Sometimes when we are too familiar with our own hometown, we may miss out to travel around the place where we live.  You may ask how you know that.  Ask yourself a question and you will get the answer.  When was the last time you have visited the most famous travel spot in your hometown excluding the shopping mall?

I have a habit if I were traveling outside my hometown Kuching.  I always carry a camera with me no matter where I go.  But I do not think that it is a habit for me in Kuching. 

Is it because of too familiar that causes us to ignore it?  We thought we see it everyday, but we are not visiting it for decades and not even step our foot on it since we were kids (may be).  We just pass by.  Occasionally, there would be opportunities that make us become a tour guide to bring our relatives or friends who are from other places to visit our hometown.  What we can always hear from the so called “tour guide” is, “Oh…  This place has changed a lot, last time it was… …”  Some may even say, “This is the first time I have been here too.”

Another reason is we have too many things to be done in our own place, which cause us to ignore or loss focus to travel on our own land.  Our work, life, commitment disallow us to become a tourist all the time.  We rush for everything in our own hometown, but we are relaxed when we travel on other place on this Earth.  Sometimes we should slow down our steps, so that we can see more things around us.

I have noticed that our scope of vision is actually depending on our speed.  Let’s compare if you use a bicycle and a car to travel from one place to another, I believe you can see more things on the way with the bicycle because the bicycle is slower.

I was inspired by mySarawak, a blog that write everything about Sarawak.  This blog explored many things in Kuching, and when I read about it, I think about this issue carefully and find that this common mistake that we always done – ignoring our most familiar things.

Not only the place to visit, anything and everything around us, even the colour of your current toothbrush, or the colour of underwear that you are now wearing.  Can you tell yourself the answer without checking it?

We need to have a dedicated relaxed time to discovored our own hometown; we also need a quiet time, without doing anything to discover ourselves.