memorable passages

posted oct 2025

When I first started travelling, I had much more time and energy than money, and a far smaller sense of self-preservation and personal responsibility.

A consequence of this was that I took greater joy in the “getting from point A to point B” part of travel¹ (in contrast to the actual sightseeing one does when arriving at a destination). In doing so, I made choices and had experiences that I probably will never get to have again.

I wanted to memorialize some of these experiences, good or bad.

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stuck in the indian ocean

In September 2019 I flew to the Maldives because there were crazy cheap flights just before Scoot killed them off.

While many visit the Maldives for their high-end resorts (>$1000/night) that they take private speedboats to (~$1000/trip), one can actually plan a trip visiting “local islands” (guesthouses ~$30/night) taking the only form of public transport that can exist for a country with >1000 geographically-dispersed tiny islands: dhoni ferries (~$2/trip).

I did exactly that! Unfortunately, on my first dhoni ride from Male to Thulusdhoo, the ferry’s engine AND generator failed — the result was that a 90-minute ride ended up being a 9-hour ordeal.

This was my first time ever truly fearing for my life, and I remember doing all the cliche trope-y things: recalling my life’s regrets, preparing messages to send to my most important people, invoking Pascal’s wager (even though I was never religious). I remember that everyone was without mobile service for large swathes of time. I remember that, twice, other boats passed us and tried to help out and tow us but failed. I also remember the insane DARKNESS — up to that point, I never appreciated how much light pollution Singapore had at night; nightfall in the middle of ocean doesn’t come with street lamps!

from my Instagram story: this was the boat that
successfully towed us to land!

In the end, we were towed to a different island (Dhiffushi), so I got a free speedboat ride to my intended destination island of Thulusdhoo. This was awesome (free!!) but possibly even more terrifying. I could see equally little, but now I was on a TINY speedboat, and the waves were choppy enough for me to experience repeated probably-centisecond-long bursts of freefall.

a train with a view

Rapid No. 172, State Railway of Thailand

My first sleeper train! I’d booked the lowest-possible class of sleeper cabin, which turned out to be a stroke of luck because it had huge open windows and thus incredible documentary-esque views of the Southern Thailand farmlands + wind blowing through to keep you cool.

I remember it was reasonably on time (scheduled from 3:39pm to 9:15am, I think it arrived ~10.15am), and at some point my window blinds broke so I propped it up with hangars I had (TEKNOLOGIA!!!!!).

I also remember a few ~10min bursts of the train being incredibly loud at night (I assume due to small segments of the track not being great), but for 605 THB I can’t complain too much.

bad border crossing, worse decisions

This is the Poipet border crossing from Thailand to Cambodia.

Wikivoyage describes it well:

Most travellers consider Poipet “a dump”. Poipet hosts a bewildering array of touts, beggars, thieves and dodgy casinos for day tripping Thais, which all contrive to separate money from the unwary. Like most of Southeast Asia, unprovoked violent crime is rare. However, being foreign and out at night could be construed as sufficient provocation.

Notably, Poipet also comes with a police-enforced taxi cartel, and many a fake immigration building!

The first funny thing that happened was that I was an illegal immigrant for ~2 kilometres. I’d seen online that the first X immigration buildings were scams, so I just kept walking past them until I realized I was just alone on National Highway 5 and there weren’t even touts around me anymore.

The second funny thing that happened was that my transport option of choice to go onward to Siem Reap was a random delivery van. I had suspicions on what goods were being delivered (that I confirmed later in life when I visited Amsterdam), but that’s an irrelevant detail.

Some terrifying-at-the-time details:

• the others on the van couldn’t read, so Google Translate didn’t even really work (audio kinda did, in one direction — I couldn’t translate what they were saying back to English)
• the van hit a small animal along the way and some of it’s corpse was stuck to the wheel for a bit :/
• the trip took 5.5h (instead of the expected 1-2h), and we were hours beyond my initial hostel’s latest check-in time so I had to find another place in the midst of all this.

Eventually, we did manage to get to Siem Reap (but decidedly not my requested address), so I got off the van the instant I saw a local tuk-tuk and had a good rest.

The dumbest part about this is that, for how terrible the Poipet border crossing is, this was totally 100% avoidable. Firstly, I arrived at dusk when I could’ve just waited a day and arrived the next morning. Secondly, quoting Wikivoyage again:

The small upside to the travel monopoly is that, once the exorbitant price for the taxi has been paid, they’re reliable and the driver will take you anywhere you like once you’ve reached your destination.

I knew this! But my hubris + misplaced frugality + desire to somehow be a “savvy traveller” made me refuse to just pay the ~40 USD for a cartel taxi. I paid 7 USD for my van ride.

what started it all and a bonus cursed email

My first transnational bus ride was booked for a Model UN conference I was attending in Kuala Lumpur. I’d already made a few solo trips to Malaysia before this, but I’d only booked flights up until this point, mostly because I’d never really thought about alternatives.

While this was a “work” trip, taking the bus (and only paying $15 for it) was super eye-opening — it helped me realize that travel was a real thing I could just do, and crucially, something I could afford on my own without having to necessarily think about saving up (or winning a CTF, lol).

For what it’s worth, the bus was horribly delayed. It did result in me sending the silliest email I hope to ever send in my life:

(The recipients are my teachers... I was an especially terrible student at this time and was in both academic and disciplinary hot water, which maybe adds to the absurdity here)

(dis?)honourable mentions

• TR734 from Singapore to Berlin on 20 Dec 2021. I think I was probably one of the first military conscripts to go on an overseas holiday once COVID-19 restrictions were lifted for a few countries. It’s also my longest budget flight (14.5h)
• Train MR1 from Hanoi to Nanning on 1 Jan 2020. I remember conversing in Mandarin with my cabin-mates feeling strangely comfortable after weeks of travelling in countries where I didn’t speak the language.
• FR2734 from Berlin to Lappeenranta on 31 Dec 2021. It was always a dream of mine to fly Ryanair because I was always amazed at how cheap they could make flying be. This ticket was 7.51 EUR :D
• minibus from Pakse to Da Nang on 29 Dec 2019. Memorable for sad reasons — I witnessed an outrage of modesty but did nothing, which shattered some world view I had that I was someone who’d do “right things”
• SQ608 from Singapore to Seoul on 21 Nov 2018. This was the time I had my flights + accomms fully paid for, so I took Singapore Airlines! Maybe this was the beginning of the end…