Hallo Aachen!

Finally arrived. Destination : Aachen, Germany.

AachenIt took me 12 hours to fly into Frankfurt. It was a comfortable flight all the way albeit the long hours. What more could I complain from a economy class seat with wide screen LCD screen, comfortable seats, good foods and Dolby Digital-like sound system (thanks to my own headphones)?

Not forgetting also that I was entertained with 3 movies to pass time; Street Kings, Ah Long Pte Ltd and What Happens In Vegas.

I was 30 minutes ahead of time upon arrival at . So, I managed to catch the earlier train to . This train would only take around 2 hours and I should arrive at at about 11pm.

If I had missed this train, the next train would take 3 hours and by the time I reach , it would already be after 1am. Who knows what time it will be when I finally get to sleep.

Took the earlier train hoping to reach at around 11pm. And by 11pm, I was nowhere near . The train stopped for 45 minutes at a small town called Duren, some 40km away from . Apparently there was an accident at the next station and the train couldn’t proceed any further.

Everyone was asked to get down, or take the same train back to Cologne and wait for tomorrow maybe?

Asked around and found out that someone has jumped onto the tracks and got hit by the train? I wasn’t too sure about it, so I asked the others and the answer was still the same.

Someone jumped onto the tracks and got hit.

Now, this was really getting on my nerves.

It was already past midnight. I didn’t have a proper sleep for 24 hours, just got down from a 12 hours flight, hungry, sleepy, tired and the next thing I knew was..

I’m stucked in this small place until tomorrow!

It was almost 1am and there were no signs of the train moving again until tomorrow. Decided to the last taxi queuing outside the train station to .

So, Hallo !

August 26, 2008 | Filed Under Travels | 2 Comments 

Time to Go, Again!

I’m just done with the internet check-in for my flight tomorrow to together with printing the boarding passes. And I’m all set to go again.

This time it’s for 5-6 months until next year!

Had a quick run through my packing list just to check I’ve packed all the essentials.

That’s about all I’ll ever need when I travel.

Packing my luggage for trips of 2-3 months is like a routine work nowadays. This time, I got everything done in under 20 minutes! I bring almost the same things overseas most of the time. And packing things has been made much easier when I place all these travel things inside one cabinet.

It’s time to go to bed now. Otherwise I couldn’t be awake in time to catch my flight tomorrow!

August 22, 2008 | Filed Under Travels | Leave a Comment 

3 Years of Traveling

It’s now late at night. And I had nothing better to do.

So, instead of going to bed, I took out my passports (old and current) and started to flip it over to check out my new, spanking German visa for my upcoming trip later this week.

When I first got my passport (the old one) back in 2004, I thought that I would never utilize half of it, leave alone finishing all 32 pages of it. My mum once said that it’s a waste of money paying RM300 for a passport when you only stamp it once or twice in it’s entire 5 years of validity.

True to what she said, the only stamp I got was to Singapore.

That was before I started to work.

Little did I know that this would change until I landed my first job in mid 2005. Somehow, I managed to get not only half, but all 32 pages of this old passport filled up nicely and neatly in the next 2.5 years.

During the job interview, they told me to prepare myself to travel up to 75% of the time. Otherwise, it’s not advisable for me to accept the job offer as I would resign sooner or later.

and being away from Malaysia for long period is the challenge. Not the job itself.

But, they didn’t keep their promise.

I didn’t travel up to 75% for my entire time when I was there. When I flipped through my old passport, I realized that I only traveled 60% (18 out of 30 weeks) in 2005 and 71% (34 out of 48 weeks) in 2006

It looked something like this :

2005
China - 6 weeks
Indonesia - 5 weeks
Pakistan - 4 weeks
Sri Lanka - 3 weeks

2006
Sri Lanka - 3 weeks
Thailand - 28 weeks
Vietnam - 2 weeks
Indonesia - 1 week

Then I changed my job towards the end of 2006. Since I loved to travel in my previous company, I’d make sure that I’ll get to do the same in my new company. But, it wasn’t really heavy traveling back in 2007. It was only about 31% of the time (15 out of 52 weeks) that I was out of Malaysia.

This was how 2007 went by for myself.

2007
Bangladesh - 1 week
Finland - 6 weeks
Hong Kong - 1 week
India - 4 weeks
- 1 week
Japan - 2 weeks
Singapore - 1 week

By the end of 2007, the passport I was holding was already fully stamped. There isn’t any more room for new stamps and I had to make a new one. This time, it’ll be 64 pages.

I know it would get full before it’s 5 years validity period ends.

I thought 2008 would be a year where I would be out of the country most of the time, and it happened to go this way. This is how 2008 will look like.

2008
Japan - 2 weeks
Egypt - 6 weeks
India - 9 weeks
- 19 weeks

By the end of the year, I would have been out of the country for 70% (34 out of 52 weeks) of the time.

My next trip will take me to and various parts of Europe for 19 weeks and it’ll last until next year at least.

So which is the best place that I’ve ever been to date?

A few, actually.

I’ll keep that for later and off to bed for now.

August 19, 2008 | Filed Under Life, Travels | Leave a Comment 

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