If I were a Time Traveller...

Over the years, I realised that there are simply too many moments that I wish to relive - the joyful moment like wedding, special celebrations and giving birth to a baby as well as the life-determining junctures like education and career path.

By that, I don't meant to undo or change any major milestones or circumstances of my life. No, I don't have a perfect life. However, I firmly believe that all everything, whether is it good or not so good or bad, is within God's plan and control. As one thing leads to another, I won't want to be caught in a butterfly effect where I ended up not having Thomas or Emma in my life (they are the best gifts to me!). 

In fact, if I could time travel and relive any moment, I just hope to walk through the same priceless moment once again but probably with better attitudes and emotions, to go to some ancient bible time to experience and understand what actually happened (reading the bible sometimes just gives me many questions marks) or to peek on how my parents took care of us during the tough days. 

It's so hard to pin down a moment for this "If I were a Time Traveller..." blog train hosted by Madeline Heng from MadPsychMum. So, I just taking this chance to time travel back to our once-a-life-time crazy countries hopping mini expedition since I'm missing the carefree life that Hubby and I once had from time to time. 

It was Hubby's big 30 and a special date, the only date with 1 digit, that we could have in our lifetime so he wanted something exceptional. Back then, we had crazier ideas like getting another marriage certificate in Vegas (too much movies!), trying bungee jumps and giving birth to a baby on 11.11.11. 

But putting the wild dreams aside, we came out with a "Where in the Hell is Matt" inspired countries hopping trip. With a goal to collect as many passport date stamps, we spent $1.2k to travel to 4 other countries in 24 hours and successfully collected 8 passport date stamps on 11.11.11. We could make it 5 if it doesn't cost more than double the price of the total for 4 countries.

Weeks before we hopped around, we designed and printed a simple couple T-shirt to celebrate the special day and encourage people to do something special on 11.11.11 when they see us.

Singapore

We departed from Singapore on 10 Nov (Thursday), 21:00 and arrives at Kuala Lumpur at 23:35pm.

 

1. Kuala Lumpur 

We were 25 mins away from 11 Nov (Friday), so we took our time to get to the check out point. Once the clock stroke 00:00, we went ahead to get our 1st stamp! Yay!

There were some strangers wishing him "Happy Birthday" and answering to our question: "What are you doing on 11.11.11?". Trust me, we were rather shy. haha.



We didn't get out of the airport and spent the next 6+ hours at KL LCCT taking photos, eating (Marry Brown and Old Town), roaming around the airport and hiding in corner to sleep.

Since I didn't get to hold a party for him, I gathered his family and friends, through facebook, to send their wishes and printed them in the birthday card. :)

It's finally 7:05 and we had our 2nd flight!

Alright, you see how cheeky the 30 year old man was. He saw this funny scene and asked me to posed for the camera. I guessed that guy feeling uncomfortable on the budget airline or probably enduring some long hual journey.

2. Phnom Penh 

It's 7:50 (1.5 hours time difference) and we had about 5 hours before our 3rd flight.

We met a Malaysian guy who was on his way to Phnom Penh to explore business opportunities on the plane and he suggested a day tour for us. Thus, we boarded a tuk tuk and asked the driver to bring us around. Come to think about it, we were quite adventurous to head out without any research. It was a nice ride but we had sand "face mask". haha

It was a educational trip to Genocide location, Royal Palace and Mekong River.

We then had a nice lunch before heading to Ho Chi Minh.

3. Ho Chi Minh City

We departed Phnom Penh at 14:00 and arrived Ho Chi Minh City at 14:45. It was a slight disappointment as it was raining heavily at the airport and the airport was not so exciting. In fact, we were actually pretty exhausted by then.

If we could time travel back, we should cheer up a little, brave the rain and head over to the nearby mall for some drinks and snacks instead of glooming at the airport for 5 hours. The cafes at the airport were rather pathetic.

On a positive note, the rain stopped a while for us to have our airport shots.

4. Bangkok

We can't wait to leave for Bangkok! It was 18:00 and hopped on our 4th flight. Here's another airplane photo with our blood shot eyes.

Upon arrival, we met a German couple who had spent 3 weeks at Vietnam and chatted with them. They proposed to have a picture taken as I believe they thought we were "crazy" little couple like them. We then linked up on Facebook. It's fun to make friends like this!

It was the shortest stopover as we only had 2 hours from 17:15 to 21:15 to check in/out and take photos. We even ran for our last flight and almost missed the plane.

Our eyes were closing by the time we arrived Singapore at 00:40 on 12.11.11 but thankfully we made it back home safely!

My Dream

This is certainly not how we looked like at the end of the mini expedition. We were beated and dirty but we had a great fun. Staying awake for at least 40 hours with pockets of naps in between was no joke. We had both past the school days when staying up was not an issue at all. 

This ride down the memory lane brings back many memories which I'm thankful of. As much as I missed our carefree pre-baby days, I wouldn't trade anything for Emma. She completes our life and brings so much joy to us. She gives new meaning and strength to the challenging parenthood. She shows us what love is and how great and amazing God is. She is our dream came true!

There is no stopping to our adventures and we are still exploring the world (both local and oversea) with Emma around. At this current moment, the paranoid me can't travel without her as I have fear of tragic accidents abroad or onboard plane and we might not meet again. Thus, we traveled as a family and "conquered" Gold Coast and Bali. Our next stop is Bintan to celebrate her 2nd year birthday! 

While we learn to be good parents, I pray that we'd continue to be the best lovers and always remember how we have enjoyed our couple time together. Sometime in 20-25 years down the road, Emma might not want to tag along and we should "time travel back" and restart on our honeymoon-ing - probably to travel around the world in 24 days instead, haha!

And so, what would you do if you were a time traveller? :D
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Next up is Angie from Growing Hearts 123. Angie is an educator at heart and by profession. She blogs mainly on how she engages her 3 kids with hands on activities especially the Visual Arts. Join her in a Back to her Future wish. One of them - to learn Chinese spellings diligently instead of hiding dozens of eggs exercise book behind a fridge!

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