I visited Vancouver in January of 2024 and met up with my old secondary school principal from when I was in Hong Kong. We went on a school trip to Yangshuo and Nanchang, China in 2008 and 2009 respectively. He left for another head of school job in Vancouver and has recently taken a break from full-time work in education. So we met up to catch up for the first time in over a decade.
We have stayed connected on Facebook and LinkedIn since I started my bachelor’s degree in 2014. He told me how he admired my spirit to travel and that traveling itself must have been a full time job in itself. “You’ve done more in a year than most people do in a lifetime, I sometimes wonder how you find time to go to work,” he said.
It’s true, in just the 2023 calendar year alone, I had visited five countries, 19 US states, and three Canadian provinces. I told him that I found travel to be invigorating for the mind, dispel misconceptions of people I’m not familiar with, and open my mind to possibilities outside of my imagination. I have experienced and seen so much more than I could have by watching videos online at home or reading from a library. And all those travels for only $15,000.
The year began counting down from 2022 to 2023 at the ball drop in New York City, where I observed the event from a private terrace. Then, I went home to continue my work and made 28 trips to Toronto for work throughout the year. I visited Philadelphia in February to eat a cheese steak sandwich where Rocky ate, admire a fine collection of European art, and roam the prison that once incarcerated Al Capone.
In March, I took a 12-hour train ride in business class from Toronto to New York to watch Billy Joel live and stay a night at the hotel where Nikola Tesla invented AC electricity and Muhammad Ali stayed after major fights. In April, I tasted wine in Prince Edward County and Kingston and continued on my alcohol fest in Regina and Moose Jaw where I learned about Canada’s contribution to bootlegged booze during American prohibition.
Come spring, I went to sunny San Francisco to see 21 things in 71 hours, including Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month festivities. I learned how to drive a Nascar on the Charlotte Speedway in North Carolina for my birthday and went to Hershey’s chocolate factory in Pennsylvania shortly after. Also in Pennsylvania, I spent time with an Amish family. I stayed active cycling twice along the Lachine Canal in Montreal before heading to Dallas to learn how to restore oil paintings in a museum and learning about the Trail of Tears in Oklahoma.
Autumn was nice and hot in New Orleans with lots of French and Spanish colonial history. It was also very humid at Angola State Penitentiary, the country’s largest maximum security prison where at least 3,000 inmates are in there for life. Then I hopped across the pond to see two old friends in Scotland and toured the Scottish lowlands for whiskey and Northern England to trace Hadrian’s Wall from coast to coast.
My round-the-world trip continued to Hong Kong in October to see friends and family for two weeks. I returned to North America later that month and drove to Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine to eat seafood before heading down to the five deep southern states to learn about black history. I even got to walk into the vault of the Arkansas state treasury and held $600,000 in my hands.
