UEFA 39b - Free n Easy

For my new relatives, friends and visitors, UEFA means Unexpected European Far-Flung Adventure. This one was in March 1996. At this moment still no photos. Perhaps next posting, when we enter Amsterdam.


I wanted to put some photos related to this travelog, but, kwank, kwank, kwang...they were not scanned yet.


In the last travelog, in UEFA 39a, I was writing that from the Heathrow Airport we took the tube to Gloucester to meet my niece, Rin, who was studying there is London. She stayed in Gloucester. It was a very short meeting, as we were in a hurry to catch the Euroline bus to Amsterdam.


Although it was a short meeting but I was happy that we could made contact although, she was from Malaysia, and we were from Singapore, but we met in Gloucester, England. Ain’t that some kind of an achievement.


Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps my daughters who followed us in that trip were a little upset, as we had to made so much trouble, just to meet their cousin whom they were not close with.


Unexpectedly, I am the type who is willing to endure the impossibilities and the undesirables, just for the sake of traveling and meeting family. It has been my personality, to visit families’ members, even if they be as far and difficult a place as Timbuktu. As you have seen in my previous trips, I always had someone to visit.


I had been visiting my first sister, Kak Ani, as far back as since 1967, when she was married and moved out to her own house. I would stay a night with her, doing nothing more important and without any other intentions than just a casual visit. When I was about 18, I took her first child, Eddy, out for a short trip from her house in KD Malaya, which was along Admiralty Road West to Johor Bahru. Rin is her fourth child.


When Kak Ani moved to Kuala Lumpur in 1971, My brother and I visited her family at Jalan Pahang in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and stayed there for 2 nights.


In 1984 when I had a work assignment in KL, I dropped by at her house in Damansara and stayed with her for 2 nights, instead of staying in the hotel. My Malaysian colleague would come to pick me up in the morning from her house, to our Diethelm Instrumentation’s office, in Ampang, which was far from Damansara.


Whenever, I drove up for holiday tours in Malaysia, I would drop for a night at her house. Next day we proceed again to Penang, Terengganu, Kelantan and other destinations within Malaysia.


During her son’s engagement, sometime in 1996, we took that opportunity to travel up with her family to the bride’s house in Penang. After the engagement’s ceremony we proceeded to Perlis, up to the border of Thailand at Padang Besar. Then we went into Gua Kelam, Perlis’s famous luminous cave. We also went to the Kuala Perlis, where there were ferry services to Langkawi.


As for this Gloucester detour, it was just one of my passion to travel free-n-easy, on my own without travel guide. I like to stop anywhere I like, then proceed again to next destinations like a wanderer. Well that’s me.


Gloucester was a busy town. The wind was cold, as it was only about 9 am. After handing her some homemade delicacies from Singapore, we bid farewell to my niece, Rin and her room mate, and proceeded with the tube to Victoria.