The Travelling Shutterbug
The New Paper Jan 12, 2003
By Tan Dawn Wei

Forget postcards. A new breed of globetrotters have found a new way to keep friends and family updated - through their own personal online travel journals.

They range from simple text and picture affairs to elaborate sites with music, videos, and space for readers' feedback.

This method of keeping in touch is cheap, efficient, and makes armchair travellers out of their mates.

Mr Wee Keng Hor was looking for photo-friendly destinations beyong these shores that offered new subjects in 1996.

His first stop was Nepal.

The Internet wasn't even Windowss-based in those days, and with some free webspace available from his Singnet subscription, he decided to showcase his pictures online.

What started out as a simple, nondescript site with a few pictures has since morphed into a full-fledged site featuring multiple links and chapters on Mr Wee's many travels off the beaten track.

"I was inspired by some websites which featured great pictures from photographers who took them during their travels," says the management accountant by profession.

He's been reacquainted with long-lost friends through the website, and sometimes receives e-mails from strangers asking for free pictures, enquiring if he's do wedding photography, or simply just to thank him for sharing information.

Once, he received a long e-mail from a fellow traveller who was impressed with his entries, only to meet her on the bus to work when he sat next to her. They turned out to be fellow colleagues.

Yet, he maintains the site is no narcissistic effort.

"I'm not a very good writer and I don't really have the flair for it. To me, it's personal. I don't mean to show it to the world."

The entries are logged only after he gets home, and sometimes takes weeks to a month to put together.

"having a website also helps to add credibility when I'm trying to sell things, like photography equipment over the net. I can refer them to my website which gives them a sense of security and confidence to send me the money."

But his preferred style of travelling (backpacking) and choice of destinations ("exotic" locales like Bolivia, Argentina, Namibia, India) have had to give way to more family-oriented holidays now that he has two kids in tow.

"It would be 10 years before I can think of such trips," he says.