How I wish I was one of those women who can walk into a plane looking chic, wearing a floaty dress and heels and carrying just a tiny handbag, who can sleep seated upright and looking beautiful and who, at the end of a 14-hour journey, exit the plane looking as fresh as a daisy.
Such women really do exist. I've seen them. I'm just not one of them.
Even short flights leave me looking and feeling like something the cat dragged in.
I went on a holiday to Japan recently and, as always, disappointed myself.
Instead of wearing something vaguely stylish, I was in my plane uniform of black track pants, grey hoodie top and sneakers.
Instead of strolling into the cabin with a dainty bag in hand, I lugged a bulky carry-on in which I'd packed two books I never got down to reading, a shawl I didn't get down to using, plastic bags filled with too many toiletries and another packed with chargers for my phones and iPod. Very auntie-like.
It was an overnight flight but I couldn't manage more than two hours of shut-eye as I tossed and turned and twisted my legs like a pretzel.
To top it off, I caught a cold. A draught from the cabin ceiling was blasting on my head, causing my eyes to tear, nose to run and throat to be parched.
I emerged from the flight with bloodshot eyes, dry lips, flat hair, bad breath and a drippy red nose.
And it was only a seven-hour flight.
Pathetic.
I can hear some of you saying that I'm silly to care about how I look when I travel. Comfort rather than style is what matters and if wearing track pants and sneakers give me that, why am I whining?
My problem is that I subscribe to the romance of travel, yes, even in this age of budget airlines and metal detectors.
Flying off to a strange land, savouring new experiences with no care in the world, eating, shopping and having fun among people you've never seen before and whom you never will again - travel is glamorous, in theory at least, and I want to dress the part.
Sadly, I always look crumpled when I'm on a holiday.
I still haven't mastered the knack of creating the perfect vacation wardrobe where I can travel light yet look pulled-together with smart, multitasking items. I also lack the discipline to dress up with whatever clothes I do take along.
More pertinently, countless experiences have proven that holidays don't turn out quite as perfect as I'd imagined they should. After a while, it becomes pointless to make the effort to look stylish if you aren't enjoying yourself all that much in the first place.
The root of all this is that I tend to place too much hope on what a holiday can do for me.
Unlike real lovers of travel, I leave home not so much because of the pull of a certain destination but the push to get away from Singapore.
I book a trip whenever I'm feeling stressed out at work and need to unwind, and when I feel a desire to escape from something that is bugging me in my personal life.
I also approach a holiday with unreasonable expectations.
I think that going away will change my life. That not only will I immediately morph into a happier, healthier, slimmer and calmer person when I step on foreign soil, but that upon my return home, I'll be refreshed, recharged and still embracing that new me.
If only life were that easy.
I've come to realise that if my life is sad and sorry, going away on holiday won't change that one bit.
Even if a holiday had been enjoyable and I carry the afterglow of it when I return, the holiday high dies in a matter of days and I'm back to my sad and sorry existence. Nothing changes. In fact, you'll feel even worse if your holiday didn't meet your expectations in the first place.
Studies have found vacations to be stress inducers. In the Holmes and Rahe stress scale that measures life events that can contribute to illness, going on vacation measures a 13 on a scale of 100. (Death of a spouse is 100, marriage is 50 and spending Christmas alone is 12).
Take my recent trip to Japan.
I'd been feeling a bit down both on the work and home fronts and thought that escaping to Hokkaido for a week would make everything better.
I pictured myself drinking in the beautiful sights the island is famous for, trekking up its majestic mountains, soaking naked in a hot spring and gorging on its delicious food.
I'd reckoned that by losing myself in the adventures a new land had to offer, I'd also lose whatever woes I was nursing.
Well, it was a nice enough holiday. On a scale of 10, it was a six, sometimes seven. Problem was, I had wanted it to be a perfect 10.
The flight there, as you'd read, was not the most pleasant and getting to the hotel lugging heavy bags was dead tiring.
While it's nice to look at mountains, I realised that gazing at them for hours on end as the bus headed to some faraway scenic town really isn't my thing. (My happiest moments were spent shopping in Daimaru in Sapporo.)
I did go to a hot spring but it was housed in a depressing hotel where a convention of veterinarians was taking place (posters of cats suffering from cataracts and other assorted animal body parts stared at me in the hotel lobby), so that's unlikely to go down in my list of Hokkaido highlights.
The food was truly scrumptious but I also came to the conclusion that there really is only so much one can eat before satiation sets in.
And when I got home, the same old problems were still glaring at me.
This feeling of being let down by my holiday also happened when I went to Langkawi with my sister and her family earlier this year.
I had imagined touching moments of family bonding and adorable antics from my niece and nephew. Instead, the trip was most memorable for the tantrums the girl pulled and the boy's allergy attacks.
Still, I've been lucky to have had some good breaks.
My yearly visit to a spa in Thailand always leaves me calmer and this feeling lingers longer than usual when I return.
My best holiday ever was in Tokyo some time ago when everything turned out much better than I'd hoped; I allowed spontaneity to take over and I was happier than I'd ever been in my life.
I suppose the best vacations are those where you don't start off with too-high expectations. That way, you don't set yourself up for major disappointments when things don't go your way or people don't behave the way you expect them to.
But even if a holiday wasn't that great, we do generally tend to look back on it through rose-tinted glasses.
Travel might be overrated, holidays might disappoint, but who will say no to going on a trip?
I know I can't wait for my next one.
This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Sep 21, 2008.
