Adrianna TanDec 21
This jasmine rice jacket is making me remember how I used to travel around on Indian railways with a jasmine rice bag to line my sleeping berth (my dad’s idea), so very often I woke up with ‘Thai hom mali rice’ imprinted on my body
Show threadAdrianna TanDec 21

My entire autistic Chinese family pitched in to help me travel to places they had never been to. My grandpa would write my name in dramatic big Chinese characters on my backpack, water bottle, umbrellas. It was a very lovely time of my life. I got to see the world (very cheaply: US$20 bought me a train ticket to travel 2000 miles in sleeper class), I got to eat amazing food, and every where I was I called home from a phone booth to describe the places I was to my grandparents in Teochew. They learned about about Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Siliguri, Kalimpong, and other places they would never see.

Later, my parents started traveling to India on their own, with a family friend I introduced them to and they really enjoyed it.

Show threadAdrianna TanDec 21
I know I had a very unusual relationship with my family and with travel. Most Singaporean parents would not allow their kids (especially girls) to go off on adventures like these. They were also certainly likely to have classist and racist ideas about some of the places I spent time in. I was gone for 3-4 months at a time at 19yo in my own. Instead, my family encouraged me and was interested in learning about what I saw and ate and always wanted me to be curious about the world. And they wanted to help, logistically. My dad would come up with ideas to help me solve some practical issues, my mom would sew them on her sewing machine, my granddad would do his Chinese calligraphy on all the items, and my grandma would ask me to tell her stories about all of the people I met.
Show threadDavid J. Atkinson
@skinnylatte Thanks for sharing this interesting slice of life.
Dec 22 at 8:01amWeb