before the upscale which I found quite amusing:
Zhou said that what tourists objected to can be described in four words: “smell” (tourists said they could find a toilet by its smell); “jump” (once inside they jumped to avoid stepping on residue left by previous occupants), “weep” (they wept when they squatted down and could see maggots in the pit below) and “smile” (when they looked up they smiled in embarrassment when they found they were not alone but with many other people who were staring at each other face-to-face.)
My misplaced sense of humour and savvy geekiness sometimes led to interesting finds such as The Bathroom Diaries which was described by the creator as “a world in which menus of restrooms were posted in the window along with the bill of fare”. Very innovative and I have to agree that one shouldn’t expose our tender bits to un-reviewed and uncharted zones in which we are not duly informed.
