Group vs. Solo Travel

If you can't be bothered to read the whole post, I will break it down for you:

Solo Travel Pros:


1. Easier to meet people - in your hostel, at a restaurant

2. You get to see and do what you want to do - no one to compromise with. Especially the travel buddies you meet spontaneously, there isn't the same pressure to stay together and do everything as a unit.

3. Reflection - More time alone with your thoughts to absorb what you are experiencing. No need to constantly entertain or think about another person.

4. You are more likely to engage in random activities - Without another person second guessing you or being more timid, you'll say yes to a lot more.

This is probably the most fun I had alone. I was in Santorini and I decided, on a whim, to start walking right. I walked from Fira to Oia and arrived just in time to see the sunset. I even ran into some friends I made on the shuttle to my hostel and they poured me a glass of wine. It was a perfect day.

Solo Travel Cons:

1. Especially if you are a woman, you have to always be aware of your surroundings - Travelers should always be aware, even in a group, but this is definitely a strong necessity if you are alone. It can get quite exhausting.

2. Fear - It's a lot scarier alone. You have to face everything without a support group. I am not saying you can't make fabulous friends while alone somewhere but if they aren't traveling with you every step of the way and something goes wrong (which will happen), it can be a huge stressor.

3. Too much time with your thoughts - I am a huge people person and while I am a fan of my own thoughts, I definitely don't like be stuck with only them for an extended period of time.

4. Danger - I don't want to freak people out and I hate it when people are so terrified of the big, bad outside world but the truth is that I have been sexually harassed in pretty much every place I have been. India was by far and away the worst where I have been groped in movie theaters, in autos, etc. I have been followed through a mall. A group of guys once even tried to pull my friend into a van. I have also had some difficulties in the U.S. and Italy, so no getting smug here western world! I was with a group when these things happened (except for the auto incident, that was scary), and while groups don't get rid of the problem, they do serve as a deterrent to potential harassers. If you are alone, you just have to be that much more aggressive and good at sensing trouble.

Tips to meeting people while solo-ing:

1. Your dorm mates - Hopefully you won't get any obnoxious ones. I got really lucky when I went to Santorini and I am still talking Facebook friends with them! Try to alternate activities with people and go see the sights together.

My awesome dorm mates surprised me with this sugary doughnut and "candles" for my 19th birthday in Santorini!

2.  If your hostel has a bar, GO! That is the only place I drank while in Athens. I did not want to stumble home along any sketchy streets so I made a nightly place for myself in the handy bar in the basement of Hostel Aphrodite. Another tip is to make friends with the bartender. He or, in my case, she is the best person to introduce you to old and new people. This hostel also had a great policy of a free shot of ouzo for every new person who walked in. Nothing bonds people faster than taking a shot together.

For the Group Pros and Cons list, just invert the Solo list. I will add these two for Group Pros:

*You always have someone to share the experience with - This can be a moment of absolute amazing or it can be stuck on a fifteen hour bus ride to Hell on bumpy road/sitting between two toilets on an Indian train for eight hours (both have happened to me). Having someone along can turn a good memory into a great one or a crappy one into a great story.   

*You can divide and conquer - If there is a large enough group and you want to see different things, you can always split up if you want company or even go it alone.

Now here is the actual post: 

I have been traveling since I was three months old. I have been taken on trains that were falling apart, rickety buses, jeepneys, tuk tuks/auto rickshaws, you name it. I have traveled all around most of East and Southeast Asia, the U.S., and Europe. All of this was with my family. The first time I ever took a flight alone (i.e. without my parents), I was fourteen years old. I was flying from Chennai, India to Manila, Philippines and I was going to visit one of my best friends. During high school I also traveled with friends to Bali, Goa, and Kodai Kanal. I traveled by myself up and down half of the U.S. east coast when I was sixteen, but always to visit friends or family. When I graduated from high school I did my celebration Euro-trip with my then boyfriend and we blazed through Denmark, France, Belgium, the Alps, the Netherlands, and England (not to mention driving through Luxembourg and Switzerland).

The common thread through all my travels is that I was always with people. The only time I was alone was during transit. I love going on adventures with people and I didn't feel like I was missing out by avoiding solo travel.

It finally came up as a viable option when I was in college and wanted to go to Greece. My friend didn't get as much of a summer as I did so she arranged to meet me ten days later in Spain. I was to head to Athens and then Santorini while staying in dorm hostels. This was new. And I was terrified.

It is such a different experience traveling with a group as opposed to alone. While I am usually the responsible one, the fact that I had no safety net stressed me out. If something went wrong, I had to work it out all on my own. If I ran into trouble, there was no one to go through the ordeal with me. If I had all my stuff stolen, there was no friend's credit card to help me get by. Having a friendly face, if only to suffer through a situation together, wasn't going to be an option.

What I failed to take into account was that groups tend to stick together and are less likely to want to branch out to fellow backpackers. Fellow backpackers are also less likely to want to approach a large tight-knit group of friends or even just a couple. I have actually had people tell me during conversation that if I had been with a partner, they wouldn't have tried to start talking to me. 

When I arrived in Athens, I had a bit of a harrowing trip to my hostel. I stayed at the Hostel Aphrodite (got to love the name) and to get there from the nearest metro stop you have to walk through a residential area, then through the sketchiest alley before you finally get to a main road and the hostel. While lugging my bag and trying to navigate in a strange city, guys began to catcall from the balconies of the apartments above me. This was not a fun journey.

However, the rest of my time in Greece was an absolute blast. I am very much still alive and in one piece and I am so glad I decided to go alone. I did get a horrible debilitating sickness (which to this day I am not sure what I got), but it only struck after I left Greece and was in Spain. By that point my friend and her friend joined me and so I had them to take care of poor sick me. That is when a group comes in handy. Plus, when I needed to pass out from exhaustion, they sectioned off and went to stuff I didn't have the energy to see.  

That whole trip was a great comparison for the differences between group and solo travel. While I had an unforgettable experience alone, I personally prefer group (as in one or two other people).

TCKs/ATCKs vs. Traveling Adults

Me with nine year old me. Poor quality Itouch picture of my role as a laughing clown in the musical Clowns when I was in New Delhi, India. My joke: "Why do giraffes have such long necks? To reach the HIGH notes!"

 *Broken down list is at the bottom

Whenever I tell people that I am a third culture kid, I usually get one of two reactions.

Reaction 1: For those who know what a TCK is, they ask where I have lived and the conversation goes on.

Reaction 2: For those who have never met or heard of the term TCK, they stare at me blankly.

Once I explain I again usually get one of two reactions.

Reaction 2a: Some people are like, "Whoa! That is so cool! I can't believe you got to live in all those places, how was it?"

Others have a rather different reaction...

Reaction 2b: "So what?"

And that is a valid question, so what? Why should it matter that I have grown up in 7 different international cities or that I spent my breaks going around India or Southeast Asia. What differentiates me from an adult who grew up in one place and then traveled after high school or, usually, after college?

The answer is a lot. And not just we are two different human beings who are our own individuals. Our outlook on life and what we base our experiences on is a world apart, literally.

I am writing this post because honestly, it is extremely disheartening when I get the "so what" reaction. There are some TCKs who really don't care how other people think about their upbringing or in an effort to just blend in, won't really address it. Others don't really hold onto it as a lifelong identity and think history is history, what matters is the now. My brother is one who feels like bringing the whole TCK thing up is just rubbing it in people's faces and that it does more harm than good. He also thinks some TCKs are too up in their own @$$es to do anything other than live in the glory days.

While I will definitely be writing a post on how we TCKs or ATCKs (adult TCKs, which is what I am now I guess) need to get off our high horses (especially me), honestly there is a difference in people who have had one solid home in one culture versus those who have had to constantly shift our interpretations of what home means.

There were two conversations I had recently that have made me want to write this post. The first was in Hong Kong and the second was in Washington DC. In Hong Kong, I was out to dinner with a friend of mine and his friends. When the inevitable question of background came up, I got reaction 2a from most of the table but there was one guy who flashed me the 2b. He then turned around and started talking about the opportunities he got as a Princeton in Asia fellow and how much travel he has managed to do in spite of his grueling work as a financial something or other.

The one in DC went much the same except that this girl was much more modest and instead stated that she, "controls the world" because she worked as a liason in the State Department. Facetious or not, there was a little part of her that believed it. Welcome to DC.

It really irked me how my entire life experience was dismissed and diminished because of how on top of the world they felt. I am the first to admit that I can condescend to people who were raised in one place and it is a reaction that I have worked very hard to curb. I am aware of it and I work to better myself. There was a big part of me growing up that wished I could be like the girls in the movie Now and Then who had their own tree house from when they were children.

I respect those who stepped out of their comfort zone and went out into the wider world, I really do. The least I ask is their respect in return for having experienced those shocks to the system much earlier in life.

I'll try to break it down into a list, even though I am simplifying:


1. You have something to compare your new experiences to.

Even if you have traveled to a ton of countries and compare one to another, you will deep down always measure home by where you grew up. Even if you hated your upbringing.

We have only other countries. There is no norm for us. There was no baseline of "if I was at home, things would be like this..." We have "if I were in Manila or Chennai it would be like this, but it's not at all close to Taiwan or Beijing."

2. The shock to the system is normal for us.

Every new place we moved brought something new, so much so that new became normal. A lot of people who have gone overseas the first time go wild. So much newness is can be overwhelming. One example is with China. A lot of people who have gone to China for the first time fall in love with it and then proceed to oscillate between love (WOOOO NO OPEN BOTTLE LAWS) and hate (SO SICK OF HOW POLLUTED IT IS!).

TCKs tend to be a bit more middle ground when it comes to a new city. We have had to learn how to pick apart the pros and the cons because every place has its pros and its cons.

3. Habits

This actually came to me when I read a friend's post on Facebook. She has been living in China for quite awhile and just returned to the US. She wrote a status along the lines of how she almost stopped her mom from filling up water from the tap. That is a huge no no in China and India and most places in Asia. All of the comments were about habits that people had just picked up during their time abroad. These were habits picked up from stints in only one place and were newly learned (as in they weren't brought up that way).

TCKs have an amalgamation of habits depending on where we have lived, international friends we have had, etc. Instead of contending with the rules of one culture, we have had to juggle many and that shows in how we approach situations.

It's even little things like having learned how to navigate between different languages and peoples from when we were toddlers. It almost feels like having multiple personalities. I can pretty much guarantee that every TCK has gotten into a fight with friends over being "fake" because all of a sudden we act markedly changed with different groups of friends. I have even been the accuser in spite of having had that same accusation lobbed at me.

4. Emotional baggage

Every group and culture has their own brand of emotional baggage. Ours is almost entirely made up of identity crises. I wrote a post on the topic of Recovering TCKs which is a group that feel like they have been emotionally scarred or hurt because of our upbringing. If you read the post, you'll know that I berate that mentality and am a supporter of having a great deal of pride in how we were raised.

We are a contradiction. While we can come off with all the arrogance that traveling the world will bring out in a person, we are also all struggling to figure out who we are. The angst ranges from person to person but we have all been through that phase.

This is a very unique form of identity crisis because nothing is taken for granted. We don't have a fall back of "I am from this place and I have always lived in this place and this culture."

It's a combination of questioning your nationality, your ethnicity (for me at least), your culture, and how you fit with the world. It also deals with how well we can match people's expectations of us with how we perceive ourselves. A big element is compromise. How much are you willing to let go for the sake of facilitating an interaction. Another part is who you belong to. Having a community is so important and up until the boom of the internet, it wasn't easy to keep in touch with other people like you.

I was on the cusp when I moved to the US during 5th-8th grade. Email was around but it was still mail for me. I remember how completely alone I felt in my experiences. I couldn't relate to anyone because they had all grown up together. I was the outsider who moved there from India but wasn't Indian...

Honestly it's exhausting having this weigh on you. I completely understand why people don't ascribe to this label and disappear into the personality that best adapts to those around you, even if it isn't all of you.
___________________________________________________________________________________

This is a long post and those are some of the main points so I'll stop here for now!

Top 10 Hong Konger Quirks

Having already done Top Ten Lhasa Quirks and Top Ten TCK Quirks, I am moving on to the Top Ten Hong Konger quirks! I have been waiting on this post for awhile because honestly, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. By that I mean that I was born in Hong Kong and have visited every single year I was alive before finally living there for a year last year. Because of this, it is hard for me to differentiate between peculiar traits and what I would consider normal, non-eyebrow-raising behavior. I enlisted the help of the Boy and a friend and the following list is a mix of us:

1. Food

Hong Kongers are OBSESSED with food. I have never known any other culture (not Indian, not Italian) that is THAT obsessed with all things culinary. While they are eating, Hong Kongers will actively discuss the next meal(s) that they plan on having.  

So much hotpot goodness

Within this food category, Hong Kongers were taking pictures of food and sharing it WAY before Instagram came out. A couple of years ago if you saw an Asian person taking a phone photo of their food, chances were it was a Hong Konger.

I am guilty of this...

Greatest chicken wings in the world. The spicy garlic wings at Bulldogs in Tsim Tsa Tsui!

2. "ar" or "lor" or "la" or "aiya"

Cantonese speakers love adding extraneous meaningless sounds at the end of sentences. This even translates into typing and texting. "Aiya" is one I grew up hearing from my mom whenever the slightest thing went wrong. Here are examples that I took from my friends' Facebooks (thanks guys!). Keep in mind that these are meaningless sounds added to make the sentence flow better:

"more likely advertising for 'kai-ness' lor..."

"kekekeke hubby already la kekekeke"

 "Aiya! Forgot cannot eat beef"

You get the idea.  

3.  Being direct about weight

I'd say Indians do this too but I cannot tell you how many times I have gone back to HK and heard this:


"You are too fat! You gained so much weight since the last time I saw you, what happened?!"

But at dinner it switches to this:

"Why aren't you eating more?! You are too thin and you need to eat more food!"

These aren't even meant to be insulting. Actually declarations of this sort are supposed to show loving care.

4. Superficiality

This is not meant to be derogatory but Hong Kongers love their looks. They love dressing well and they love status and money. Of course the centers of this are Central, Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Tsim Tsa Tsui (to an extent, TST is a bit more seedy).  There are just in your face no-bones-about-it consumerism. Advertisements abound and man do Hong Kongers live up life if they have the means.

You can argue that plenty of other cities around the world have this as a quirk but I have never ever seen a city that has what are called Star Tutors. These tutoring kings are some of the wealthiest in HK because they market an image to high schoolers. While their actual job is getting these kids to pass the rigorous exam systems, their primary responsibility is style. They have to be "ying" (stylish and modern) to attract followers and that entails designer clothes (one woman has never repeated a piece of her wardrobe because she claims her students would notice and be unhappy), designer cuts, and a celebrity style pizazz.

Here are some articles if you don't believe me:

Hong Kong Star Tutors

Celebrity Tutors

5. Karaoke

Again, another quirk that could be applied across East Asia but Hong Kongers love their Karaoke with this very unique drink:

Whiskey (Johnnie Walker) mixed with green tea. Not the hot green tea with leaves but the green tea that comes in bottles that you can put in the fridge. It actually doesn't taste too bad.

BBQ/buffets are also a part of the KTV experience.

6. Weddings

Hong Kong weddings are a trip. I would say Indian ones are more elaborate but Hong Kong ones are definitely in the same ballpark. It will boggle your mind the hundreds of thousands of dollars (HK and US) and up that people will spend on banquet halls in hotels and restaurants.

My friend brought up this one: wedding pictures before the wedding. Hong Kongers love the wedding photos and they take full advantage of the sheer amount of money that is spent on dresses by using them as many times as possible. Thus the pre-wedding photo package where the bride will even wear her wedding dress for the shots.

I recently attended my boss's wedding and it was a whole day affair. Starting in the morning with games wherein the groom and his "brothers" (that is what they are called instead of groomsmen) have to get through the torturous games that we "sisters" (instead of bridesmaids) designed to test their fortitude. The games included bribery (they had to give us money in red pockets before we even let them through the door), eating questionable food while blindfolded and spoon feeding each other, recreating how two entwined stuffed animals fell with each other, fishing mini-mahjong tiles out of ice cold water with their toes... You get the idea. In case you have to ask, this was definitely the funnest part of the wedding!

Other notable Hong Kong wedding traditions include the tea ceremony where the bride and grooms families are served tea by the bride and groom and offered gold in exchange as well as the banquet. The banquet is a big deal because it involves food (see quirk #1) and because the guests get to get the bride and especially the groom hammered. The poor couple has to make the rounds to each table and do a cheers while draining a glass full of whiskey. Banquets usually have a lot of tables, you do the math.

They actually managed to get the mahjong tiles out!

7. Kids names

Hong Kongers give their kids the oddest names. Charms, Caesar, Creamy, Nympho, Crispina (not Christina)... the list goes on.

8. Yum cha (dim sum)


Going to yum cha (which is literally translated as "drink tea") is a group affair. You go with your family, you go with your friends and you sit for hours at a round table ordering long (the bamboo steamer baskets) after long of dim sum while drinking tea. This is the quintessential Hong Kong activity.


9. Filipino/Indonesian housekeepers


Most households in Hong Kong have at least one Filipino or Indonesian housekeeper. These same housekeepers also double as nannies/surrogate mothers to Hong Kong children. I wouldn't be surprised if this were Hong Kong's largest import commodity: household help.

If you really want to get an idea of how many Filipinos and Indonesians workers live in Hong Kong, just walk around anywhere on a Sunday and you will see them packed around stairwells, in overpasses and in Victoria Park enjoying an afternoon picnic with friends.


10. Death rites


The way to commemorate the dead in Hong Kong is to burn paper objects. The ash from these is supposed to float and transport them into the afterlife so that the deceased won't lack for any amenities. For my Grandfather's funeral we burned him a paper house, a paper sports car, and paper servants so that he would get the best of the best in afterlife comfort. You can also find paper Rolexes, IPods, IPhones, dress shirts, you name it.

While other cultures may burn incense, Hong Kongers take it to a whole new level.
 

New Gallery, Pinterest, and Istanbul

I have made a few changes to my Unsettled TCK site including adding an entirely new gallery and joining pinterest. I recently found out that I have pretty much maxed out all my free photo storage for this blog. This left me with either spending about $30 to add extra space in google OR opening a completely new photoblog with another account and linking it on here. I chose the latter.

Welcome to Unsettled TCK's Gallery blog: http://ceciliahaynesgallery.blogspot.com/ 

I haven't decided whether or not to spend the $10 and give it a custom domain like www.ceciliahaynesgallery.com but we'll see. I ended up spending money to buy the template since there are no decent free templates out there. I spent a lot of time looking and settled for looking sleek.

I figure I'll concentrate on written posts here and link to photos on the other site. So far I posted some snazzy pictures I took while in Istanbul, so if you are curious head on over and see the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and a ceiling shot in Topkapi Palace: Unsettled TCK Gallery

Here is a screenshot of the gallery so that I have one picture in here:

What do you think of my new Unsettled TCK gallery?

I also took the plunge and joined pinterest. I was very curious about it and now I will never leave the internet! I haven't done very much but I'll get there.

Feel free to see what I've got so far: http://pinterest.com/unsettledtck/



Well those are my major updates, let me know what you think or if you have any other suggestions. I plan on adding one other website which will be hosted on someone else's domain, but we will see if I have the time...

An International School Regret

A couple of days ago I read an article in Rappler (it is a Filipino magazine) written by a friend of mine from high school entitled "Truly, dreams can come true," and it really made an impact on me. For the first time in a long while, I felt ashamed of myself. If you take the time to read it, which I highly recommend, Natashya Gutierrez writes about how she made a difference in someone's life. And I don't mean that she donated some money or put a few bricks together (which is GREAT if you do because charities are awesome and so are building houses). Just her being alive and putting her story out in the world motivated a fourteen year old boy named Romnick to put himself on the line and push for a higher education.

The International School of Manila has a very hefty tuition fee, especially for high school: $10,780-$12,060. Keep in mind that this is not a boarding school and this is not a university. My parents were able to afford this because they didn't have to. The State Department paid for my schooling. Other ISM kids I know either had parents as teachers (school paid) or were obscenely wealthy because they belonged to the richest families in the Philippines. However, there were one or two kids who were able afford the school's hefty fees because they were a part of the International School Manila's Filipino Scholar program. This scholarship gives these students a full ride to the school starting from eighth grade. 

For those who have never been to an international school and are wondering what the big deal is and why anyone would spend this amount of money to go, these schools are private schools with excellent instructors (usually Master's degrees and up) and a small teacher to student ratio. Graduates from ISM have gone to every single prestigious school you can think of, some with a full ride. Natashya was one such student who went to Yale on a full tuition scholarship. The opportunities that international schools provide is without parallel (at the very least, you'll have an interesting entrance essay to write) and I wish I had done more.  

While I don't think that I squandered my education, I definitely don't think I pushed myself as far as I could have. I can be a pretty lazy person and I have done very well at school because of the sheer fact that I can retain information very well for a short period of time. Not as well now, but in my heyday as my friends sweated over a test for days, I would read the chapter in the thirty minutes before class and walk away with the highest grade. I did nothing for the full year of AP Bio, crammed for two days prior to the exam, and walked away with a 4. The highest score is 5 and I got college credit for my 4. Pretty good for only two days of study. This was all at the American International School of Chennai (AISC and yes, the school's name is ridiculously long) and I know of one teacher in particular who was dumbstruck when I walked out of AP World History with a 5. At the time I was irked by his reaction because, hey, I got a high score, what more was he expecting? Now I understand that while he wasn't exactly hoping for me to fail, he was hoping that I would learn (and this is going to be cheesy) the value of hard work. And now I completely agree with him. It seems like my scores and my diplomas (including college) are a sham. I am still paranoid that people are going to swoop in and take away my degree because I feel like I haven't earned it. Granted, this could all be in my head and I could be a genius, but somehow I doubt that... Although this video by College Humor makes me feel a little better.

For my senior year of high school I went to the ISM. During my time there I went out, I drank, and I watched friends tempt the drug testing policy (I was WAY too paranoid to partake). It felt like half of the school were models and the rest a mixture of sports players, f@ck ups, and the odd theater kid. I was dealing with the bitterness of having to move to a new country my senior year (which I am now VERY grateful for) and so I threw myself into having fun. And looking back, that's pretty much all I remember about my year at ISM. Lounging in the guidance counselors' area and parties (and ICARE, our community service trip). Actual classes, not so much. Life is never wasted and I definitely had some pretty amazing experiences but Natashya's and now Romnick's lives highlight how spoiled I really am.

I exerted myself for my friends, I definitely did for sports because my coaches were tough as nails, and I exerted myself when going out. I cruised with pretty much everything else. And looking back, I am definitely a little ashamed of myself and humbled by those who have worked so hard to get to where they are now.

This young boy, Romnick, no longer has to walk two hours to get to school. He doesn't have to cross a river to get to school. The excitement that he must feel that these two obstacles are no longer in the way is something that I cannot relate to on any level. Thank you to my parents for that and thank you to luck/fate/universe/what-have-you that I was born into my family. This kid wasn't born into an affluent family but he has made the most of what he was given and for that I admire him so much. I also admire the dedication of the Green Earth Heritage Foundation for helping Romnick through the application and selection process.

Not to put too much pressure on this kid but I really do wish him all the best and I hope that getting this scholarship will be a game changer for him, the way it was for Natashya. Thank you both for pushing me to reflect on myself and to put my life into perspective. Again thank you to my parents for everything and for especially not getting upset at the revelations in this post!

Adorable Red Tibetan Mastiff Puppies

The title says it all! As a treat, here are some photos of adorable red Tibetan mastiff puppies. While living in Lhasa during the fall of 2011 for three and a half months, I used to pass by a vet's office every day whenever I left the hotel. Inside there was a giant bear of a Tibetan mastiff (she's the one that I am playing with in the photos) and I always wondered why she/he was there. I assumed that the owner had gone somewhere and was boarding the dog until I saw a spillage of fluffy puppies! I have no idea how she fit so many giant babies in her body...

Giant Tibetan mastiff puppies!

Very sedate red Mastiff

So fluffy!

Their mother had that drugged look as well!

So many adorable mastiffs.

These puppies were surprising calm unlike pug puppies which are insane.

How did they all fit?!

They were so soft

The very cute face of a disgruntled red mastiff puppy

Fiiiiinally curious

These would be great for kids. Completely unfazed.

So adorable!

It's crazy to think how massive these dogs will get.

Sibling solidarity

These were honestly the calmest puppies I have ever seen. Nothing really seemed to rouse them out of a slow stupor. I don't know if this is a breed thing, a genes thing, or just the time of day, but they were basically stuffed animals that occasionally sauntered. Love me some mastiff puppies!