Hello from the road, fellow travellers!
My name is Tri—an interior designer by trade, a philosopher with a camera by nature, and by passion: a traveler with the constant itch to explore the world, who believes the most extraordinary stories are written not on paper, but on the open road. Vietnam is where I return, but the road is where I live.
I’ve been traveling alone since 2016, though alone is never the feeling I get when I’m on the move. Travel, to me, is never truly solitary. Unless you refuse its offers, the road will always try to gift you its own companions in forms of strangers who become friends, landscapes that pull thoughts from deep places, and moments so transcendent they demand to be captured—if not in hands, then in words or images.
This blog is my way of holding onto them, my love letter to travel: a space where adventure meets introspection, where cultures intersect, and where the road itself becomes the greatest teacher. I write and photograph not to package the world neatly, but to untangle it, to ask why riding my motorcycle down a dusty road while the sun drops behind a far-off mountain carries a kind of clarity I’ve never found in words, or being invited to tea & biscuits in a language I don’t speak can feel more home than home ever did.
Here, I share the lessons I’ve learned, the stories that moved me, and the practical insights to help you craft your own unforgettable journeys.
This is for the ones who see maps as invitations, who understand that the best routes aren’t always straight, and who believe—as I do—that travel, at its best, isn’t escapism. It’s confrontation—with the world, with yourself, with stereotypes and unspoken rules we mistake for truths. Every mile changes you, if you let it.
If any of that resonates, you might find something here worth keeping. Not just answers, but better questions.
So, let’s wander—together. The road is calling your name.
INTJ 5w4
Left-handed
Unleash Your Inner Explorer!
Get inspired—with stunning views & soulful travel stories reserved for curious souls like you.
The detour that became the journey…
It started with a simple “no.”
In 2016, I applied for a short art course in Canada—a creative escape, a chance to breathe in a new world, to dip my toes into the possibility of another life. Yet, the visa officer’s verdict was final: “Your passport is too blank.” To prove I’d return, I first had to prove I’d left.
It was … an inconvenient setback, to put it lightly. But, as moping was never my style, I quickly picked myself up with even greater determination. Like the spark that lit the fuse, the rejection ignited in me a burning desire to rewrite my fate: I would build a travel history so undeniable, no bureaucrat could ever doubt or dismiss it again. Little did I know, this would mark the first turn on a path I was meant to take all along.
My first solo adventure took me to Taiwan. Ten days, shaped by carefully crafted itineraries, hour-by-hour plans, and the electric thrill of unfiltered freedom. No tour groups, no compromises—just me, my notebook, and the quiet pleasure of following my curiosity wherever it led.
And it worked! Not only did I proved I could navigate the world on my own, but more importantly, I uncovered a deep love for the experience itself. The buzz of unfamiliar streets, the fleeting connections, the way each corner whispered stories through its architecture and culture—every step sparked a sense of adventure & wonder. With each discovery came a pulse of raw, exhilarating joy, not just of a new place, but of a new piece of self.
I wasn’t just collecting stamps; I was collecting pieces of myself, scattered across borders and cultures.
One country a year became my rhythm: France, Thailand, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia… The stamps steadily piled up. Yet, somewhere between the flights and border checks, my purpose began to shift. What started as a quest to prove myself to the faceless officials and the lingering shadow of that rejection, evolved into something far more personal. It became a pilgrimage to the person I was becoming.
The transformation was quiet: Travel no longer felt like a means to an end, but rather the way I learned to love the world—and to find my place within it. The act of traveling had become the purpose itself.
My dream of the Canada visa, once so central, blurred away like a road sign receding in the rearview mirror—distant, irrelevant. I look back sometimes, pondering the life of the lucky self who was able to take that turn:
Would he have found his success in some Canadian suburb, his life neatly scheduled, his worldview unchallenged while his passport collecting dust?
Would he have ever trembled on the descent into the Hunza Valley, or learned the true meaning of the sublime—not as a word but as a silence—that raw, terrifying awe that arrives only when you are rendered insignificant, standing dwarfed under ancient mountains and infinite sky, your ego scattered on the wind?
Would he have understood that the most profound conversations happen without a common language, only a shared humanity?
And most of all: would he look at me now with jealous eyes, or pity the rocky, unstable life that I’ve chosen?
I will never know.
That initial refusal, which had once felt like a barrier, revealed itself as the only doorway that mattered. It was the one that forced me to stop looking at the roadmap I’ve architected for my life as the one true path and finally start feeling the scree on the trails. And beyond it, the road unfolded—open, endless, and entirely mine.
Random Inspirational Quote.txt
Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.
— Theodore Roosevelt
Monkey on the Roads: The Origin
I was born in 1992—the Year of the Monkey. Oddly enough, the species never stuck in my mind in a positive way. They’re… let’s just say, erratically aggressive and full of mischief.
I personally had the unpleasant run-in with one while visiting the Uluwatu Temple in Bali. It all happened in the blink of an eye: one moment I was admiring the temple grounds; the next, my glasses were snatched clean off my face. Before my brain could even register a proper reaction & come to term with what just happened, the crafty thief had already scampered up a tree, smugly chewing on my glasses like a prized snack stolen from a child. (that’s what I imagine goes on in their little mischievous monkey brains).
The cheeky macaque was just out of my reach, perched near the cliff’s edge, dangling its newly-acquired toy with the kind of reckless glee only monkeys could possess. One wrong flick and it’d be gone—lost to the ocean below, along with my vision for the rest of the trip.
So, I did what anybody would have done had they faced with this absurd hostage situation: I just stood there, stunned with my eyes half-blind & mouth half-open, speechless.
What was even the right course of action that I could take? Should I be mad & climb over the wall to chase down the culprit? Or should I accept defeat and chalk it up to another expensive lesson from life? These thoughts swirled around my head while I remained frozen in place, vision blurry not just from the missing lenses but from sheer disbelief.
I was leaning toward resignation when I finally opted for a third, more humbling option: I looked around for help. Fortunately (or really unfortunately for this place) that to the temple guards, this was just a day like any other. Unfazed by the drama, one guard calmly came to my rescue, bananas in hand, like a seasoned negotiator ready to strike a deal with the glasses-napper. A barter system as primitive as time itself: fruit for goods. After an intense five-minute of waving the bananas to their faces & strategically getting them away from the cliff side, the negotiation went through: ransom was taken, and the hostage was allowed to return home—though not without a few bite marks to remember the ordeal by.
I’ve had more than my fair share of face-offs with monkeys over the years. Yet, despite their antics, there’s still an undeniable thrill that pulses through me whenever I spot one perched by the roadside or swinging from the tree branches. In a way, seeing monkeys along the road has become something of a rite of passage—an unspoken milestone every off-the-beaten-path traveller stumbles upon at least once in their life. It signifies that the journey you’re on isn’t a typical one but wild, unpredictable, and full of hidden adventures waiting to unfold.
Beyond their rough, feral nature, monkeys have come to symbolize something more meaningful for me: the untamed, chaotic, occasionally frustrating, but always unforgettable essence of travel. They remind me that the best journeys aren’t defined solely by destinations, but by the unexpected moments that emerge when plans unravel. There’s a certain magic in those spontaneous detours—the moments that slip through the cracks of even the most carefully crafted itineraries.
Monkey on the Roads was born from those cracks. It a tribute to what I love most about traveling: the unpredictability, the occasional chaos, and the moments when everything goes sideways, when you’re forced to improvise and adapt and laugh at the absurdity of it all—and somehow, that’s when the best stories come to life.
Travel, like monkeys, is equal parts wondrous and irritating—and that’s precisely the wild mix that keep pulling me back for more & I hope to bring you along for the ride.
Random Inspirational Quote.txt
The further I go, the closer to me I get.
— Andrew McCarthy
The Mantra to My Wanderings
There’s a quiet truth that reveals itself on the road. Not in the destination, but in the hum of the engine, the rattle of loose stones under rubber, the sudden clarity when you look out and see the land stretching out to the horizon, open like a book with no ending. These moments are often small, barely noticeable if you’re only passing through. But when you begin to live with them, sit with them—truly absorb their essences—they begin to take on weight. They start to mean something.
That’s the foundation where this blog is built on—the idea that travel isn’t just about where you go, but about how deeply you choose to notice.
“Record – Reflect – Repeat” isn’t just a catchy motto. It’s a fundamental process. A cycle of attention and awareness, a practice. It’s about choosing to be present, again and again.
The mechanical camera records the world’s surface.
The disciplined mind records its depth.
To record is not merely to snap a photo or press ‘record’ on a camera. That’s capturing what the eyes see, yes—but what about what the heart sees? What about the subtle shift in your thoughts as you ride through a mountain pass and, for a fleeting instant, feel the vastness of the world shrink your worries into something quiet, something clear? What about the unexpected warmth that floods through you when you’re lost on unfamiliar roads, and a stranger’s kindness rewrites your definition of what hospitality truly mean?
These aren’t just beautiful moments. They are revelations. And yet, they vanish. Like dreams at first light, once so vivid and real, only to slip through the cracks of consciousness before we can grasp their meaning.
We tell ourselves we will remember. But memory is not a locked box—it’s a river, ever-shifting, reshaping its course, burying its own traces. The self you were on that road, beneath that sky is already eroding. The feelings, once seemed unforgettable, dissolving into distant silhouettes, becoming a half-remembered dream, a phantom that slip away the moment we try to name it.
And so, we record. Not for an audience, not for validation, but because we have come to realize how easily the mind abandons itself. Like a map leading to forgotten treasures, the act of writing, of tracing letters like footsteps, is the act of leaving a trail even the wind cannot scatter.
To record is to preserve the memories of things that matter against time’s quiet erasure. We record, because the alternative is to let the relentless current of time wash it all away.
Then we reflect. We sit with what we’ve recorded. These moments of enlightenment have weight, substance, consequence. Yet they reside only in the space between sensation and understanding, in that razor’s edge where experience becomes knowledge. We turn them over and over, like stones in a stream, until their sharp edges smooth and their true shapes begin to show. Reflection is where insight hides. It’s how we learn that what we thought we saw might reveal a deeper meaning, or it might have been something else entirely. That the discomfort was growth, and the detour was the real journey.
Reflection changes us. It sharpens our perception, reshapes our beliefs. The more we reflect, the more we start to see ourselves not just as tourists in a foreign land, but as participants in the unfolding drama of life itself. We begin to understand that every road is a mirror.
And then—repeat. Because this journey we are in isn’t a linear path. It’s a spiral. With every new chapter, we begin again. But not from the same place. Each loop around, we bring more to the experience. More awareness, more humility, more curiosity. The cycle deepens. And what once felt like wandering starts to feel like becoming.
Record • Reflect • Repeat
This blog—Monkey on the Roads—is my way of practicing that mantra. Of living it. It’s a record of where I’ve gone, what I’ve felt, what I’m learning. And maybe, just maybe, it invites you to do the same. Not to follow my steps, but to walk your own roads with intention. To record, to reflect, and to keep going.
Again and again.
