Going places

I used to be a workaholic, and my wife will vouch vehemently that I am still one till these days.

I completed my undergraduate course and started my career in medical profession since1989. During those carefree bachelor years, I had only made two short-distance tours to Jakarta/Bandung and Bangkok/Patthya in 1990 and 1991 respectively. On both occasions, Keng Leong was my travel companion. In those early years of my careers, it is not uncommon for junior doctors to do average of 6-7 calls per month. I spend most of my "free time" catching up on my readings / preparing for examinations, and watching movies mostly.

I met my wife in 1992, and tied the knot the following year. We joined a package tour to Rocky Mountain/Vancouver for our honeymoon, followed by short trips to Shantou (1994) and Yangtze River /Chengdu (1995). We did not go for any long distance holiday travels till much later.

In July 1997, I took up a fellowship training course in Child Neurology at Birmingham, Alabama. Cheng Kai (my second child) was only 3 month-old then. I travel to Birmingham alone to a completely foreign place. I was fortunate to have a good boss, Dr Allan Percy, who waited for me till midnight in the airport (the flight was delayed for a few hours), and brought me to his home for the night. I was even blessed to have Susan Branscome, the department secretary, driving me around the following day looking out for used car / getting my driving licence for my stay in Birmingham. I managed to rent a place in Long Leave Lodge @ Hoover for the first year. My wife, my mother-in-law and two children (Cheng Yee and Cheng Kai) flew in 3 months later. We have another addition (Cheng Jie) to our family one year later. The following year in 1998, we moved to Vestawood Apartment which was nearer to the pre-school that Cheng Yee and Cheng Kai would be attending for the next 1 1/2 year.  My mother-in-law returned to Singapore just before Cheng Jie was born. You could imagine how busy my wife and I were during the confinement period all on our own.  Temper flew at times when both of us were exasperated; but fortunately all went well subsequently.

We made it a point to visit nearby cities and attractions during the one week Christmas/New Year holiday breaks. We covered several tourist spots in Gulf Coast of  Mexico and East Coast of US (travelling as far north to Washington DC). The kids were probably too young to remember their helicopter ride to view the  Tennessee National Park, the trip to the White House and Disney World @ Orlando, and that our car ran into a deer while travelling in Smoky Mountain. But surprisingly, Cheng Kai still remembered fondly the wooden axe that we bought as a souvenir from Grandfather Mountain.

The last 3 months of my training was spend in Boston Children's Hospital. I rented a UHAUL trailer, dumped all our luggage/spartan furniture into it, and towed it all the way from Birmingham to Boston (it took us three days to drive all the way there). And what a world apart - the apartment in Boston cost 2x that of Birmingham, and the place was rather cosmopolitan and the living pace too hectic for our liking. We managed to cover some of the tourist spots in Boston and Massachusetts, and made a trip to Niagara Falls / Toronto, and then visited New York before our return to Singapore in July 2000. We visited the Twin Towers in New York before its disastrous demolition in 911.

Both my wife and I were so busy with our works and children when we returned to Singapore, that we did not go for any long distance family holidays till a few years later.

We started to embark on our annual holiday sprees starting with Phuket (2004), then South Island of New Zealand (2006), South Korea (2008), Tasmania (2008), California(2009),  Greece(2010) and Melbourne (2011).

TASMANIA                                                   

Hobart, Tasmania

Visiting one of the caves near Hobart

Cheng Kai and Cheng Jie

Cheng Yee

An unexpected tour @ Tree top Adventure, Launcester

CALIFORNIA

Disney World, LA

Waiting for sunrise @ Grand Canyon

Hoover Dam

Grand Canyon

Las Vegas

Yosemite National Park

 GREECE

Acropolis @ Athens

Acropolis

Waiting for Sunset

Monemvasia

Monemvasia

Lighting the flames of Olympic

Meteora

Meteora

Meteora

Except for the trip to South Korea, the rest was free and easy / self driving tours. My wife and I prefer self driving tours as we are able to stop and go at our own pace, visiting places that we fascinate. Package tour can be quite rush at times, and everything has to go according to schedule - we are not allow to spend more than the allocated times at places of interests.

Looking back, it is certainly more fun and exciting traveling with family members. Family holidays are good time for bonding while exploring new places. Fortunately for the family, we are not particularly about food or lodgings. Our top priorities are to explore the local natures / scenery / attractions (The Glaciers in New Zealand, Mt Cradle in Tasmania, Night tours/Ghost Stories in Port Arthur, the ruins in Greece), try new adventurous spots (e.g Jetboat in New Zealand, Tree top gliding in Tasmania) as much as possible. We may at any restaurant along the road trips - as long as they served cook food. My children love Fish & Chips, Kebab, Slovekia, which can be whipped up quite fast and taken away to be eaten in the car (when we were rushing for time).
Even though we had planned our routes before hand, it was not uncommon for us to spend to much time at certain places. Hence, we usually did not book our hotels before hand. We would lodge in any reasonable hotels that we encountered at the end of the day. Sometimes, we ended up driving in circle for 1 hour or more looking for suitable hotel to stay for the night; and tempers might fly when it was late at night and everyone was tired and hungry! All would be forgotten when we woke up for new adventures the following day.