My Travel Notebooks

As mentioned on my About page, all my travel diaries were handwritten in travel notebooks. I know there is a mobile-phone app called Travel Diaries and I can type my daily travel experience on my laptop, but I feel handwriting is much more personal. It gives more freedom to express myself. Or maybe I am a bit conservative to change the habit.

When PhoTrablogger challenged us to post our handwriting in our native language, the challenge made me realize how chaotic my travel diaries were written. I wrote my diaries in total chaos in term of linguistic.

I wrote in two or three languages at once as depending on what happened on that day. Mostly I wrote in Indonesian language, my mother tongue, but very often the diary also written in English, perhaps I had to speak English for the whole day by then. On the recent travel experience, I mixed my writing in Indonesian language with Dutch just because I spoke Dutch with some Dutch scuba divers whom we met during our holiday.

In short, my handwritten diary was a chaos but it showed the freedom I had when expressing my thoughts on that day. Here’s one page as example of how chaotic it was. Creepy handwriting.

The diary page as showed was written on the first of January 2014 in Bangka Island, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. The owner of the dive resort invited us, the guests, to join her to visit the villages at late afternoon to greet her staff who had day off as New Year celebration. I took the invitation as it was a great opportunity to see the villagers plus, not every dive resort owners I met were that humble to their staff.

The first day of the year turned to be a special celebration day on the island. The villagers were celebrating by having “street parties” called as “circus”. The men were walking around the village with music instruments, they were singing and greeting their neighbors of Happy New Year meanwhile the ladies were dancing from house to house. Visitors like us were welcomed to join their celebrations. Reading at this diary again (thanks to PhoTrablogger’s challenge), I remember how fun it was on that day.

Please join PhoTrablogger in this interesting challenge and visit this post to participate – Write Now..Yes Right Now..