I’ve travelled aplenty in my lifetime, although nowhere near as much as the youngsters of today, who’re packed and ready to go at the drop of a hat. It’s all very enviable; I may even have a case of sour grapes, but travelling just doesn’t hold the appeal for the creaking bones and foggy brain anymore. By the time you squeeze into your seat on flight, you’re already wishing you’d never left the comforts of the sofa in front of the idiot box.

Firstly, in Bangkok, scheduled time is irrelevant – you could chance a day of super traffic, only to find out later that your flight has landed at its destination without you! In case you did make it to Suvarnabhumi International Airport in good time, you need to scurry the million miles to join the snaking queue to check-in. Once there, you hold your breath and hope those heavier-than-heavy bags didn’t, once again, exceed the weight limit and won’t be embarrassingly impossible to heave onto the conveyor belt. Then comes the daunting and exhausting security procedure since 9/11: remove shoes and this and that; no liquids over 100ml, not even water, which you’ll then buy at a ridiculous price. Then after being zapped by a weakened X-ray, you’ll collect your things and despite knowing that the same ordeal awaits us at the other end, we’ve learnt to tap into our Herculean valour, and made some unique and interesting trips well worth retelling:

• It was way down memory lane, when she and her husband and her recently- married brother took their parents to Bang Saen. Once there, the days passed in easy camaraderie; everybody interacted without fuss or discord. It was a trip from which her mother came back really happy, and recalling it still gives her a rush of joy!

• While walking through the rooms of Çırağan Palace in Bosporus and Topkapı Palace in Istanbul, enjoying the beauty and the antiquity, she experienced an ethereal, unexplainable feeling of familiarity; a deja vu of sorts, to perhaps a past life, which was calling out to her!

• This gentleman from a continent far, far away, reminisces on the “tranquillity of travel on water on the local ferry on Lake Geneva, on the numerous crossings back and forth from France to Switzerland, with the backdrop of the natural mountainous beauty and the numerous small villages.”

• On one visit to the zoo, and observing the animals in their cages, she pondered how nice it would be to see them roaming free in their natural habitat, and she was fortunate enough to experience that in Kenya!

• The sweet and caring gesture of her parents on a visit long ago, when they broke their staid routine and took her and her then lil’ toddler far from their Wongwian Yai home to a newly-opened waterpark. Her mother’s pleasure at seeing her grandchild having a ball was unbounded.

• She loves trekking up the mountains and into the forests – to her, it’s heavenly to breathe the fresh air with no pollution. But most recently, she did something which she never thought she would or could do, and at 60! She ziplined in the lush, fern-forested, 3,540ft quartzite and sandstone pinnacle of Avatar Hallelujah Mountain (Southern Sky Column in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, prior to inspiring James Cameron) to the cheers of her family, including her mother. The incredible dare made her feel like a bird, flying from one mountain to the other!

• Although she lives in Japan, the recent trip to Hokkaido that her daughter and son-in-law from far away took her and her unwell husband on, felt really special. Being driven around amongst the unbounded nature of Niseko was heart-warming, as it not only gave her a much-needed break, but renewed the meaning of being alive and together with the family.

• Her best-ever trip was her 60th birthday celebration. She voyaged with her three gal-pals to her childhood friend’s place; that friend who thought of her as special and always showered her with the utmost affection. She made the birthday even more special by having an accompanying birthday song with a cake to cut at every meal. The stay was short, but the gals let their hair down and were free to be themselves; to laugh and joke without any inhibitions!