Sunday, April 3, 2016

Birds of a Feather

The headache of finding travel buddies is exemplified by the title of an article published in the Lonely Planet: How to travel with friends (and not want to kill them).

When it comes to travel companions, the surest thing you can say is that they're as difficult to find as kidney donors. Well, you will need good matching to avoid rejection.

In case you're wondering whether full-match travel buddy exists on this planet, the answer is that we just connected one during our Sydney visit. Going on holiday on our own - three of us in a nuclear family - worked well during our first half of the trip, but there's no denying that we love the second part more. It's all about meeting Jasmine's old best friend and her sister. They knew each other in primary school, and then her friend's family moved to Malaysia. In an attempt to meet again, we planned the Sydney trip.

Everything went well. The kids met, chatted about this and that, playing till the cows come home - oh, and did I mention their parents were as tired as dead cows by then? When I say "play," I mean playing wildly. And when I say "playing wildly," I don't mean any wild idea - I mean those wildly crazy ideas like forward roll gymnastics exercise, anywhere and anytime, on the road.

The children preferred to shoehorn three of them into the back seat of our car. They snuggled up at night even it's not the comfiest way to sleep in the same bed. It looked as if they had to grab every minute before it's time to bid farewell. During the week together, there wasn't a single day when I didn't hear their clapping game "A Sailor Went to Sea." Ditto for their heartwarming laughter. And their parents' laughter, too.

The holy grail for travel buddies, I think, is being able to find kids with similar temperaments - and similar parents.

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