sayang ang miles

A couple of days ago, I was suddenly hit by a burning wanderlust upon learning that I’ve got close to 12,000 miles expiring soon on my frequent flyer program. I searched the airline website and day-dreamt about the possible destinations that I can go to, eliminating Korea and Japan for their impossibly high living costs. And I was left with three choices.

Bangkok, for one thing, sounds like fun. It seems like a great destination for generally everything. The food, the culture, plus a little bit of shopping on the side. The only thing that hinders my decision to go to Bangkok, is the fact that I’ve already been there.

For the longest time, I’ve obsessed about taking a trip to Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh would seem like the perfect destination to get away to. I’m interested in seeing the picturesque French and Soviet architecture that fills their cityscapes. Although I’ve also heard that Hanoi is culturally more vibrant in this respect, and unfortunately, this particular airline doesn’t have the means to get me to Hanoi as of the moment.

Chengdu, located in the heart of China, is the panda capital of the world. While I don’t have any special fondness for these creatures, Chengdu does have one thing that I’m after, and that is their awesome Sichuan cuisine. Plus, I think I’m fairly versed in Mandarin already so communication shouldn’t pose any huge problems. Though I’m also thinking that I should put off this trip ’til the time that I’m actually prepared to go to Tibet (Chengdu, being the gateway to Tibet).

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Last night, I tried to watch Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, with ‘tried’ being the operative word. It was a pirated DVD that my dad bought while we were in HK the other week, and he said that the picture and sound quality of the disc were more than impressive.

So I felt like in the mood for something artsy before going to bed, and decided to view the film. True enough, sound and picture quality were of high standard. But, bad trip of all bad trips, the film was without english subtitles.

Still, I tried to understand the on-going dialogue; the chinese subtitles were helpful, but not by much. All efforts were futile though as keeping up with the fast conversation was headache inducing, and I found myself fast asleep 15 minutes after. Oh well, maybe next time, when I’ve achieved real fluency, whenever that may be.