By LU MEI WEI EMMY
Louis Wong reminisces about his travel adventures through passport stamps and souvenirs, including a medal from his first overseas marathon in Cambodia. PHOTO: LU MEI WEI EMMY
“Che Cazzo (Italian swear word to show frustration)!” A fair-skinned Singaporean man fluently spews out a string of curse words in an Italian downtown bar. Bursts of laughter echo throughout the space as he attempts to master a variety of Italian profanities. At this moment, it is apparent that the bar-goers are both intrigued and charmed by the antics of Louis Wong, a young solo traveller in a foreign land.
At 27 years old, the Sociology graduate from National University of Singapore has already set foot in a whopping 56 countries, including those in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
However, with the Covid-19 pandemic, Wong’s quest to roam the world has unfortunately been cut short. Now that travel restrictions are slowly easing, the current account manager at Ninja Van is slowly getting in touch with his wanderlust again.
“I’d like to explore the southern parts of Africa, like Zimbabwe and Botswana. South America too. North Korea is also one of my top choices,” Wong says.
On how he initially coped with the travel curbs, he says, “Very sad, because I already marked out the countries that I want to go to.”
“But I also feel happy that I travelled while I could. So while others regret not travelling, I have a lot of things to reminisce about,” Wong says, a tone of nostalgia surfacing.
As he walks down the memory lane, Wong reveals how he first developed the desire to travel alone. Since he was a child, he had frequently travelled with his family because his relatives are residing overseas.
“I have been to the States quite a few times with my family. Usually, they will stay home, and it was so boring and excruciating,” he says with an exasperated look of a teenage boy.
Fortunately, Wong was soon old enough to start travelling with his friends. Yet, he still did not enjoy the trips as thoroughly as he had hoped.
“They were a little slow for me. I realise I didn’t enjoy the things that they were doing, like shopping,” Wong says.
Let's just say you can liken Wong to a wild lion kept within a zoo, perfectly safe but hungry for more of life's adventures.
Fast forward to 2015, when Wong unwittingly started his journey of solo travelling after signing up for a marathon in Cambodia. As an avid marathon runner back then, he wanted to try one overseas.
“It was the trip where I realised I love travelling solo,” Wong says.
After completing the marathon with time to spare, Wong toured the provinces and explored places like the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, an iconic site that the history-lover has always wanted to visit.
When Wong was in Siem Reap, he encountered a group of villagers whose friendliness initially put him at ease. But to his horror, the enthusiastic hosts graciously offered him some food with crickets on them.
“They asked me whether I wanted to try, but of course for safety reasons I didn’t,” he says with a chuckle.
In the face of incomprehensible languages and unusual meals, Wong developed a special connection with solo travel.
“I learnt that this is what travelling alone gets you. You don’t have to curate your time for others, you can do so many more things.”
After his first solo travel experience, Wong was hooked. During his university exchange trip to Lithuania in 2018, he continued fuelling his new-found passion and ticked 31 countries off his travel checklist, including Portugal, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Estonia.
A daredevil at heart, Wong is particularly keen to explore countries that others deem as “dangerous”.
“The more remote the place is, the more I want to try to go. Some would tell me that this country is very dangerous. I googled it and see, it’s actually not so dangerous, I'll try to go there.”
That might explain why Wong also decided to go data-free while travelling across Europe then, relying solely on free wifi and the help of kind strangers. It turns out that this bold move was a spontaneous decision.
“Actually, I wanted to get data when I was in England, but I feel like the cost will be too much. It started from a very monetary perspective,” Wong reveals.
“If you think about it, travellers in the eighties didn’t have wifi. How do these people do it? I thought to myself, why not try to survive seven months without mobile data?”
And so he did. Seven months without the Internet at his disposal. Did he ever once regret it?
“No, not at all,” Wong says with an air of certainty.
“Even though I feel it was dangerous sometimes, I still don’t have the urge to buy data. When I travel, I don't spend time on social media. Just me and the city, the people and nature.”
Disconnected from the virtual world, Wong was able to fully embrace the adventures that came along the way, including a near-death experience in Bosnia where he almost dropped off a hill while reversing his car.
With a jam-packed itinerary, Wong only had three to four hours of sleep in the car the night before.
“I was very tired, and I was making a three-point turn when I realised that my car wheel was stuck in the soil on the cliff. It wasn’t a very tall hill but there was a significant height,” Wong describes.
Without any help in sight or mobile data to contact anyone, he had no choice but to start walking as far as he could to seek help. Thankfully, Lady Luck was on his side. 20 minutes later, he chanced upon a village and met a man who could speak very simple English.
The nerve-racking ordeal eventually came to an end when the man understood Wong’s situation and brought a forklift to lift Wong’s car out of the soil.
That was not the only time Wong was met with a life-threatening experience. During his solo trip to Australia in 2017, he almost got into a fatal car crash due to careless driving.
Planning to overtake three cars ahead of him, Wong was speeding on a two-way expressway and failed to spot an oncoming car from the opposite direction. Fortunately, he managed to swerve away from that car and onto a sandy path, jamming his brakes right before he was about to hit a light pole.
“I really could have died. I drove safely for the whole trip afterwards,” Wong says, a sudden tone of seriousness in his voice.
However, not once have these close shaves curbed Wong’s wanderlust.
“To me, those situations serve as reminders that I should take care of myself better. Plus, all those situations were brought upon by myself. I was fortunate that I didn’t have anyone pointing a gun or knife at me,” Wong says.
While not taking risks in a foreign land, Wong has a unique way of turning strangers into friends - making crude jokes.
“As an Asian, it’s not so easy to get to know the Western people. The whole notion of an Asian in a Western country is that you are a nerd who’s good in Math and Science, and you are not so sociable,” Wong says.
However, Wong realised that his sense of humour and free-spirited nature allowed him to deal with such racial stereotypes.
“I was very keen on learning how to say all the dirty curse words in Italian and Portuguese, and that’s how they realised that, ha, this Asian is very open-minded,” he says with a chuckle.
With Wong’s easy-going and humourous personality, it is no wonder he won over the hearts of his Italian acquaintances, who have since become his good friends.
Through the friends and memories he has made on his trips, Wong learns the importance of treasuring time and living without regrets.
“I realise that for all these people I met, I don’t know when I can meet them again. So that makes me discover that what you do with your time is very important,” Wong says.
“Will I die or will I die regretting? I always ask myself this question. I’d rather not die regretting.”
Even though one hears these cliché-sounding phrases all the time, there is an unfeigned sincerity in Wong’s words.
After all, these are the sentiments of a young man who has ditched his comfort zone, openly embraced the most challenging moments of his life and made it back to tell his story.
“Sometimes you almost die, but doing all these things makes you feel most alive.”
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