Why do I enjoy travelling? For good food? For shopping? Definitely not for food. On the one hand, I have a very sensitive stomach which is allergic to many kinds of food, which may mean nothing to ordinary people. On the other I am not particularly keen on eating and time is too precious to be spent on looking for specialities. As for shopping, I may spend an afternoon choosing souvenirs or stop to pick an interesting item if it happens to catch my eyes amid my trip but it is by no means the sole aim of my tour.            For me, travelling is both a serious and enjoyable matter. (I make a note of this feeling because the two adjectives seem to be incompatible to a lot of people.) Every trip (excluding those package tours) is a training camp or an outward bound for me. Teaching is no doubt a challenging job but things in my everyday life are just so predictable. Travelling by myself is to put myself in an unfamiliar place forcing myself to brave the unpredictable and the uncertain and seek solutions calmly when an unexpected incident comes up or a mistake is made. The satisfaction of finding a place at last after reading the maps in hand and asking local people the way many times is beyond description. Hopefully my senses will be sharpened again. Once I was waiting on a platform for a train to my friend・s home in Germany. I was to take the 4:15 train. When a train came at 4:00, I got on, settled in a comfortable seat and took out some grapes. No sooner had I enjoyed a few sweeties than I realized the time was just 4:07. Immediately I dashed out of the door to look for the conductor. Luckily it was not a fast train and the next stop was just a few minutes away. I was told to change train there. What an exciting mistake! I have taken wrong buses or trains quite a number of times. A computer friend of mine does not like travelling because he thinks it is too much like ．trouble-shooting・, which, however, constitutes a memorable part of both my trip and my life.            Another reason for my immense interest in travelling is that visiting a place enables me to see the truth for myself. A lot of people criticize the French for refusing to use English even if they can. I have visited Paris three times and on several occasions when I tried to practise my broken French (I had learnt French for about a year.), they simply asked me, ：Vous parle anglaise (Do you speak English) ?； I nodded my head in embarrassment and switched to the English channel immediately. Those experiences were funny but also awakened me to a serious possibility, if not a fact, that how much I have been and will go on being misled by the so-called cultural experts or veteran travellers. We are too used to the views of the developed western countries, especially the American ones, to look at the real faces of the races or peoples unfamiliar to us such as the Muslim world. Unfortunately we, or just I, cannot go to every part of the world to witness and report the truth..            Visiting art galleries and museums is an important part of my desire to travel. All forms of art such as paintings (not modern and very abstract ones) and sculptures are appealing to me and a tour without such visits will mean an idle one. The one that strikes me at this moment is the one in D・Orsay in Paris which is entitled Le Reve (the dream) depicting a large number of sleeping soldiers in a battlefield dreaming of homecoming. The huge painting, more than 8 square feet, still empowered me on my second visit. Buildings or architecture, also a form of art, are gigantic exhibits that I am eager to spend time looking for. I admire beautiful scenery too , but I don・t know why it is never the top priority in my itinerary or a strong incentive for a visit. One thing which is not an important reason for spending a lot of money and time travelling but which I consider a bonus is reading. Being out of Hong Kong, I can concentrate on leisure reading of serious works during a break in a park in the daytime or late in the evening in my hotel room. Serious works are not as serious as academic papers, but just novels, cultural guides and language books. For example I finished two Harry Potters during a recent two-week travel to Europe .            Closely related to travelling is learning languages, which is another interest of mine that I take seriously. Besides genuine admiration for the use of language in expressing one・s deepest thoughts and feelings in literature and the fun of comparing different languages to see some universal ways of human expressions, my interest in travel provides a practical motivation for me to learn a language. As I prefer to travel by myself, knowing some basic expressions of a local language gives me a greater sense of security. For example, I am able to ask the way ( my sense of direction is very weak), understand some signs along the way and buy things from hawkers. Communicating with local people is one of my favourite activities when travelling. Once I met a grandma who was taking a rest with her grandson in a park Summoning my courage, I chatted with her in very simple French, basically single words, short phrases and sentences. The topics were, of course, limited to very simple things such as the weather and the living environment. The success in communication was, however, very thrilling. Another use of elementary knowledge of a foreign language is to understand the titles and descriptions of art works in galleries and museums. A direct understanding of the theme is joy. Learning a foreign is like opening the door of another world enabling one to make the first direct contact with the people and things, cultural or non-cultural, of a new world.            Despite my keen desire in mastering languages and the numerous advantages of having a lot of languages in hand, it is obviously impossible for an ordinary person like me to have time to learn many or to have the ability to handle many. Inevitably English is still the only language that I mostly use or that I can use to communicate with local people. Chatting with local people enables me to have direct contact with local culture and first-hand information of the real situation of the country, which is another important part of my overseas trip. The more frequent the chatting, the more pleasure the trip gives to me. Once I was in Berlin talking with a man from eastern Germany. I said the impressive number of construction sites must mean lots of job opportunities to local people. He smiled and asked, ：Do you mean loss of job opportunities?； Another time I was inside a train compartment and my only fellow traveller broke the ice asking me if I spoke English. Then our conversation started and she told me she was going to take an art course in Bulgaria. She was a sweet young lady and the chat added delight to an otherwise ordinary ride. When direct contact is impossible, local newspapers bring me close to the problems, concerns and interests of the people there. English translations of literary works or socio-political analyses free from American views of the politically subordinate countries are often appealing to me and add weight to my luggage. Despite the full-house of my bookshelves at home, I can never resist the call of these precious books which open windows and doors of the world that are inaccessible to me in Hong Kong such as books on the Islamic world and the Arabic language.            A serious task that I want very much to achieve is to take the opportunity to study, or at least get to know more about, English teaching in local education systems. For example, how is English taught in Egypt to successfully motivate her students to approach tourists bravely and chat with them in English? Unluckily my recent attempt to visit a secondary school in Cairo was in vain and I was told that a letter from the Ministry of Education is needed. I am going to find ways to get ．a permit・ that enables me to bring the pictures of English teaching and learning overseas to my students. The findings may be enlightening. As a matter of fact I interviewed local students and people of a number of different jobs (not from all walks of life yet) during my visit to Cairo. My students were fascinated with the video clips. Travelling is such an enjoyable and self-improving experience that it is indispensable to my life-long learning and intellectual growth. That in turns benefits my students.