My Love of Travelogues

It was a really hectic day at work today. It wasn’t because there was anything significant happening today but more of just the workload of things I had to complete this week. I got swamped by all the things I had to do that I didn’t really have the chance to sit down to reflect on the day and think about what I am to write about in today’s journal entry. I guess this is just the universe’s way of balancing the good day that I had yesterday. Still, I am still lucky that I have days that I am struggling to get through the pile in my INBOX compare to other people who might have been laid off from work due to the current economic situations.

I did manage to find some time earlier today to pop into Nizam’s blogspot. It seems that he has started on what I hope would be a series of travelogues about his weekend trip to Penang. I have to say that other than fan-fiction, travelogues are my next favorite things to read on the net. I don’t really know how many travelogues that have been written out there in the Net but I would guess that they would number in the thousands. I don’t really have a favorite travelogue site to go and read them but Yahoo does have a good category listing from where one could start their online journey.

The best travelogues in my opinion are those that not only provide an account of the sights and scenes of the place visited but would also contain the visitor’s impression of their surroundings. This one inclusion into the text would be the one thing that differentiates a travelogue from a travel guide. I sometimes would try to read travelogues from people who have visited Malaysia just to learn about their reaction towards my beloved country. I must say that it is refreshing to learn something that we never noticed before from understanding these first impressions of first time visitors to Malaysia. Things that we as locals take for granted does really get expressed in a different light when one doesn’t have it inbred in them their whole life.

I guess my love for reading travelogues is partly the result of my continuing wanderlust. I want to know about what is out there in the world and about places that I might never have the opportunity to visit. A good travelogue would let the reader feel as if they are there experiencing the same impressions as the writes see it. Maybe I should try to do one for my online journal entries when I go travelling next. I do have to travel to Penang and Singapore in September on business so maybe that would give me the best opportunity to do so. I guess I just have to wait and see if I would get the chance to execute this plan.