My Ritual

Trust me when I say this.

One of the most exciting thing about travelling, be it for leisure or business, start right away before the journey itself.

For me, it has always been one of my ritual that before every journey, I will start looking into the following website. Sometimes as early as a month before.

1. Agoda.com
2. Trip Advisor
3. Malaysian Airline and Air Asia etc. (Depending on which country I am heading to).
4. Google maps.

This are the four MAIN website that served me so well over the past 7 or 8 years.

Agoda? For the cheap rate offered. As for Trip advisor, believe it or not, I only use it to look at the "Traveller's photo" especially on the hotel room condition.

Believe me, sometimes what you see may not be what you get. Hoteliers around the world spends hundred of thousands to employ the professional photographer to make their hotel look good, hard to refuse type.

What you get in the website may look like this.

And you ended up getting this. (If you are lucky).

Or if you are not.

If that is the case I would rather do the "homeless" way.

Call me a spoilt child, but I always believe that during travelling, at the end of the day what you need would be a good rest, rather than chasing around for cockroaches in your hotel room.

Apart from the accommodation, one of the fun part would be choosing the airline to fly with.

All this while, this is my priority list.

1. Malaysia Airlines.
2. Emirates.
3. Cathay Pacific.
4. Air Asia.

But ever since the completion of KLIA2, it has become:

1. Air Asia
2. Air Asia
3. Air Asia
4. Air Asia

(Yes, THE AIRPORT is IMPORTANT for me)

If only Tony Fernandes read this, I am sure he will be so proud that give me and my dog the premium flatbed seat for free.

That's his face saying "Yeah right, **** off.."

The third thing, the google maps, is important for me too.

I always plan ahead. (If i want to).

Let say I need to meet 5 clients in that week, I will try to choose the most centralized area for my hotel location. (And trust me, you don't want to make the wrong choice in a big city like Beijing).

Basically that is the main 3 things for me before travelling, my ritual before every travel.

Oh yes, time to restart my ritual again. For this month!

Adios!







 

USD 100

How world has changed.

During the early days, birthday wishes came in cards.

Today, you get your birthday wishes via Facebook notifications.

 

 

Time flies, people changed too.

 

She was once the hottest chick in your secondary school.

 

 

 

 

Now you feel really lucky you didn't end up marrying her.

 

The brightest engineering student classmates of yours once in your college.



 

Took a career twist and ended up as and Insurance agent and make tonnes of money out of it.

 

 

 

Once a traditional water festival in Thailand.

 

 

 

Now became a hit and culture all over the world.

 

 

 

How things have changed really.

 

Honestly? I am kind of looking forward to see what else changes in the next 5 years.

 

* Sorry I was writing this post out of boredom and stress due to too much of ice bucket challenge video on Facebook recently.

 

I would like to do it differently.

 

If this post get 30 hits of comments before 1st September, I will pledge USD 100 as the donation for charity.

 

I can't stand cold water, sorry.

 

 







 

The Cultural Shock

I have been to China three times this year alone.

Being a Chinese myself, it is funny that I still do feel the cultural differences, or should I say a cultural shock whenever I am there.

1. They talked so loud that you can hear them from a mile away.

The only time you would see us Malaysian shouting into each other's ears would be during a concert or clubbing session.

Not in China. It seems like in their dictionary, the word "talk" has no difference with "penetrating your eardrum".

One day you will see a China man shouting into his phone, with the impression that he might be having a big argument with his wife but when you listen carefully, all he was saying was "Ok darling, I am coming home now. See you soon."


2. Chinaman can drink like a fish.

When it comes to alcoholic beverages, never (ever) try to outdrink a china man.

Unless you enjoy to be like this.

A friend of mine who always deal with clients from China, this is one of his advice every single time before I flew off.

It is fair to say that I did trained "quite a bit" while I am back in Malaysia. All I did was puking in front of the public eyes in one of those streets in Shanghai.

Considering that I still can walk back to my hotel, it is quite an achievement. (After 4 bottles of wine, unknown number of pint of beers and one bottle of whisky.)


3. Simple meal is not that "simple".

This is one of the part that I hate the most. China man always has been very welcoming (or should I say show off) towards their guest.

They always demanded that the table shall be filled up with lots of foods even knowing that they are not going to finish it.

I still remembered during my second trip to Shanghai, learning from previous lesson before the lunch I have told my client that I am going to have a simple lunch today. (As I had a late breakfast in the hotel).

He said OK, NO PROBLEM.

This is what I am expecting.

 

 

But this is what I get.

 

 

And I am sure that I know how to say "simple" in mandarin.

And I can imagine if I requested for a "heavy meal" probably they would have book the whole restaurant for that dinner alone.



4. Taxi in China doesn't know all the places so well.

In Malaysia, whenever you board a taxi and tell the driver you need to get to so and so place, they will immediately come up with all the shortcuts and even the price even before you step into them.

Not in China.

80% of the time, apart from the fact that I need to translate all the address into Chinese character, you will noticed that they tend to have this confused look on their face whenever you tell them the destination you wanted to go.

YET.

Most of them DOES NOT EVEN HAVE GPS!

Well this could be very much contributed to the fact that their city is so huge and comes with ten of thousands of buildings which can be quite confusing at times. I don't blame them.

But at least, get yourself a GPS!!

Ever noticed that in Malaysia our taxi driver never use a GPS before?

5. China man always think we Malaysia does not know how to speak Mandarin.

I must be honest enough to admit that I do get a lot of praises from the China man whenever I converse in mandarin.

At first, I really thought that my mandarin is really excellent but hey! Suddenly I realized that it could
be for the fact that people in China always think we Malaysian are capable only to speak Malay and English.

Or only capable to make a plane go missing or shot down.

But one thing for sure, I always feel very much at home whenever I travelled to China.

It is still a very nice country especially during the cold weather.

Lots of foods, drinks and yelling? That sounds like a party for me anyway.