People - like siblings, twins, or even triplets - who share the same parents, have the same upbringing, live together under one roof, under same circumstances, e.g. same neighborhood, same country, same school, etc., may not have the same or similar minds or thinking towards life and its purposes. They may even have completely different personalities and lead a very different way of life.
However, two persons who are born and live separately in two different countries, lead different types of life, brought up with different styles of upbringing by different parents, who have different number or type of siblings, may share the same interest and hobbies, have similar attitude towards life, which sometimes you yourself can't believe that how come this person has the same passion and life style very similar with what you have.
Every single of human being is special and unique. Why? Because we experience different things in our life, meet different types of people throughout our life, which at the end, steers our lives differently too. The choice, preference, value, are not built up in one day.
The above things struck my mind when I met up with someone who was few years younger than me, had pretty different background with me, like country we were born, subject we chose to study, siblings we had, and so on. But when two of us started talking and shared our experience, we could easily understand each other situations on why we did these and those things under certain kind of circumstances.
Ok. To give you a clearer picture, I'll share with you what passion we both have.
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| Wearing Mongolian's traditional cloth |
It is
traveling. Traveling here, not the kind that we choose the most comfortable and expensive flight or bus services - like paying more to get the upgrade services, such as: business class seat; staying in the most luxury or having the most comprehensive facilities inside the hotel (unless we get it on huge discount or free :P), or spending most of our traveling time browsing shopping malls and going back with tons of shopping bags on both hands, or sleeping inside the hotel room. No, no, we don't.
We both rather choose the most economical, but still faster to reach (we will ask around, compare many different airlines timing and fare, etc.); choose to stay in the safe and clean, but rather low cost hostel/hotel or even better, at friend's accommodation, preferably in a very strategic location that made us easier to go around on foot on day and night to see the lifestyle of local people who lived at surrounding area; preferred hotel with no breakfast so that we could try a real taste of local food (what usually local people would eat everyday), and we rather use our time to browse the sightseeing places, watch the
must go local art performances that you can't find in other countries, e.g. Wayang Kulit, Beijing Opera, Water Puppet show, Russian Ballet, etc., sit at local eating place with a bottle of fresh local
(and cheap) beer plus some local snacks as accompaniment.
We prefer carrying our
lousy-look luggage (rather than buying a shiny, very good brand and expensive luggage that people would have a first impression that you're foreigner); even perhaps, buy a cheap $20 bag from
Mustafa, which was extendable, in case we go home with more stuffs, like tidbits, from our journey.
We love to travel more than two weeks time or even a month or more, especially when we are unemployed, to make full use of the spare time we have.
Living life to the fullest? That's most probably the suitable quote for our mentality.
We travel alone most of the time but plan to meet friends or accidentally make lots of new friends in another side of the world. Obviously, the number of our overseas friends becomes exceeding our local friends! :D
We prefer to wear and bring simple pair of clothes, however functioning well depending on the seasons. For example: one two-layers jacket (outside was water proof material that can protect us from rain) rather than few pieces of sweaters of the same thickness, materials, or different colors, plus raincoat, another wind breaker, plus another leather jacket, or jeans jacket for not so cold weather so that you can look great and differently in your holiday photos. Easy to dry shirt and pants are essential for us too as we prefer to wash it almost every night rather than keep the dirty clothes until we go back home and wash. For us, travel light is important as we travel long term and to many different places.
Eating and tasting local food and snacks most of the time are essential for us rather than indulging in fast food joints, or Chinese/ Indian/ Western food only restaurants, that you can easily find it back home. Local beer/ wine/ spirit is a must-try!
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| Wearing Kebaya - Indonesia's traditional cloth |
Sometimes, we buy and wear clothes as what locals wear. To blend with them, learn and experience different cultures make us learning new things everyday.Chit chat with locals to get more information about their lifestyle, cultures, thinking, ideas, and so on will bring our minds into another new perspectives. The information is rather fresh, real, and true, rather than stay inside the room and watch international channels TV program before sleep. That's defeat the purpose, isn't it?
We are after the adventure, trying new things, visit the
never been places before, and when we both are discussing it, we are as if looking at the mirror. As if we both are the same person. Isn't it amazing? I've met such a person and I'm glad that I'm not alone. At least what we do is not uncommon (compare with those people who have different traveling style), and we are proud on what we do. So, what type of traveling person are you? Have you ever thought about it? :)
