Onward to China

Vacation has always been a form of escapade for myself. Ditching whatever I hold on my hands and take off in an air jet, travelling above 40,000ft in the air, barely containing myself in the seat for the unknown that is awaiting me.

Whenever I return from a trip, I am reluctant to unpack my luggage. Removing every piece of item from my luggage is a road of reminiscing, revisiting every moment of my trip. Seeing my unpack luggage lying there out in the open is like a reminder that my trip was just over, and I still have ample of energy stored up within me, to prepare myself for reality.

When the luggage is finally unpacked and stored high up above my wardrobe, it is finally the moment when reality hits me, that I have to make do with the amount of positivity left over from the trip to get me going until the next trip arrives.

The same goes for photographs. Though luggage unpack warrants nagging from my mom, so it gets attended to far quicker than photographs. I finally got to photographs taken during a trip with my parents to China 2 years ago (Yes, this is how bad my procrastination can get. Which you probably are aware, seeing me post about Christmas 2014 four months later. Coughs…).

A selfie at the first hotel we got to. Followed by selfies with my parents! Who do I look like?



Wishing it wasn’t so cold and they’d fill the pool with water so I could jump in.




Yes, the highlight of the trip was to Guilin, the hometown of our ancestors.



Our entire tour group, and you could see that I was the youngest there.

Since we were in the rural areas of China, there were a lot of boat rides, scenery views and a little mountain climbing.


Interestingly, the family that live in the house below, only leave their house and make their way down the mountain once a month. They are getting older in age and legs are not as strong. Leaving their house only for purpose of grocery shopping, sufficient to last them for another month.

Lighting from above is great for pictures!

And more boat rides and scenery.








Truth be told, I can’t recall where I was most of the times when I was looking through the photos. You see, that was a tour guided trip which I absolutely have no say in the itinerary. When people say move, I walk. When people say eat, I gobble the food in front of me.

Though the scenery is beautiful in rural areas of China, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t want to go again. As China is developing, there were heavy construction going on everywhere we went. So much dust flying around and I got major breakout starting from the second day I got there. It got so bad that most of the time I was wearing a mask that almost covered my entire face.

So apart from the first few days, I didn’t appear in pictures most of the time. Or when I do appear occasionally, the pictures look similar to above. After a while, I even gave up smiling for the camera. It doesn’t matter anyway, right? Travelling with my parents was a wonderful decision though. Just probably not China.

Seeing the last trip with parents was 2 years ago, I sense it is time for another trip with them. But trip this year is already planned out for and none of them involve my parents. So I guess it would have to be early next year? (Bites fingers nervously)

My post title is “Onward to China”. It felt more like “Backwards to China” since the trip was made so long ago. Ha!

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