Archive for October, 2009

What Does Travel Mean To You

kelvinlls | October 25, 2009 | Comments (0)

Travel Is Not About Bragging Rights

I recently read an article from the Sydney Morning Herald about “Where to get your travel credibility” and this really sparked me to write about my views on travel. The article describes how certain travel destinations have become more accessible to tourists, and you can’t say you’re a great traveller just by mentioning these places. Apparently, your travel credibility is measured by the toughness and remoteness of the places that you go to. Being an avid traveller, I totally despise people who talk about their travels for the sake of bragging where they have been and what they have done.

Travel is not about having bragging rights of where you’ve been and what you’ve done. Travel to me is an experience, a personal journey that people embark for themselves to experience different things in different places. It may not necessarily be a very spiritual experience, but the mere fact of seeing something different and being in a different environment offers the mind and soul a whole new perspective. Travel, whether it be for leisure, adventure, luxury, or business, is not an area where you need to build credibility on.

Each person has a different take and reasons for travelling. Some people may want to travel to relax themselves from the usual stresses and pressures of everyday life. Some people may love to travel to seek out new adventures and to experience new cultures. And there will be some people who want to travel for the sake of being said that they have been to certain places. Whatever your purpose or reasons for travel, the whole idea is not to have a scale of how good or “seasoned” a traveller you are. It is all about what you want out of travel.

Travel As Food For The Soul

Travel enriches someone’s knowledge of the world, of perspective, of humanity, and of life. Oftentimes, people tend to live in their own silos and enclosed world that they forget that there is a bigger world out there. When you think you have had the worst job and the worst day of your life, you forget that there are other people in this planet that have it a million times worse than you, and yet, they don’t moan as much. Travel can offer you that experience and realization that it is a matter of perspective. Travel can open people’s eyes, no matter where you go. It may be through a package tour to Africa or some real intrepid adventure through the Amazon rainforest, but the truth is, people who travel can see different things in a different light.

What Travel Means To Me

I may have already said this through the previous paragraphs, but I truly believe that travel is a personal journey in many ways. It’s a journey of discovery of new things, new perspective, new realizations and learnings. I believe people have different ways of discovering and embracing new things, and hence, travel is done in many different ways to suit a person. I believe that every person on this planet has the right to travel, and the right to say that they are a traveller regardless of how they travel. We all travel, one way or another, and there is no scoring system.

So, to those who think certain people have less credibility as a traveller than others, think again. Different people have different agenda for travel, and there is no set standard on what constitutes a fabulous traveller or a great traveller. For all intents and purposes, it all boils down to personal experience.

Have A Fabulous Journey Ahead, whatever it may be!

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My kind of travel

Kelvin Lim

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Five Great Reasons To Do The Grand Pacific Drive

kelvinlls | October 16, 2009 | Comments (3)

The Grand Pacific Drive

GrandPacificDriveScene3 Five Great Reasons To Do The Grand Pacific Drive Many people are familiar with the Great Ocean Road along Victoria’s southern coast. It’s a fantastic stretch of road that offers dramatic scenery and has a great history around the construction of the road. One thing not many people or tourists are familiar about is the Grand Pacific Drive along the eastern shores of New South Wales. This stretch of road starts from the Royal National Park just south of Sydney and goes through small villages and towns including Wollongong, Shellharbour, Kiama, and finishes in the inland town of Nowra. The Grand Pacific Drive doesn’t have the rock formations like the Twelve Apostles of the Great Ocean Road, but having a bridge built on the side of a cliff face and passing through some gorgeous beaches is a great sight to behold.

Reason # 1: Catch The Sunrise

GrandPacificDriveScene2 Five Great Reasons To Do The Grand Pacific Drive Watching the sunrise is one of nature’s best light displays, along with a sunset. However, I’m not an early riser, and I always find it difficult to catch the sunrise, and only do I occasionally wake up to see it. Since moving to Australia 2 years ago, I’ve never seen the sunrise, and I thought it would be awesome to coincide it with a road trip to the southern parts of New South Wales. I managed to convince 2 of my friends to come with me and drive down from Sydney to Wollongong for the day along the Grand Pacific Drive and check out the sights along the way. Catching the sunrise at Stanwell Park and Coalcliff was one of the highlights of the trip, and seriously, one of the most underrated (or unmentioned) activities along this coastline. Catching the sunrise is not a tourist activity along this coastline, and only locals know of this. Before any tour groups start descending along this stretch of magnificent road, go and witness it yourself really soon!

Reason #2: No Tour Groups Around

There are so many organised tours to the Great Ocean Road, and while this is great for those who don’t have cars or only have a short time to get around, having busloads of people fighting for the view can be annoying. The great thing with the Grand Pacific Drive is that it is not as far from Sydney as the Great Ocean Road is from Melbourne, and the drive is not that long. It generally only takes over 2 hours and you will be able to cover the entire distance. If you take some time to enjoy each spot, it might take a little bit longer. However, it is definitely more manageable on a day trip than the Great Ocean Road.

Reason #3: Great Beaches and Views

The view along the Grand Pacific Drive is awesome! It’s either totally underrated, or underpromoted by the general public. It may not offer such dramatic scenery, but the numerous beaches and the sea views from Stanwell Tops are great! The city of Wollongong and the township of Kiama are also great attractions on this stretch of road. Wollongong has a nice beach and harbour, and an old lighthouse that adds to the character of the harbour. In the city itself is the largest buddhist temple in the southern hemisphere, the Nan Tien temple. It’s architecture is distinctly Chinese, and it was built by the members of the Chinese Fo Guang Shan community who have migrated to Australia. Which leads me to the next reason..

Reason #4: Interesting attractions in the area

GrandPacificDriveScene4 Five Great Reasons To Do The Grand Pacific Drive

Sunset at Kiama Lighthouse - Grand Pacific Drive

Before reaching Wollongong, I had the impression that there is totally nothing interesting to see in the town itself apart from the usual shops on the main town centre. I thought it was just another industrial town, with totally nothing to offer. Was I completely wrong! The harbour and beach is an attraction on its own, and the lighthouse adds character to the place as well. If you drive all the way down to the town of Kiama, you can find some blowholes along its coast. It’s a natural phenomenon wherein holes are formed from the erosion of rocks on the coastline. If you do a slight detour from the Grand Pacific Drive, you can check out the Illawarra Fly Tree Top Walk, which is about a 30-minute drive from Kiama. It offers a spectacular view of the Illawarra coastline, and the structure itself is quite a unique in its design. Its edges are suspended from the cantilever, making it bouncy and quite challenging to those afraid of heights.

Reason #5 : Relaxing, Laid Back Atmosphere

The Grand Pacific Drive is only 45 minutes away from the CBD, and yet, the pace of life is totally different from the buzz of the big city. If you are ever tired of being always on the go, squeezing in with other people and the long queues, this place can soothe those angst and worry aside. The towns along the Grand Pacific Drive are quite small, and people are just totally laid-back. The beautiful beaches along the way would have been a highlight of the trip, and something that you can look forward to, if you’re never been down the Grand Pacific Drive.

Enjoy a drive down the Grand Pacific Drive, from sunrise til sunset on a nice clear sunny day, and you won’t regret it!

Have a Fabulous Journey ahead!

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Five Great Reasons To Do The Grand Pacific Drive

Philippine Typhoon Appeal

kelvinlls | October 1, 2009 | Comments (2)

Typhoon Ketsana Disaster

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Saving a drowning person

On 26 September 2009, the northern part of the Philippines was struck by a strong typhoon that dumped a month’s worth of rain in a matter of 6 hours. The typhoon was called Typhoon Ketsana, though locally known as “Ondoy”. Typhoon Ondoy came like a thief in the night. No one expected that this typhoon was so intense. Severe flooding happened very quickly, and there was little to no time for people to respond and prepare themselves for what’s to come. Rivers burst their banks and overflowed into the villages and neighbourhood, submerging the capital Manila into neck-deep waters. People scrambled to rooftops and searched for higher ground. Many were stranded without electricity, water, and mobile phone coverage. Families were split apart, not knowing what has happened to one another.

It was a scene of utter chaos. The whole city looked like a warzone, with cars damaged and strewn all over the place, and walls collapsing due to the strong current of the flood as it gushes through the entire city. Typhoon Ketsana disaster has claimed 250 lives in the Philippines and left 500,000 people homeless, and now Typhoon Ketsana has wrecked havoc to Vietnam and Cambodia. 33 people have been reported dead in Vietnam and so far only 9 in Cambodia.

This is a travel blog and I realise that I may have just breached my rules of only putting out content related to travel. However, having come from the Philippines and seeing the disaster, I would love to contribute and help my fellow countrymen out. The Philippines is a great travel destination, and like most places with a good tourism potential, this disaster will hurt whatever tourism industry there is in the country. It is a bit like the Boxing Day Tsunami in Thailand where the devastation is intense, and tourism has plummeted, causing more suffering to its people.

Feeling Helpless While It Happened

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Floods in the Philippines

I was logged into Facebook on Saturday night, trying to see what’s happening to my friends when I saw a barrage of status updates from my friends pleading for help. It was so distressing seeing one of my close friends from university who was really pleading for help for her family. My friend is now based in England, but her family is still in the Philippines. Her entire family got stranded on the roof of their house when the flood waters gushed into their home. They had to endure the wind and rain for several hours while waiting to be rescued.

Some of my other friends were frantically looking for their relatives, as they didn’t know where they were, and they didn’t have any mobile phone coverage.

First Hand Account of the Tragedy

Here’s a first hand account from a friend’s friend, Lisa Navidad of the Typhoon Ketsana disaster:

“It was raining non-stop since Friday evening. Hubby and I were watching TV and heard that Pasig was flooded. That was where my younger sister, Bubut and her husband was living. I texted her and asked how things where in Pasig since they were also living with my bro-in-law’s grandma who is 87 y/o. She replied with exclamation points “Hanggang ankle na inside the house!!!” (It’s ankle-deep inside the house) and that was the last time I heard from her.

I was texting here the whole afternoon and way into the evening. No response. I thought it odd that she won’t reply to me and even when my mom and dad texted her. I felt that something was wrong.

What happened next was excruciating. News flash of ranging waters in Pasig and on different parts of Manila was shocking to say the least. How could this be happening. I was scared for my sister and her family. They lived in a one-storey house, with an old woman who is blind in one-eye. Where will they go? Are they still alive? Those where the thoughts that ran through my head. I’ve been calling their cellphones the whole night, but it was out of service. Panic and hysteria are bubbling inside my head. The storm and fear forming inside my chest was devastating. Where they still alive?! I hoped so, I really hoped so.

I talked to the sister-in-law, younger sibling of my sister’s husband. She told me the last time they talked to them was around 4pm. They urged them to transfer to an abandoned apartment in front of the house because it had a second floor. Then after that no news. Each hour that passed, fear and terror crept into our hearts. My dad did not take it well, he passed out. His blood pressure climbed high, he was beyond consolation. So is my mom.

No one could help us. The rescue was a slow, pain-staking process. The night passed and we wondered if they were safe, if they had food, if they were alive. The following day, we waited for news, none came. It was after lunch already – still no news if there was any rescue going to happen. We called everyone we knew, all the government agencies, anyone who can help, strangers. No one could help, all the government agencies were deployed, all we can do was wait…and hope that they were still alive.

September 27 4:47pm, my sis-in-law got a message from them, they were alive! Thank God but stuck in the 2nd floor of the apartment, cold, no food and no idea if help was coming. That gave us hope, they were alive. We will move heaven and earth to get to them even if we had to swim there ourselves.

A lot of people from Facebook responded to my urgent request for help. But still we couldn’t do anything. If only there were more rubber boats available, if only we could get there faster, if only help was sure to come. We couldn’t do anything but wait. Wait for any good soul to tell us that they will get them. My sister had hypoglycemia, her grandma was sickly.

After waiting for almost 2 days already, finally news! People from Red Cross and the Armed Forces got them. It 12:30am September 27 they were riding, 1 of the 4 rubber boats deployed for the whole City of Pasig, back to our waiting and longing arms. Rescued at last.”

My sister’s account of what happened brought goosebumps in my arms, people wailing at night in the dark asking for help, asking for food, but they couldn’t do anything…the water was high, way past the one-storey roof. There were dead bodies, mothers who gave birth prematurely, sick people in respirators who lost their lives due to hypothermia and no electricity. No words could describe the devastation. Still even as I write this people are still on top of roofs, people are still starving waiting and hoping for help, people have lost their loved ones, people have lost their means to live.

The Typhoon Ketsana disaster is not over yet. Cleanup is still in progress, and there are still missing people, unaccounted for after the flood. Some have been presumed dead. The Philippines is now appealing for international aid.

Images of The Flood

Here is a video clip of the terrible disaster that struck the Philippines:

Help The Flood Victims – Please Donate

The Philippines need a lot of help in recovering from this disaster. Poor people have lost their homes completely and would need to rebuild their lives literally from scratch. If you can donate to any of the organizations listed below, it will go a long way to helping the people of the Philippines recover from this tragedy. Below are the list of good organizations that you can donate for the Typhoon relief:

Philippines.com.au – Sagip Migrante Fund Drive: Donate to Ondoy Flood Victims
Philippines.com.au is a site dedicated to Filipinos living in Australia. They are currently accepting donations for the victims of Typhoon Ondoy. This is a great site for Australians to donate.
Caritas Australia

Caritas Australia is part of the global Caritas Foundation, whose aim is to help the poor and the disadvantaged. Caritas Australia is currently accepting donations for the Philippine Flood Relief. Caritas in other countries would surely have a similar fund raising for this disaster so visit your local Caritas website.

Ayala Foundation
Ayala Foundation is a Philippine-based organization that was founded by one of the Philippines’ wealthiest families, the Ayala family. The foundation has several projects that help the poor and the disadvantaged. You can donate for Ondoy victims here.
Philippine National Red Cross
The Philippine National Red Cross is part of the International Society of Red Cross and Red Crescent, and is responsible for reaching out to those who are in need of medical assistance and aid. Please donate to this wonderful organization.

Thank you for your generosity and for your reading this post. I will be back next week to write about another exciting destination.

Have a Fabulous Journey!