Education of a Wandering Young Man

Convinced that an overseas education with ample opportunities for traveling is superior to a local one, Lam took up a Singapore government scholarship to study in Loughborough, UK. Beginning with the very first winter vacation in Germany, where he travelled solo and almost lost his life on a highway in Cologne, he tried to visit a different country every vacation. Whenever possible, he would stay with locals so as to learn about their culture and way of life, such as working on a kibbutz in Israel, lingering on a farm in Zambia, and trekking from one village to another in the Kelabit Highlands in Sarawak.

In the five years covered in this book, he had set foot on five continents and interacted with people of diverse nationalities and ethnic tribes. The experiences had enriched his life beyond the confines of the four walls of a classroom; they constituted a form of education which he considers superior to the conventional approach through books and the internet. He believes that what one learns by rote, one is likely to forget later, but what one has personally experienced, one is likely to remember for life. For this reason, he chose to experience life.