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Introduction


Welcome to Tourist Chee -- a website which serves as an archive of my travel highlights. As I'm too lazy to scrapbook or write a travel log, writing down short snippets of memories and storing them online is more feasible. The name was inspired by a friend, who remarked that I was a perpetual "tourist", having been many places. Yet when I come home to Singapore, I also felt like a tourist while fumbling around new shopping malls and new train lines. In addition, since no one could pronounce my name (Qi) in many of the countries I've visited, I have often introduced myself as "Chee" in order to ease communications with others.

 

As Singapore is such a small country, traveling is easy since driving about an hour north would put us in Malaysia, and a boat an hour south would put us in Indonesia. I took my first flight when I was 6 to Australia, and since then we had a grand family trip yearly. When I was 11, my dad was offered a short term training course in Texas, and we all moved there for 2.5 years. During that time in USA, we traveled a lot within the country. Every summer, we would embark on a grand family roadtrip which involved driving from Texas to somewhere really far away, like Montana or to Washington. I learned to be a nomad then; always helping my parents look out for motels along the road and sleeping in a different bed every night.

 

I did not travel much upon returning to Singapore, except for the occasional trips to neighboring countries. However, I was offered a scholarship to study in Berkeley, California and departed for the USA once again in 2008. I saved my stipend money and started traveling whenever I could during the break, until my passport started being full again. Planning my own travels was both tiring but yet satisfying as I had the freedom to choose what I wanted to do in each place I visited.

 

 

 

Even though I have started work, Tourist Chee still lives on since Singapore itself is perpetually under construction, rendering locals to feel like tourists. I also get 18 days of leave a year, and although it is not long enough to travel to far-flung places, it is enough for me to visit nearby South East Asian countries which have recently become more accessible. Here's to more travels ahead.

 

Note: Not every city/region I have visited is listed on this website. I barely remember all the places I have visited when I was little, and in the USA we road-tripped so much that my memory is just a jumble.