Darren YeohFor best effect, do read this while having soft, nostalgic instrumental music in the background. I recommend Yiruma but that’s just me. Go on, go to Youtube and select something. I can wait. Done? Okay, let’s roll.
As a traveller who loves travelling solo, I often look forward immersing myself in the culture and lifestyle of the places I visit and to collecting new experiences to speak about with friends and family back home. After all, there’s nothing quite as exhilarating and scary as being in a completely foreign place where nobody knows you, far from home, with nothing but your wit and maybe a map or two to go by.
But ever since falling in love with life on the road, I’ve always wanted to revisit the places that I had visited in the past when I was much younger, places which, by the stamps on my passport, I have set foot in, but equally places of which I have no memory of. Some of my friends were of the opinion that I could find better uses for the money that I would have to spend to do that, but I was determined and I started, about half a year ago, to go back to places like Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong and most recently, Taiwan. Here are three things I learned about why it’s always worth revisiting places you’ve been to before.
Reliving Precious Memories
What connects all those places that I’ve just mentioned? They were all countries I visited on my first ever trip overseas. I was 12, and I was whiny and I really would have preferred staying at home with my Playstation 2 than go travelling. In fact, I hated the idea of travelling. It was a hassle, meaningless. It simply didn’t appeal to me then. (How times have changed, I know)
And truth be told, I have nothing but selective memory snippets of my trip from way back then. I remember a gold jewelry factory in Hong Kong, and, oddly enough, an uncooperative peacock in Taiwan which refused to spread its tail feathers for us. Nothing else. Taiwan had little meaning to me…until a few weeks ago when I was visiting the Lotus Pond in Kaohsiung.
You see, I had little idea what I was going to see there. I knew there would be a pond (duh!) and some pagodas, but what I saw took my breath away. Not because of its physical beauty (do visit it at night, it’s majestic) but because I realised with a jolt when I saw the pagodas that I had been there before. I was with my parents and my dad’s friends and my mother had just cracked a #mumjoke about the pagoda’s entrance.
We didn’t take many pictures back then so I had completely forgotten all about that moment. Now, 11 years later, there I was at that very same spot, alone, a feeling of nostalgia and familiarity in a completely foreign land. Just standing there looking up at the pagodas was itself a highlight for me as my mother was no longer with us.
I learned that when we’re travelling, we sometimes encounter situations at certain places unexpectedly, and unknowingly, we create and leave a part of our memories there. Revisiting those places help us to remember those moments, however special or mundane they may be, and that alone, can be a comforting throwback to a time long since forgotten.
The only constant is change, but not all changes are constant
Excuse the soapy subheading. As a Penangite, I’ve seen my the place I call home transform from a little port island into one of the most talked about travel destinations in the world. But just as Penang as changed over the years, so have the places that I’ve visited in the past (and the places you’ve visited in the past have probably changed too).
Now this change is not limited to just physical changes even though they are often the most noticeable. Apart from new attractions and commodities, change occurs constantly among the people and their lifestyles. For example, in my most recent trip to Hong Kong in November last year, I stumbled upon the Sino Centre, a little mall which specialises in three things: videogames, anime and K-pop. Back then, K-pop wasn’t even a thing in Hong Kong but it has blown up, as it did in many parts of Asia, to the point where the annual Korean Music Awards (MAMA) was held in Hong Kong (begrudgingly a few days after I left).
One very vivid memory I do have of my first ever trip to Taiwan were the roadside Pinang (areca nut) girls. What these girls would do is they would flag down tour buses and proceed to climb aboard for a short while trying to sell the nuts to tourists. Why do I have such a vivid memory of this? Because back then, the girls would be wearing nothing but skimpy bikinis. What? I was a hormonal 12 year old boy hitting puberty, of course I remembered that!
Fast forward 10 years and you can hardly find these girls anywhere anymore. Pinang is still on sale widely in Taiwan, but the merchants now conduct their businesses with more…ahem…modesty. This was due to a campaign to clean up Taiwan’s image and to promote itself as a family-friendly place to visit.
What I learned is that people and places change, their views change and trends change along with it. You will find that the geographical coordinates of a place you visited in the past is likely the only thing that hasn’t changed over the years. The place may go by the same name, but the experiences will always be different.
Because you have also changed
And speaking of change, perhaps the one thing that has changed the most between your last trip to a place and your current or next, is yourself.
In my case, like I said, I used to hate travelling and I found it a waste of time. Now, I find it liberating and rewarding, and as such, I can gain, and learn, and feel and love a lot more about a place now than I ever could years ago. And this isn’t just a case of a child transitioning into a teen and then adulthood, I believe it is the case for any person of any age group.
They say that when you travel to a new place, it broadens your horizons and you can find peace with yourself, that you can know yourself by partaking in new adventures. And while that is true, I feel that when you visit a place that you’ve visited years before, you stand to learn even more, about yourself, the place you’re visiting and how it all relates to your travelling experience.
It’s like turning on a videogame a long time after you last played it, and realising that you’ve gotten better at it, or you notice something you didn’t notice before, or you find a new way to complete an objective that you didn’t even think about before.
As we go through life, our concept of the world and society around us changes, shaped and formed by the perception of our current selves. And just with that, our willingness to experience new things change accordingly. Maybe you never thought that you would want to go bungee jumping, but now you do. Maybe you never thought you’d want to spend a day with the locals doing nothing, but now you do. Heck, it can even be as simple as having different preferences towards food!
What I learned is that sometimes the best way to notice how much we’ve grown and changed is by going back and revisiting places (and things!) from our past. And this is best achieved by travelling because it’s only then when you have the time to think about and reflect on such things. It is also then when you have time to come up with an article like this. Hah!
So that’s why I think, if one can afford it, it’s always worth revisiting a place after a few years have gone by. I don’t always write articles like these, but when I do…I…can’t come up with a witty way to end them. Perhaps I should try writing this again in the future, after a couple of years. For now, it’s onwards towards the next travel adventure! Wherever that may be!
