These are the Rules of Amazing Road Trips

Quickly, which are the moments you'll remember the most? I bet it won't be the moments that you spend sitting in your cushy tour bus looking out a glass window, having your tour guide announce the sights in front of you. No - I bet they'll be the moments you spend out in the middle of nowhere, looking out into vast fields of absolutely nothing, spent in silence with people who you have somehow come to know, love, and trust.

The best travel moments aren't even the most iconic ones.

The best travel moments are the ones that you know can only belong to you.

This is why a lot of people consider road trips the best way to see the world. You're off somewhere - often in the middle of nowhere - and there doesn't seem to be anyone near you for miles and miles around. There's the earth - vast, wide expanses of lush, green grass and trees - and the sky - so endless, so infinite and boundless. And if even for a fraction of a second, you realise that we humans are so small and tiny and insignificant, and our insignificance is beautiful.

Perhaps one of the most unbelievable things about your particular situation might be that you are in a country in Central Europe, better known for its gruesome WW2 history than its surreal green summers. You might even ask yourself, "What did I do right that I wound up here?"

Have a fantastic partner

One of the most essential things to a great road trip is, of course, having a fantastic partner. Partners are crucial - these are the people you'll be spending 24 hours a day with, for however long your road trip takes. It is essential that your partner get along. (It also helps if you have the same taste in music, especially if your taste in music is similarly ridiculous, like playing Le Festin from Ratatouille on repeat even though you're nowhere near Paris.)

Here is my Polish road trip partner, Adeline. There are many like her, but this one is mine.

Adeline sometimes runs off into the tall grass and sunsets.

We spent our entire road trip sleeping in our car, shielding the windows with clothes hung up like laundry and spending more time than I'd like to admit searching for gas station showers so that we could have at least some semblance of hygiene.

Having a great road-trip partner is so important because travelling together can make or break your friendship. If you aren't better friends by the end of your trip, it's probably because your friendship fell apart doing it. But if you find a travel partner who's willing to be sticky and stinky and sweat it out in the middle of a Polish summer with you, you better hold on tight cos you got yourself a treasure.

Don't follow all the rules

Okay, I know this post is called 'Rules of Amazing Road Trips', but really, aren't all rules kinda made to be broken? If your map tells you to turn right, turn left; if your GPS tells you to take a particular road but your gut instinct figures there must be a short-cut, take the short cut. Yes, it's sometimes a stupid thing to do - more than once we've gotten ourselves stuck in tall grass and almost unable to get out of a pretty frightening situation - but it's only when your adrenaline starts pumping that you realise you must be well and truly alive, because your fear takes over and you start thinking you might just die.

Just make sure that you're smart about when to follow the rules and when not to. Sometimes it's okay to get yourself stuck, but always - always know when to turn back when it's time to turn back.

If you're lucky, your risk-taking might be rewarded with beautiful views something like this one.

Sometimes, driving wildly off-route can lead to picture-perfect ponds.

Treat yourself

Even the most hardheaded of roadtrippers needs a coffee break. Go ahead and take one. You've been driving for easily 10 hours, you're tired and exhausted and your legs need a stretch. Pull up into the next town and take a couple of hours away from the wheel, looking out into the harbour in silence. You deserve it.

While you're there, you might as well take a stroll around the harbour too. Road trips are awesome, but sometimes when you look at other modes of transport, you might find yourself wondering if a boat trip on your very own private yacht might not be such a bad idea either. Boat trip next time, maybe?

Just remember to feel guilty when you return to your car afterwards and think about how loyal and trusty she's been, getting you from one place to the next. Almost every road trip involves a slightly overenthusiastic degree of fondness for your rented vehicle, who you by now have no doubt named and talked to on numerous occasions. 

Take it as it comes

This is probably the most important one of all. Road trips are all about letting go, and this means that it's perfectly okay if your drive gets suddenly blocked by a herd of cows standing in the centre of the road. Yes, really. And if that happens, it's perfectly okay to make silly mooing noises, wait for the cows to move, and generally be quite amused by your drive being stopped by cows instead of heavy downtown traffic.

If you have a great road trip partner, you may even start checking out cow butts, just for the hell of it.

Probably some of the most memorable moments of my Polish road trip involved, in no particular order:

1. Sleeping under the stars in a rural area so dark you could see the Milky Way,
2. Driving towards the primeval European forest Białowieża near the border with Poland and Belarus in the middle of the night,
3. Seeing deer by the roadside just as we we're talking about the improbability of seeing deer on our drive,
4. Later becoming totally lost in said primeval forest while looking for European Bison (we didn't find any), and
5. Endless hours talking about life, the universe, and everything with my awesome road trip partner. (More on this later.)

Sounds crazy? Awesome, I thought so too. But the crazy randomness of these moments is what makes them so great. After all, you're not really rushing anywhere are you? So go out there, get lost, have fun. and watch the different colours of grass paint the world a work of art.

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Warsaw: A City Destroyed and Made New Again

I remember the capital of Poland from The Pianist, which is in my opinion one of the best WW2 films out there.

I've played piano pretty much my entire life, so seeing how Adrien Brody's character suffered not only at the hands of the WW2 injustice but also from being away from his instrument, I can quite truthfully say that I almost cried when Szpilman started playing Chopin's Mazurka in A minor.

Everyone, on three: sob.

The city is beautiful, its architecture old and weathered. Warsaw has survived numerous wars throughout its city, most famously World War 2, where some 85% of the city was destroyed. It has since been rebuilt (can you imagine rebuilding an entire city?), although the city bears memories of the war and especially the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, with monuments dedicated to the Warsaw Jews.

The Warsaw Uprising monument on Krasinskich Square

Warsaw is a city shaped by its scars.

Despite its difficult past, it's clear that it has come a long way. Today, it is very much a liveable place, with all the creature comforts that one would expect of a global city. The summers are comfortably warm, with people out on the streets under blue skies walking in between crayon-coloured buildings. Without the many monuments to WW2 victims, you might not ever know that this place was once the scene of massacres.

My German fellow Couchsurfer Ozzie and I set out on a hunt for the perfect pierogi, a Polish dish of stuffed dumplings that are first boiled, then either baked or fried. A summer day in July is perfect for just such a hunt.

I love seeing interesting adverts, especially if they involve upcycled materials. So when Ozzie and I were walking around and came across this advert van, I just had to take a picture.

We wandered down some tree-lined streets leading up to beautiful gates. (It's almost like Warsaw had to double her efforts to look pretty after being destroyed in all those wars.)

It turns out that 'authentic' pierogi isn't really a thing - in Poland, they're as common and widespread as fish and chips. (Imagine the embarrassment when we were trying to ask around for 'real' pierogi. Typical tourists!) Ozzie and I finally headed to Zapiecek, a restaurant chain that is well-known for having kickass pierogi at really decent prices.

Zapicek is super cute - it has a really homely atmosphere, with servers dressed in Polish costume and every restaurant decorated the way you might expect a grandmother's house to be. It looks and feels almost like a fairytale grandmother's house, which makes it all the more fun to be in.

After having a very Polish meal, we had fun hunting down the most Polish name that there was. (The name is "Stanisław", in case you're wondering.) And it's so typically Polish that we even found streets named Stanisław.

If you're a chocolate connoisseur, listen up: there's a Polish brand of chocolate called E. Wedel, and it's got an entire chocolate factory in the centre of Warsaw. Yup, that's right - a whole chocolate factory! Where there are chocolate factories, there must be cafés, and it was here at the Warsaw E. Wedel factory that I had some of the best hot chocolate I've ever had.

As if having hot chocolate next to a chocolate factory isn't enough, it's even better that the heavenly smell of chocolate wafts through the air around the factory. It's like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory come to life!

That chocolate! That whipped cream! What more could you want on a summer afternoon?

The heart of Warsaw's Old Town is its marketplace, which is bustling with restaurants and cafes filled with people at dinnertime. Amazingly, this entire area was systematically destroyed by the German army in the second World War and then completely rebuilt in the style of its pre-war appearance after the end of the war! A near-total reconstruction of a medieval city - that's pretty incredible.

It's clear that Poland is full of people who are as stubborn as they get. Complete rebuildings of cities are all in a day's work for these guys. I guess that's what you get from being a part of a country that's forced to toughen up from endless war and suffering, and that's what makes the Polish some of the most admirably resilient people there are out there.

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A Singaporean in Warsaw

One of the last places you might expect to bump into Singaporeans would be Warsaw in Poland.

And yet, Warsaw is precisely where I met the amazing and incredible Toniwalia, who - despite having grown up in Singapore, being totally Singaporean through and through, and cooking maggi goreng of all things for me on my first day in Poland - is Poland's top Couchsurfing host.

Toni is absolutely the most amazing guy and the most incredible host - he left Singapore some 18 years ago, moved to Warsaw, and never looked back. And when I asked him why Poland of all places - most people would go to the UK or the US - he simply said that it was the first place he went to and that he'd fallen in love so much that he never left.

This is "do not freak, I am a Sikh" Toniwalia.

Toni has hosted over 800 people in his little apartment in downtown Warsaw in 5 years of being an incredibly involved Couchsurfer. There's never a week that goes by that he doesn't have someone staying with him.

Imagine the amount of trust you must have to let more than 800 people through your front door!

Apart from being an incredible host, Toni also cooks insanely good Asian food. He runs a place called Tandoor Palace that makes the best tandoori chicken. The signature dish is called Chicken Toni (named after himself, of course) and it was the best Indian food I've ever had.

After having spent a good year away from Singapore and food like this, having this little taste of home was the best thing that ever happened.

Perfectly crisp tandoori chicken with neon green mint sauce. Soooo good!

While in Warsaw, I met a German girl named Ozzie who was Couchsurfing with Toni too. My temporary room-mate and I hit it off from the very get-go, and as everyone knows, liking the people you meet is the foundation of any amazing trip!

Toni took us around some of the most famous places in Warsaw, including the Łazienki Królewskie park to see a statue dedicated to one of Poland's most famous sons, Frederic Chopin.

Ozzie and me in front of the Chopin monument in Łazienki park!

Walking around Łazienki on a warm summer's day is like some sort of a dream, with happy families out having picture-perfect picnics on the green, green grass. And the park is massive - like, really, really huge, occupying an incredible 76 hectares in the centre of Warsaw.

In fact, Łazienki park is so big that it even boasts a palace. A palace! It's called, imaginatively enough, the Palace on the Water (because it sits right on the water).

The Palace on the Water actually sits on an artificial island that was built in Łazienki Lake, so it divides the lake into two northern and southern parts.

In keeping with the style of what seems like every other piece of royal real estate out there, the palace has peacocks. Indian peacocks, right in the middle of Central Europe. Why? I don't know, but it seems like every piece of royal property has to have peacocks, so... Peacocks for Poland!

Let's not forget the peahens.

The peacocks and peahens in Łazienki are so tame that they are barely bothered by the humans all around them. Some are even so tame that they'll take food right out of your hands! Most people feed pigeons, and then there are those that feed peacocks... Ha ha!

While we were walking and talking, Toni, Ozzie and I started making some so-bad-they're-good jokes. Toni told Ozzie and me about the Polish dish pierogi, which are a sort of dumpling with all sorts of fillings on the inside. ("P-p-p-pierogi!")

He also told us that since we were staying at his place, we were free to make ourselves at home. 

How much at home, you may ask? "If you go out and bring someone home, all I ask is that you bring one girl home for me too," says Toni. "With Polish girls, you don't fuck them - they fuck you!" Well, Toni, we'll be sure to keep that in mind! Bahaha!

I could not have been any happier with the new friends that I'd made that day in Poland. Two Singaporeans and a German in Poland? Sometimes the most unlikely combinations are the foundation for the most memorable moments.

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