Before Chickenfeet Travels became Chickenfeet Travels.
I moved back to Singapore in 2010 right after graduating from university and getting my certification as a scuba diving instructor. I was full of energy, worked for a startup in the superyacht industry, trying to do everything all at the same time. I used to be an extrovert back then. I taught diving on week nights and through the weekends. I worked 9-5ish Monday through Friday-ish. And whenever the startup did not have money to pay me or they knew they had a quiet month, I would just travel. Mostly to dive my checklist and then to do everything else; I had developed a taste for scootering around semi-aimlessly, summiting mountains, and gained a deep respect and interest in all the cultures around this region that I never learned about in school or on the internet. Then I would come back to Singapore, glowing with the best tan ever, excited with uncontainable travel fuzzies, and taking meetings with young-ish corporates and attending networking events. And more often than not, I would be asked the simple question that kicked off friendships that I still have to this day and launched this company.
”Why are you [always] so tan?”
So what was my answer?
Certifying divers in Tioman
Diving in [Perhentians/Bali/Sumatra/Borneo/Philippines/Komodo/Thailand]
Trekking [volcanoes/mountains/to waterfalls/to see orangutans/to see elephants/to see gibbons]
Just exploring…
During 2010, 2011, and 2012, I explored and dived in all the destinations and places listed on today’s “must-see lists/blogs” of Southeast Asia and so much more.
This is the punchline, I promise, before Chickenfeet Travels became Chickenfeet Travels, while travelling, I would write down all the names, phone numbers, email addresses of the guides I trekked and dived with.
Time travel with me: Those were the beginning days of travel blogs, cheap internet and smartphones. 2011 Instagram only had 1 million users! Instagram hit 100 million in February 2013! Do you remember Lonely Planet Travel Guides? We were lucky enough to go in blind to destinations and depend on the local people in each place we went to. We were lucky enough to not be distracted by travel influencers. We were lucky enough that a sense of discovery was almost guaranteed on every trip abroad.
2010-2015 was arguably the best time to be a young-ish corporate living and working in Singapore; I only part-time lived in Singapore until 2013. Those days were filled with corporate packages that would essentially cover all your living expenses in Singapore which meant those back-in-the-day high salaries meant expendable income you did not have to think twice about spending. Pair this with the launch of low-cost carriers, every expat I was friends with was flying somewhere every other weekend to drink on a different tropical island or major city.
People started asking me to plan their trips. When their friends and family came into town to visit, I would be planning those excursions too. I also started to explore new places with friends, something that I promised myself not to do since 2008 (I prefer to travel alone). I remember that around this time, my very good friend Stephen kept telling me that I should do this for a living and I always lol’d at him.
Fast forward to February 2012, when Simon and I met on a group dive trip to snorkel with whalesharks and dive with mantas…then fast forward to early 2013 when Mark from said trip was leaving Singapore and first come first serve claims to all his hard liquors brought Simon and I back together and the idea of a travel company was incepted.
And there it is. Before I even knew it, Chickenfeet Travels was born out of a thirst for adventure, passion, and connection.
