旅行的意义

The preparation to exchange has been an arduous one. I planned it quite a well back.. prior to entering university. Picking up basic Korean phrases from phrasebook, watching Let’s Speak Korean series, chionging k dramas and the love for the language and culture served as a reinforcing cycle to strengthen my desire to get my butt there.

Quite often people ask me why I wanted to go Korea? (probably thinking to themselves: just go for a tour there la. Go there exchange for fuck)
Here’s the few standard answers that I always generate.
To get my dose of plastic surgery and come back 200 pounds slimmer and hopefully handsomer.
To look for BoA, my abject object of fantasy since my hormonal raging teenage days.
To eat chachangmyeon everyday. Haha.

While there’s pretty much of stereotyping we do of the Koreans and I hope to find out more about this intriguing bunch of people and discover more about them and about myself. Travelling is a moment that comes when we are out of our element and allows us to see, or feel, or think, anew. The fact of the matter is that one of the main wellsprings of travel motivation is the ambition to achieve a certain kind of distinction. To go where few have gone, to see what few have seen, to have done what few have done. I would really love to explore a different side of Korea. I’ve already seen the ‘tourist’ side of korea. It would be meaningless and a waste of money if I live my next 4 months without doing anything that I can do in Singapore or that I have already done in Korea before.

Anyway here’s really what I hope to achieve there. To improve my Korean, to become more independent, to just let loose, and not be bound by curfews, academic stuff and indulge in some wild fun. The only word in my head now is hedonism. Haha. Hmm let’s see how it works out.