Stepping into the Frame

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Tokushima, Shikoku, Japan
Spring · Apr 2018

For years, I was the one behind the camera. And I was a prolific photographer, with folders filled with landscapes, meals, little corners of cities and moments that caught my eye. Yet when I was putting together a collage for our 20th wedding anniversary, I realised something strange: I could hardly find any photographs of the two of us together.

One of the frames we finally remembered to step into.

I had documented so many journeys, but somehow forgotten to include the two people who were making them.

So these days, we make a conscious effort to be in the frame together. Not because every moment needs to be recorded, but because one day, we may want to remember not just where we went, but that we were there together.

What the Waves Remember

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Kōchi, Shikoku, Japan
Spring · Mar 2024

Standing before the raging waters of Kōchi, I lost myself for a moment in the fury of the waves. I stood there almost motionless, just watching them rise, break, and crash against the shore. For a while, I barely noticed anything else around me. My thoughts wandered—not really to the ocean itself, but to the people who had once set out into it. Fishermen who knew these waves not from a distance, but from within them.

The Pacific Ocean hurled itself relentlessly against the rocks. Strong winds tore at hats, scarves, and umbrellas. Parents instinctively held on to their young children as they stood watching. Cars pulled over along the coast, and strangers seemed to fall into the same quiet silence as I did, completely captivated by the raw force in front of us.

I shuddered, partly from the cold, but mostly from imagining what these waters must have been like centuries ago. Before modern engines and reinforced hulls. When fishing was not just a job, but a livelihood, and every time a boat left the shore, there was always the possibility of not coming back. How frightening it must have been.

Courage is not the absence,
But the conquest of fear.

For the first time, I understood courage a little differently.

It was not necessarily found in dramatic acts of heroism, but in ordinary people pushing their boats into a sea that frightened them because their families depended on it. Fear was never the opposite of courage. It was part of it.

Later, I learned more about the Nankai Trough, the offshore subduction zone capable of producing some of Japan’s most powerful earthquakes and tsunamis. Kōchi is among the prefectures most directly exposed to it. Knowing this added another layer to what I had already felt standing there. The people of Kōchi have lived for generations with the knowledge that the sea that sustains them can also threaten them.

Perhaps that is why what stayed with me was not really the violence of the waves, but the quiet resilience of the people who have learned to live alongside them. They do not conquer nature, but they do not surrender to it either. They simply carry on, with a deep respect for its power, accepting both what it gives and what it can take away.

The sea has given Kōchi an extraordinary abundance of seafood and shaped a culture deeply connected to it. But watching those waves, I began to think that every catch brought ashore carries with it generations of courage, perseverance and quiet resolve.

Long after the roar of the Pacific faded behind me, that memory was what stayed with me the longest.

Some Places Need No Introduction

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Venice, Italy
Winter · Feb 2025

Some places are instantly recognisable. And Venice doesn’t need an introduction.

Few cities carry an identity so effortlessly.

I’ve been here more than once, and perhaps that is why Venice feels less like a place I visit and more like a place I return to. There is something about its quiet beauty, its strange sense of time… the way it seems to exist entirely on its own terms.

One of my favourite cities, always.

When the Wind Became the Memory

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Copenhagen, Denmark
Winter · Feb 2026

We knew the Little Mermaid wasn’t far.

“Just a short walk from Nyhavn,” they said.

It was a mere 1.7km on paper, a perfectly manageable distance by any measure. But by the time we reached the Little Mermaid, I wasn’t thinking about Hans Christian Andersen anymore; I was wondering whether a nose could actually freeze off.

I knew Wellington, New Zealand, was famous for its winds. What I didn’t know was that Copenhagen could be just as relentless. And I certainly wasn’t expecting it to feel colder than Tromsø. It was, and my carefully packed winter wardrobe proved no match for the biting wind.

At some point, the hubs suggested we cut inland, or take an Uber. But I insisted we keep going. Apparently, I had become very committed to the Little Mermaid.

Suffice it to say, it was the longest and most painful 1.7km I’ve ever walked.

By the time we arrived, I simply couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm as everyone else gathered around the monument. I was cold, miserable, nursing a headache—and, as it turned out, my nose hadn’t frozen off. I just couldn’t feel it anymore.

The face of someone questioning every life choice that led to this 1.7km walk.

Maybe it was the biting wind talking, but I found the Little Mermaid surprisingly underwhelming. She was much smaller than I’d expected, and the skyline was more smokestacks than storybook. It wasn’t exactly the fairy-tale setting I’d imagined.

In retrospect, I probably should have listened to the man and saved myself the misery.

A Matter of Perspective

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Nakafurano, Hokkaido, Japan
Summer · Jul 2026

It wasn’t the lavender fields that lingered with me long after we left, but the sight of a family of three standing beneath a lone tree, dwarfed by the vastness around them.

There was no time to compose the shot. I caught it almost by instinct, just before the scene disappeared.

Only later, when I looked at the photograph, did I understand what had drawn my eye. The family wasn’t really the subject at all. It was the sheer scale of the place that stayed with me. Their smallness made the space feel even larger, but it also give the photograph a sense of life within all that grandeur.

Before We Become Insiders

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Somewhere along the way, I started attempting not to dish out unsolicited travel advice.

It wasn’t because I ran out of recommendations. If anything, we’ve accumulated more over the years: small family-run restaurants, quiet neighbourhood cafes, overlooked alleys… places we’d happily return to. It was because I realised something: every traveller has a first time.

If it’s your first visit to Japan, perhaps you’ve dreamt about eating at Ichiran long before you booked your flight. Maybe you’ve watched countless reels of diners seated in individual booths, waiting for that first steaming bowl of tonkotsu ramen. Then someone tells you to skip it.

“It’s overrated.”

“It isn’t worth the wait.”

“Go where the locals go.”

“There are so many better places.”

Perhaps they’re right.

We’ve had wonderful bowls of ramen in tiny neighbourhood shops with handwritten menus, no queues and not a word of English. Sometimes there’s only one item on the menu. And some of those meals remain among our favourites. Yet somehow, every time we’re back in Japan, we find ourselves back at Ichiran again. Not because we think it’s the best ramen in Japan or because it’s a hidden gem, but simply because we enjoy it. We like being able to customise our bowl, we know exactly what to expect, and after so many visits, it’s become one of those familiar stops we genuinely look forward to.

Over time, we also started measuring our travels by how obscure our discoveries were. We hoped to stumble upon the hidden café, the restaurant with no tourists, the alley no guidebook mentions. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some of our favourite travel memories have come from wandering into places we hadn’t planned to visit. But there’s something equally satisfying about finally experiencing a place you’ve imagined for years, whether that’s the crossing at Shibuya, the torii gates at Fushimi Inari, or a bowl of ramen at Ichiran.

I’ve come to believe that neither experience is more valid than the other. Travel isn’t a test to pass or a summit to conquer. It’s deeply personal. What becomes unforgettable for one person may be entirely ordinary to another.

So if it’s your first trip to Japan, order that ramen you’ve always wanted to try. If it’s your tenth, wander into the little ramen joint tucked away down an alley. If you eventually end up doing both, even better.

As for us, we’ll probably still queue for Ichiran every time we’re in Japan. Not because it’s the best, but because we like it.

Before we become insiders, we all deserve to be first-time travellers.

What Stays

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“The world doesn’t need another travel influencer.”

This was my reply to a close friend when we met over lunch one day and were discussing viable ways to generate a second income on YouTube.

The words came out before I’d really thought about them. Looking back, I realised they explained something I’d never been quite able to put into words. They also explained why I’d stopped writing for a while.

We never stopped travelling. If anything, we travelled more than before, and I came home with more stories than I knew what to do with. I stopped because I wasn’t interested in writing another travelogue, and I didn’t yet know how I wanted this site to evolve.

When I think about the journeys that have stayed with me, they’re rarely defined by the itineraries I painstakingly planned. Instead, I remember the moments that seemed insignificant at the time: waiting on a station platform before sunrise, wandering down a quiet street with nowhere to be, returning to a place years later and finding it both familiar and changed.

This is my way of celebrating those moments.

Some entries are travel journals. Some are photographs. Some begin with a passing thought that lingered long after I came home.

They’re still all about travel.

Just not always about where I went.

The Grasslands in The Park

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A visit to a park possibly furthest away from home in the entire of Singapore has been in the pipeline for the past month, but our plan had been thwarted several times due to inclement weather and last-minute recall to work. Finally on this day, we managed to make a short trip (albeit long drive, by local standards) to the new national gardens. At 90 hectares upon completion, Jurong Lake Gardens will be even larger than Singapore Botanic Gardens. Imagine that!

The mister proclaimed that it has been raining in the mid-mornings the past few days, so he planned that we wake up early and target to arrive at the gardens before 7am in order to avoid any weather. We drove almost 40 minutes before daybreak to reach Jurong expecting the park to be close to empty, only to be sorely wrong. It was eye-opening to learn that so many health enthusiasts like to exercise very early in the morning.

We headed to The Grasslands first, and came across several mounds. Got the girls to mount one, which they happily did and stayed for the vantage view that satiated their curiosity. Belle and Cassie were so busy looking at the joggers, strollers and cyclists they barely heard us when we called out to them.

‘Tis was a very strange morning – Cassie was much more receptive to being photographed than Belle, which… never happened in the past. Must be my lucky day that she was in an obliging mood.

Cassie was a full-fledged busybody on the walk. A golden retriever walked by with its owner and she was curiously following its path with her eyes. How adorable! I bet if we had let her off-leash, she would have run off to make friends with that golden retriever. Reminds me of how her trainer told us this girl would easily be the life of a party given how she wanted to be friends with everyone in her obedience class. And back then she was only a 4-month old puppy! 😛

That morning, the girls have experienced walking on all sorts of terrain: concrete, grass, gravel, mud and sand. Belle and Cassie are generally very fastidious about cleanliness and they are not so used to walking on gravel. Both girls challenged the terrain with much gutso, to my surprise.

My newest favourite picture of my three beloved.

We’ve only managed to explore The Grasslands in the short hour we had before it started pouring. It was enough to let us have a taste of what the completed gardens would be like simply by seeing how well designed Lakeside Garden is. The rest of the gardens including Chinese Garden, Japanese Garden and Garden Promenade are currently still under construction, estimated to be completed by end 2021, but I guess with the current COVID-19 situation, completion date would be postponed.

In spite of the long drive, we can’t wait to revisit and explore the other areas of the park!

Fort Canning Park, a Historical Icon

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A particular open-air spiral staircase location encased by lush green leafy top has been making its round as an Instagram hotspot. This photogenic site was never meant to be a point of attraction of the park, until local Instagrammers discovered it. Now, more than half of visitors to Fort Canning Park will probably invariably end up looking for the spiral staircase. Talk about the impact of influencers.

Resting in the tunnel waiting for our turn.

Fort Canning Park isn’t a park that we frequent, hence we had no idea where the spiral staircase is located despite researching online. Eventually we ended up walking the whole length of Fort Canning Park before realising that we had passed and completely missed it because Google Maps was slow in updating our position (and because I was navigating haha). We had to retrace our steps slowly in part to allow the app to update, and in part to allow the girls more time to take in the scents along the trail.

How to Get to Fort Canning Park Spiral Staircase if You Drive:

  1. The spiral staircase is denoted by Fort Canning Park Tree Tunnel in the Google Map attached above. If you drive, it is very near to the parking gantry (on your left).
  2. Fort Canning Car Park C in front of Hotel Fort Canning is the nearest car park to the spiral staircase. If you intention is also to explore the park, Car Parks A & B are good alternatives.

When we finally found the spiral staircase, there was a queue! On a Monday afternoon! As Instagram Influencers wannabe, I think we have completely failed. How on earth did they take such nice pictures? Then again, we have not really seen good pictures taken with large furkids.

We waited till everyone in the queue has cleared before we attempted to take some pictures. There was no way the mister could carry both the furkids at the same time and take care of their safety, so he carried them one by one while I stayed at the foot to take pictures. It was hilarious! 😆

We daren’t take too long as a queue was again forming behind me. As it turned out, this picture above ended up being our best attempt. Without showing any of the tree canopy. We laughed at what a failure we were. 😳

After a lacklustre attempt at becoming Instagram stars, we headed back to the car at a leisure pace. Which involved a long flight of steps in the sun…

And at sighting a bench, the girls immediately jumped up without much coaxing, just to rest a bit in the shade. We let them be, to let them cool down a bit. Heatstroke in dogs is a very real problem that is not taken too seriously here in Singapore, but recently a dog here passed away from heatstroke, simply by walking in a park. It really hit home, so we were careful not to let that happen.

After Belle and Cassie have rested sufficiently, we headed back to the car. And this was how Cassie’s 4th birthday excursion went.

On hindsight, we didn’t explore much of Fort Canning Park, including all the historic landmarks found in the park. It necessitated another visit, but the next round, we vow not to be obsessed over the spiral staircase.