It actually sounds scarier than it is. It was very safe otherwise the company wouldn’t have let us in.
I signed up an ‘Inside a volcano’ tour but because it happened in the afternoon, I joined a free walking tour in Reykjavik in the morning.
I like joining free walking tour. The first time I did it was in 2002 when I was travelling in Berlin. No, you can’t find that journal on this website because I took all those photos with an SLR camera not a digital one. It’ll take me a long time to go through those photos, select them and put them on this website. A big project.
Anyway, the point I want to raise is back in 2002, most people were still quite skeptical about the language ability of people with an Asian face. Not only that, they were also skeptical about the intention of the visit. I remember when I was at the passport control at the Frankfurt am Main airport, I was asked so many questions. One of them was ‘how much money have you brought with you?’ I told the officer an amount. ‘With that little money and you are staying here for 2 weeks?’ He asked. I said, ‘I have credit cards. Your country accepts credit cards.’ So, back to the free walking tour. I was with a European when I went to the assembly point. I don’t remember where in Berlin. But anyway, when I arrived, the lady who conducted the walking tour looked at me with that question ‘can you understand English?’ on her face. The European who was with me saw that and said, ‘yeah, she’s a baby.’ I laughed. The fact is, I could understand more Deutsch than that European. In fact, I was travelling to quite a few places with that European and everywhere I went, the local people talked to him instead of to me and when they spoke Deutsch, they expected that European to understand. When I nodded and responded in Deutsch, they then started to talk to me.
The world has changed quite a lot since then. You can see more and more Asian faces traveling around the world and they have proved that they can speak English and some other languages. Some of them can speak fluent French, Italian, German, Spanish…, you name it. I am actually quite glad about this change. The younger generations also are now more open and comfortable talking to people from different nations in English without doubting their English ability. Although there are still people who struggle with English, it seems not to be a big problem now. In the entertainment industry, some people are open to see a movie with Asian faces. Wong is one of the characters that I like in Doctor Strange. He is funny because he looks so serious all the time. 😀 I am also quite surprised that Lisa from Blackpink has so many fans from different parts of the world, not only in Asia. I am not saying ‘hurray, Asians, you are taking the world.’ What I am saying is we are all Earthlings. There is no need to differentiate a person by their skin colour. We can find different skin colours in the world because we live in different parts of the world and our skin colour is determined by the sun, the UV or whatever. That’s all. There is only one race in the world – human race. The word ‘diversity’ itself contains discrimination. Culture wise, because we live in different parts of the world, the way our ancestors lived was in accordance with the weather. The buildings were built according to the weather, like Machu Picchu, and many other things. All our ancestors believed in some gods. That was because there were so many things they couldn’t explain. Even now, with the so-called ‘advanced technology’, we still can’t explain everything. The more you travel, the more you will find similarities among people. You can find 7 sins in every country. At the same time, you can find kindness and generosity in every corner of the world. When I talk to people, I see them. I don’t just look at them. I am a firm believer of one single race – to reiterate, the human race.
You probably don’t want to read these LOL!
So, let’s get back to the free walking tour in Reykjavik. Actually, I don’t remember the names of those places anymore. 😀
Let’s have a 2D tour here. 😀
I still had some time for the day. Actually, no. It was just that it was summer so the day was super long. Night almost never fell.
When the day was clear, I and some other backpackers from my hostel walked to the shore near our hostel to watch the midnight sun. I couldn’t catch it today. I did, kind of, eventually. Stay tuned. 🙂
23 June 2016
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