Fancy seeing you here…

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

A friend of mine spent his Christmas and New Year holiday in Seminyak, Bali. He said it felt like he was in Holland Village, Singapore.

The same type cafes. The same type restaurants. The same type shops. And oh yes, the same type types he would meet at Holland Village, Singapore.

Another friend decided to take his four-wheel drive to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai and go off-road to a place he thought he could escape from the madding crowd. The place was full of other Bangkokians with the same idea, with the same four-wheel drives.

Yet another friend who’s bought a villa in Phuket said he ended up playing golf with the same people he thought he would get away from – turned out all of them had bought villas in the same place.

Down under, in New Zealand, I was told by a friend that his sister fled to an island off Auckland to her beach house, only to find herself surrounded by friends from the same neighbourhood who too had all bought beach houses on the island, thinking they’d escape one another.

A 40-something friend then told me he was thinking of buying a house in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, so he could escape those who had bought villas in Phuket, Samui and Bali. “That’s so yesterday,” he said. “Been there, done that.”

Seems The Land Below The Wind has remained relatively under the radar screen for the crowd that’s beginning to think of where-are-we-going-to-live-when-we-retire …

I suspect it won’t be for long because I have heard that they too are building luxury villas and private residences in Sabah for those who are looking for their second or third homes in the sun.

Low cost airlines, the explosion in travel television programmes that has made every destination accessible and familiar to the masses, the democratization of travel …

Yes, in today’s flattened world, it seems it’s getting harder and harder to escape the madding crowd.

So what do some of us do? We escape into our computers. Facebook. MySpace. YouTube. Let the world come to us. The world is our screen. We are the world. We are the champions. We will rock you.

Some urban kids are even getting blasé about travel. A friend of mine says that her 14-year-old nephew would rather stay at home and play with his friends than travel.

He went with his family to Japan, over the new year. Seeing the sights in Hokkaido, skiing on snowy slopes. And when he returned, he said, “I’d rather stay at home.” He said the same of another trip to Hong Kong his parents took him on.

In 2007, this kid travelled to the US and Australia as well.
Jaded, before his time. Bored, from too much travel.

Adults looking for future homes to escape to and kids who just want to stay at home – the extremities of the travel.

Catch more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Cafe