By a long shot, the country I know most about is my own, Malaysia. Everything of what I read, heard, observed, all that I felt, smelled, breathed, and touched for a great part of my life, resides in the vast archives in my mind.
But up until recently, I found it hard to write about it, in a way that shows another person how to feel what it’s like, to travel Malaysia. And that’s because communication is not about parroting out my worldview. It is about capturing yours, and reeling it in. So that I can match your eyes to where mine is.
So it wasn’t until I had begun to travel differently, and returned to travel Malaysia again, that all that I know from my very skin, could colour my travel stories here. Because now I have in my storytelling toolkit, many more worldviews. And I can better anchor the tale on a point where, hopefully, many can see what I see.
I daresay you could probably feel the difference between my stories told from a time before this, and after. I’ve left them all intact. I have no intention of revising them, so that this point can be seen and reflected upon.
These are the stories from the eyes of a native Malaysian wandering her own country – on and off the beaten path – and trying to do it sustainably. An urbanite disinterested in the city – a cosmopolitan in the wild.
