Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The travel guide books tend to make it clear how difficult it is to travel, even in convenient and relatively safe continent that it Europe. “Even for 3 weeks, travel seems to become...work,” the books say simply. And after personal experiences doing exactly the many things the travel books recommend travelers to do, the travelers would unequivocally agree with the books’ sentiment. But amid the tiresomeness and desperations of continued travel, what becomes more important, upon retrospect, are things that the travelers seem to forget when they are on the road. (1) When the travelers are still energetic at the beginning of the trip, they tend to carefully track their spending and remember to budget for how much to spend every day and each destination. Three weeks later, that financial meticulousness goes out the window as fatigue sets in. The travelers would eat whatever whenever they want; they would stay in much nicer lodging because they cannot be bothered to seek out those che

Many non-Asians traveling through the less touristy parts of Asia often complains that they receive too much unpleasant and unwanted attention from the locals simply because of skin color. Of course, the source of the attention is justifiably obvious: the locals simply have not come across many foreigners before and are expressing their surprise/curiosity/”joy” of seeing foreigners in ways that the foreigners would consider them rather obnoxious. The Asian travelers, unfortunately, usually do not understand just how unpleasant it is to be on the receiving end of such unwanted attention against foreigners because they tend to always end up in places where Asians faces are common. In Asia, they can blend in as locals. In the West, they can be one of the millions of Asian immigrants. And in popular vacation destinations such as Athens and Istanbul, the foreign crowds, whether it be tourists or businessmen catering to the foreign crowds, are often predominantly Asian. Locals in these

Sitting in the city center of Sarajevo, right in front of the bustling main bus and train stations, is one of the most massive gated compounds one could ever imagine in the middle of a city. Surrounded by tall white walls and patrolling armed guards in military uniforms, the compound consisting of three well-maintained concrete towers stretched well over two and a half standard street blocks on what must be some of the most expensive real estate in town. In front of the big entry gate, the golden letters marked “EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” One would normally be awed by the sheer size of the buildings, especially considering that this is Bosnia, a country where there is barely any presence of American citizens outside the few, like myself, who drops by from nearby countries to check out the well-preserved ancient townscapes of Sarajevo. But the American representation here in Bosnia is nothing compared to the grand residence of UN and NATO representatives in downtown Pr

Being on the road, the traveler often comes across situations where his own decision-making. And when the wrong decision is taken, the cost is unbelievably high in monetary terms (not to mention damages to self-confidence)...but it is those wrong decisions that tend to be, ultimately, the most memorable ones. And the same wrong decisions, by pure "virtue" of their being incredibly BAD decisions, lead to the greatest adventures ...but at the end, with the wallet all beat up, the traveler has to realize where is that fine line between "adventure at all costs" and "sound financing while on the road." Yesterday was that sort of day. The traveler planned to travel from Pristina, Kosovo to Dubrovnik, Croatia by transferring once at Podgorica, Montenegro. When the bus from Pristina arrived in Podgorica at 2am local time, the traveler, to his dismay, realized that the daily bus between Podgorica and Dubrovnik, becomes once every two days during winter times, a

When I first arrived in America as a young 12-year-old boy, my family lived in a mostly immigrant neighborhood in southern part of Boston. The neighborhood school was filled with immigrants from Eastern Europe, especially the Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia, and Serbia. As fellow students of ESL classes, I spent years with them, earning American culture, English language, and talking about the homelands we left behind. And talked we always had about our homelands, with bit nostalgia, and plenty of gratefulness that we all got out. Once the Albanian told me about the view of America people had back home. He said with a certain degree of cynicism, “back there, everyone thought America is a land where money grows on trees and the roads are paved with gold...I mean, literally.” The naiveté of the comment had such a huge impact on me that six years later, it became the first sentence of a college application essay that got me into Yale. The optimism with which new immigrants appro

Being used to the heavy Xmas decorations and cheesy seasonal songs being blasted everywhere, the traveler feels a little empty moving through Turkey and Greece in the past couple of days. Over in Istanbul, it was just another day at work, everything operated as if nothing special is happening, save for extra-busy working conditions dealing with hordes of (mostly Asian) tourists. Over in Athens, the main sights are closed for the two-day Xmas holidays, but as for everything else, the cafes, the souvenir shops, and indeed the daily routines of the common people, operated in completely normal ways. Yes, in this corner of the world, there was absolutely no catering to the Xmas celebrations happening elsewhere. No Xmas songs, no Xmas lights, not even a word of "Merry Xmas" from the locals. The reason seems rather plain and simple: Muslim Turks (obviously) do not celebrate Xmas, and for the Orthodox Greeks, their Xmas falls on Jan 7th (a fact that I did not know until I was tol