by Ning Cai
“Then I’ll learn it,” I said matter-of-factly, as I cleared our glasses.
“What if…” Pam got up and followed me. “We did just that?”
“What? Learn French?” I raised an eyebrow. Surely the BFF wasn’t thinking of…
“Yes, that… and travel around the world! Write a book! You going to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, me eating all the stuff you’d bake,” Pam grinned. “Checking off items on our bucket lists!”
“You’re nuts, Pam,” I snorted as I rinsed the glasses at the sink. “What about John and Jeremy?”
Pam pursed her lips and there was silence for a while. “You know my boys are my world… but that can be worked out with my family. I know they’ll understand.”
“You say it like you mean it,” I turned to face her after wiping my hands dry. “Is this about you turning 40?”
Pam grabbed me by the shoulders with a strength that surprised me, her eyes twinkling. “Let’s do it!”
My heart was pounding. In showbiz, taking a break is a formula for career suicide. Out of sight, out of mind. As it is, I’ve had to struggle so much to prove myself to be better than the boys. And all the crap I’ve had to fend off from jealous magicians upset that there was now a woman on their turf… take a break to travel the world? Pure madness.
“We love our careers, but surely, work can’t be all there is to life. We only live once,” Pam reasoned, her hands gesturing animatedly.
We plopped back down on my sofa and I sighed. As insane as it was, I’d always lived my life picking the risky, crazier option… but this time, crazy might just be an understatement.
“There’s so much of the world I want to see. Sunsets in Santorini, baobab trees in Madagascar, Montmartre in Paris…” A dreamy look glazed over Pam’s eyes. She’d had wanderlust since her father brought her and her younger sister, Desirene, with him on his travels when they were little kids.
As for me, every time I travel, it’s always been for work. Get in, get out. Maybe stick around a bit if our hosts bring us around. I’d never had a family vacation. I had given up feeling sorry for myself long ago when my schoolmates would boast loudly about the Disneyland family vacations they had during the December holidays. If there was something I wanted but couldn’t have, I’d shelve it away as undesirable and move on with my life. Travel had always been one of those things because it was something my family could not afford. But now…
“Okay, I’ll think about it.”
Sleep wouldn’t come that night. Something had been seeded in my mind, and while my brain tried to logically explain that it was a bad idea, my heart was excited and happy. I wanted to go smell the roses. Travel the world. Explore unfamiliar continents and different islands. Have my own adventure. Meet people. Experience new cultures. Why was I letting fear hold me back? Was I living life, or just living?
The next day at the office was oddly unsatisfying. It bugged me greatly since I absolutely love what I do and my teammates JC and Ade are like family to me. Something had changed.
I called my mentor that night. 14 years older than me but perhaps 140 years wiser, Mang has somehow found the secret to that perfect balance… finding time for work and play, and doing both so well. Everyone loves her.
“The Dalai Lama shared this on Facebook yesterday,” the savvy Ogilvy & Mather director told me, in her soft, soothing voice. “He said, ‘Genuine happiness requires peace of mind or a degree of mental composure. When this is present, hardship counts for nothing. With inner strength or mental stability, we can endure all kinds of adversity.’ So apply this teaching.”
“That’s a bit deep. Can you elaborate?”
Mang patiently explained. “Life shows us the paths and allows us to choose the paths to take. How do we choose? By knowing what and who and where we want to be. Only then will we choose the right path. Have faith, fear nothing, listen to and love your own Voice. Do not go with the flow for you will land where you may not want to be.”
Soon after my conversation with Mang, I received an email from my “big sister”, Su. The active forty-something runs her own medical practice, has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, visited the Galapagos, and like Mang, showed me that it is very possible for the modern woman to have it all. Su would often send poignant emails about life lessons and thoughtful quotes from books she read.
I clicked open her email to find a random quote from Anais Nin:
“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”
That was it. I took it all as a sign.
As irrational as it was, I was going to do it. No idea how just yet, but Pam has always talked about the power of intention, so I quickly scribbled down a list of goals and objectives, as I channelled positive thoughts and willed them to manifest.
When I broke the news to my teammates, JC and Ade were taken aback with my decision but were still incredibly supportive. They loved me and understood my untamable free spirit. Much planning had to be done, since I had a slew of show bookings already committed many months ahead.
My family was excited but apprehensive about our safety. However, they knew that the BFF and I had been training with the professionals at the KAPAP Academy Singapore, so we were at least equipped with self-defense skills.
Look out, world!
PAM
I don’t know if this is how a mid-life crisis is sparked, or if I was in fact going through one. But an annoying seed had been planted in me, and it continued to grow because I allowed it to. And I guess in Ning’s little corner of the woods, another seed was planted as well, which she secretly watered.
What blossomed was a beautiful but potentially career-suicidal plan to take a break from our successful careers to travel the world together. This secret plan for world domination took on a life of its own as we fuelled it with personal reflection, conversation, imagination and endless daydreaming.
And before my 40th birthday, we both decided it was now or never.
But there was no way I would have left if I didn’t think that my boys were in good hands. For me, it was very straightforward: they couldn’t have both daddy and mummy gone. If my ex was unable to move back for nine months, it was a no-go for me.
He agreed, without hesitation. I have to admit his ready support surprised me because it was a big change for him as well. But he, of all people, understood that I needed to do this. I was thankful because it meant that he would be back in the boys’ lives in a big way, and the boys could reconnect with their dad. So I felt – at last – that I could let go.
I took his support as the go-ahead to share this beautiful but suicidal plan with my family, bosses, and my two little boys. That, I knew, would be the hardest part. I could only pray that they would one day understand that, in the bigger scheme of things, this time away was a necessary step to find myself again and to reconnect with the core of who I am.
As I stepped out into the bright afternoon sun after our meeting, I closed my eyes, raised my face to the sky, and took a deep breath. I knew that something fundamental in my life – and within me – had changed.
I was on the verge of chasing a dream.
NING
We were tapping into our life savings, coughing up a combined S$100,000 to fund this 9-month-long backpacking adventure around the world. But when the word got out, many kind friends and companies approached us with generous help and contributions.
&
nbsp; I started our simple Adventuresof2Girls.com website and Pam created a Facebook page for us, and from these online social media platforms, we started receiving encouragement from friends, friends of friends, and even strangers. Marshall Cavendish magically popped into the picture and presented us with a book deal! News reporters even wrote of our intention to inspire and show people that nothing is impossible.
Worries did cross my mind, but I chose to focus only on the positive. There are things money can’t buy, things one has to do when you’re still young, healthy and crazy enough.
So on 18 March 2011, after wrapping up two filming projects, I was all set to fly! Our families and close friends came to send us off at the airport. They told us not to worry about anything in Singapore, and to simply enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Yes, all loose ends had been tied up, and now, it was just the BFF and I. I glanced at Pam beside me saying goodbye to her kids, and I realised that my chief concern was not what I was leaving behind in Singapore, but us. Everyone knows that travelling with someone for a long stretch isn’t easy. Would our years of friendship survive the test?
There was only one way to find out…
01
house of the sun
Maui . March 2011
PAM
Ning’s eyes were heavily hooded as she pulled on her blue striped pyjama pants at three in the morning. I watched in bemusement as she then tried to pull on her skinny G-Star jeans over those balloony PJs… jumping, jumping, jumping across the hotel floor till she collapsed on the bed.
Ning had only brought one pair of skinny jeans for our entire 9-month trip, and as I found out later, that was her secret to staying slim. As long as she could fit into those skinny jeans, she was fine. Now why didn’t she share that secret with me earlier? But packing light was essential because we only had one 42-litre backpack each for all our belongings.
So we were a little stumped in Maui that early morning because there was nothing in our backpacks for a sub-zero degree volcano climb. Layering was our only option.
I seriously don’t know how the BFF manages to stuff so many layers of clothing under her jeans and tops and still look slim. A few years back, when we were travelling in Kyoto, my jaw almost dropped when I was picking up her clothing from the floor (while she was in the bath) and pulled out seven layers of leggings from under her jeans. How is that possible? I’d look like a lumpy Michelin Man. God is so not fair.
The sky outside was pitch black, and the town of Lahaina lay in complete silence. Were we out of our minds? The neon green digits on the clock flashed mockingly at us from the bedside table – 03:00. It was going to be a long, long drive to catch that sunrise. It had better be worth it!
It was our first week in Hawaii, and we had flown from Honolulu to Maui the day after we touched down – jetlagged and all – because we had bought tickets months earlier to catch Jake Shimabukuro in concert. Jake Shimabukuro! Can you hear us screaming hysterically already? Who is he, you say? He is only the planet’s best ukulele player. We’ve been in love with him… I mean, his music… since we first saw a YouTube video of him playing a ukulele solo of While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
The day after we met Jake at the Maui Cultural Center where he autographed our CDs and obliged us with a picture, we drove our Hertz-rented SUV westward to the historic town of Lahaina. Before Honolulu became the capital of Hawaii, Lahaina was the royal capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii between 1820 and 1845.
This charming seaside town was also the capital of the global whaling industry because it practically lay on the main “highway” where whales migrate from north to south in the colder months, and then back up again after their mating season. But with stricter controls on whaling in recent years, Lahaina has become the capital of whale watching in Hawaii. And that was why Ning and I had driven there to spend a night.
The name L hain means “cruel sun” in the Hawaiian language, describing the sunny dry climate. I can think of a thousand other places that should be named L hain, including our homeland of Singapore, but definitely not this pretty town. The weather was perfect as we pushed off in a boat that warm breezy afternoon.
That was our first whale-watching experience, and coincidentally, March was their mating and calving season. Although we were warned that there was no guarantee we’d see whales, our guide (a blond 20-something Marine Biology graduate from the mainland, who came out to Maui every year for the whale-watching season) was quick to add that she would be extremely surprised if we didn’t.
For the three hours or so we were out in the open sea, Ning and I saw several pods of humpback whales spouting water from their blow holes, and mothers with their newborn calves diving into the deep with their giant tails waving us friendly hellos.
Chasing whales is the most exhilarating thing ever! When our boatman received a heads-up on his communication system, our little boat would ride the open waves, spraying salt water relentlessly on our faces as we sped toward the sighting. There would usually already be a few boats there, all on the lookout. We would all squint into the sun to spot the telltale signs of cresting waves and water spouts in the open ocean. Ning and I became experts at spotting whales after a while!
But whale watching wasn’t the only thing to do at this western end of Maui. There were breathtakingly scenic routes to drive along, and window-shopping along the historic Front Street, a charming street built in the 1820s and voted one of the “Top Ten Greatest Streets” in the country. So one of the first stops we made when we arrived in Lahaina by car was to stop by the Visitor Information Center.
“Two days in Maui? That’s not enough, you need to stay here for at least two weeks!” John, the resident painter dressed in a khaki Safari shirt and straw hat, exclaimed. We didn’t dare tell him that our friend Alan Okami from Honolulu had told us we should cut short our trip to Maui, in favour of a smaller, more obscure island called Molokai.
“In that case, you’ll have to catch the sunrise on the volcano,” John said, glancing up momentarily from his painting.
“Volcano? What volcano? Where?” Ning’s eyes lit up. She could sniff an adventure.
“It’s on the other side of the island though, in the east,” John said. “The volcano is called Haleakal and it’s the highest volcano in Maui. The sunrise there is spectacular!”
The other side of the island? That was where we had just come from! In fact, we would have to drive past our previous hotel midway, just to get to the base of the volcano to begin our ascent. Just the idea of it was ridiculous.
“How long is the drive?” Ning seemed undeterred.
“About an hour and a half from here. But you’ll need to get to the summit by 5am to get a spot before it gets crowded. The sun rises before 6am,” John flashed us a smile, anticipating our reaction. “You have to set off from here at about 3.30am.”
And drive in the dark for an hour and a half?! It was the most insane thing in the world. I glanced at the BFF and I knew she felt the same way. But I also knew that because it was so absolutely, ridiculously insane, she was considering it. Just as I was.
“Or you could join us tonight for Drum Circle by the beach?” John dropped another option for our consideration, before turning his attention back to his painting.
Being an avid drummer, I sat up. “What’s drum circle?”
“Oh… it’s just a couple of us local guys heading up to a secluded beach to jam. We bring along our drums and percussion instruments, and play around a fire,” John shrugged. “There’s a bit of booze, a bit of nudity and lots of music.”
“That sounds fun!” My eyes twinkled.
“!” The BFF exclaimed in a cheery sing-song voice so John would not suspect that she was warning me and slapping me on my head with her tone. Are you crazy? There’s bound to be drugs!
“!” I responded with matching cheerfulness, like we were earnestly and enthusiastically discussing the option of going. Surely not, right?
“How do you get there? Wha
t time does it start?” I pursued a bit more.
“You can park at the beach, then we’ll have to walk. It’s quite a distance; you have to climb a hill to get to the beach. Only the locals know about it, it’s not a tourist thing, but I can take you there,” John offered. “We can get there around 7pm. It ends when you want it to end. Some people stay till dawn, it’s up to you.”
Ning rolled her eyes.
The BFF and I have a standing rule: If either one of us felt uncomfortable about something, anything, we would not go ahead. It was always better to err on the side of caution. That was our understanding, and so, this was a no-go.
Ning told me later that it was a stupid idea because the situation would make us completely dependent on one man. We didn’t know where this place was. If he led us somewhere else, or if he was too drunk to lead us back when we wanted to go home, we’d be stranded. She was sure there was more than booze and nudity involved; there was bound to be drugs too. And listening to her, I was glad we trusted her instincts.
When we politely declined John’s invitation, he shrugged nonchalantly. “Then like I said, go catch the sunrise at Haleakal. You just gotta wake up at 3am, that’s all!”
Ning and I looked at each other with eyebrows raised in silent query. So how?
I grinned. “Sounds like fun! Let’s do it!”
“OK!” My partner-in-crime returned the grin. “Let’s go shop for some snacks to keep us awake during the drive.”
“Hello, you are supposed to keep me awake!” I jabbed her, as we thanked John and breezed out the door to our car.
A 3am wake-up call to drive across the island to catch a sunrise. Smells like an adventure!
* * *
Haleakal is a massive shield volcano that forms 75 percent of the island of Maui. Not only is it the tallest and steepest volcano on Maui at 10,023 feet above sea level, it is also steeped in myth and folklore. In Hawaiian folklore, the depression at the summit was home to the grandmother of the demigod Mui. According to the legend, Mui’s grandma helped him to capture the sun and force it to slow its journey across the sky in order to lengthen the day.
