It’s more exciting not to have anything planned, to have only one ticket in and one ticket out and know that in between anything is possible. That way, things never quite turn out the way you expect them to.

I now find myself in Antigua (the quaint little town in Guatemala, not the Caribbean Island by the same name, mind you) despite the fact that I never intended to spend any time here, or Guatemala, at all. I’d thought that from San Francisco I’d work my way immediately to Nicaragua, but that just didn’t happen.

People who know me can testify that I can - frustratingly - be a very last-minute person. I prefer to be described as ’spontaneous’ and I like to think that that makes me better able to deal with challenging situations under pressure, but I know my parents prefer the use of the unflattering adjective ‘haphazard’. Admittedly my last-minuteness hasn’t always proved to be a good thing, but more often than not I’ve found it to be quite useful, and it’s landed me in plenty of interesting spots I’d never have found my way to otherwise.

Basically, what happened was this:

I had a flight booked to Guatemala from San Francisco on October 16 at 8:05 p.m. and by 5:30 p.m. I still wasn’t sure if I was going to take the flight. You see, I’d fallen a little bit in love with San Francisco and wanted to stay longer, thought that perhaps later I could make my way down to Nicaragua by land via Mexico and Guatemala. But in the end, for fear of invalidating my return ticket home if I missed this segment, I decided to board my plane.

However, I had no onward ticket to Nicaragua and no accommodation booked in Guatemala. I thought that upon my arrival in Guatemala I would buy the next ticket out to Nicaragua, if there was one, or take a bus. Or maybe I would stay a night and make a little tour of Guatemala before moving on to Nicaragua, since I was already in the area. But honestly I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. So I waited till I arrived to survey what my options were.

In the end, what happened came completely out of the blue: two elderly women from Hong Kong adopted me for a little while and gave me a place to stay.

To be honest, for the first time in my life I had found myself intimidated by the prospect of spending the longer term in a foreign country. When I was in transit at the Tom Bradley International Airport in Los Angeles, the boarding gate had been swarming with Latin Americans — at least, that was when I had an inkling of what Latinos looked like. It was my first-real life glimpse of this people, and they looked nothing like the Latinos I’d seen on celluloid and magazines — Shakira, Antonio Banderas, Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias… just to name a few. Yes, I’d been no better than a frog under a coconut shell about Latin America and its people prior to my visit (which was one of the first reasons I wanted to spend my year out in the other side of the world in the first place), and it was to my surprise that I found them similar, in a tiny way, to the Malays in Malaysia, in the same way some of the Spaniards mistook my Muslim friend for one of their own while we were traveling in Andalucia last year.

Still, after the comfort of San Francisco where there were English conversations, English books, English ideas, English everything… all of the sudden I found the people around me so terribly unfamiliar and a little bit intimidating. My mind raced to envision what it would be like in Nicaragua and all the Latin countries I would be traveling to, and I almost felt like I didn’t want to leave.

Feeling so completely alien (compounded by the unabashed stares I was getting from eyes as dark as my own), it was only natural that I took comfort in the few Asian faces on board. There was a company of men who looked like they were on a business trip together, and in retrospect, perhaps they were Korean, because I’ve learned that there is a sizable Korean community here in Guatemala snapping up the business opportunities here. The men spoke perfect Americanized English and they gave me curious little glances — they must have been wondering what I was doing getting on a plane to Guatemala. I was a little too tired to make any sort of conversation, so lamentably, I didn’t speak to them; I didn’t speak to anyone. But at the end of the flight, just as we touched down onto the tarmac of La Aurora airport, I struck up a conversation in whatever little Mandarin I still retained from primary school with two elderly women I had thought were from China but who were actually from Hong Kong. I was very curious as to their reason for visiting Guatemala.

Turned out they’ve lived in Guatemala for the better part of the last 30 years, which explains their admirably fluent Spanish. The younger lady (Mrs Liang) still lives in Guatemala, whereas the older (Mrs Chang) has been living in the United States for the past four years. Since her husband died from cancer she’d moved to the States to live with her children, who were working and had made families in the superpower to the north. Mrs Liang was acting as a companion of Mrs Chang’s because Mrs Chang’s daughter had been adamant against her traveling to Guatemala on her own. They were both very shocked to hear that I was 22 years old, a girl, and traveling unaccompanied. Hence, Mrs Chang extended me an invitation to stay with them. She owned a property, she said, and although she’d rented out the ground floor to a restaurant, she still owned the top floor and I could have the bedroom there. It was her old family home, she said, and she was about to try to put it on the market to sell. She apologized beforehand that it hadn’t been lived in for a while, but with a little cleaning it should be livable for a short time. So if I wasn’t afraid of sleeping alone in the house, she told me, I could come with her; they themselves would be staying opposite the same street in a friend’s place like they had originally planned. It would be no trouble.

I must admit I was rather shameless about it and said yes almost immediately. And I didn’t know it then, but the rest of my four months would be shaped by this one encounter. And of course, my plans to get myself to Nicaragua as soon as possible flew right out the window.

This is the bedroom I slept in. That purple dye thingy is my sleeping bag silk liner, which folds small enough to fit into a pocket and has proven very very handy.

I felt very self-conscious when Mrs Chang’s grandchildren - a girl and two boys - came to pick us up, especially since it took a while for me to be introduced to them, since they were busy kissing cheeks and hugging after not having seen each other for some time. I kept thinking guiltily, “God, they must be wondering who the hell I am!”, but my shyness was soon put to rest as the grandchildren were incredibly inviting and friendly. Her granddaughter, Ana, is the same age as I am, finishing her last year of psychology at university. One of the boys had just finished secondary school and would enter university in January; the youngest was still in school. I was fascinated by the slight hint of Asian-ness in their faces (inherited from their father), but their mother’s Guatemalan genes had quite obviously prevailed. Sadly, later I found out that their father had passed the way of their grandfather.

I was very much a privileged guest to Hongkie and Guatemalan hospitality. When we arrived we went straight to Ana’s home where we found breakfast waiting on the table for us — my first taste of Guatemalan food: simple omelettes with tomatoes and onions and bean paste with bread. I also met the grandchildren’s mother but we didn’t speak much as she was rushing to work (she’s a teacher). They’d even prepared a makeshift bed for me in the living quarters upstairs so I could rest for a while after the flight, which had arrived in Guatemala at 4:00 a.m. I wasn’t tired however, so I didn’t use it, but I was very grateful at how much trouble they’d taken for me, a total stranger.

Driving through Guatemala you can see the disparity between the zones. The grandchildren lived in a posher neighbourhood (Zone 15 I think), whereas we were to live in Zone 1, parts of which are known to be the more notorious zones in Guatemala City, although it’s also where most tourist attractions and budget options are. However, I hadn’t known that until later. It was ironic really, considering that the kind ladies took me in for my safety but that meant I had to live in Zone 1. Haha. Still, I was entirely safe because we got around by car and never walked the streets, which honestly, raised my hackles every time, even if I was only crossing the street, especially at night. Where we stayed there is a sizable Chinese community — all running restaurants with Guatemalan bodyguards armed to their teeth guarding the entrances — and they all seemed to know one another. Thus I was treated to yum-yum Chinese breakfasts, lunches and dinners enveloped in an atmosphere that reminded me of home, all the aunties gathered together chatting in the typical ear-splitting Chinese way. Of course, I was scared to death by all the aunties regaling me of the horrific stories of robberies turned murders in Guatemala but I tried to tell myself they were just being overly concerned and paranoid, like my Asian parents or grandparents would be.

Conversely, Ana the granddaughter had told me with a roll of her eyes, “Don’t listen to what they say about it being dangerous here. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve been okay.” I was very tempted to listen to her but after all the stories I had heard from the aunties and the stories I had read in the news, I decided that Ana could say that it was safe because one, she spoke Spanish and she was a local; and two, she was living in the better part of Guatemala City. Zone 1 really is quite ghetto. I don’t think there was any way I could have walked down the streets with my conspicuous backpack and not been harassed. I could have opted for a roller bag like my dad wanted me to but really, the condition of the streets would have made it too difficult to lug along. A backpack is the most practical option, despite the fact that it screams ‘tourist!’

While I was in Guatemala City I’d also spent some time with a friend of theirs, the boss of Jou-Jou Restaurant (6ta Calle 3 - 52 Zona 1) whom I call Feng Tai, who took me around house-hunting with her in an upcoming residential area. I also met her perhaps-soon-to-be-daughter-in-law Monica, a girl about my age currently working on her thesis and who spoke good English, so we could converse comfortably. I also met her boyfriend Alejandro, who runs a steakhouse with incredible food, which we later went to for dinner. I was fascinated to observe that the couple spoke in Spanish to each other as their first language, rather than Cantonese — it was a pleasant fusion of what I would later realise are such opposite cultures.

So after two days in Guatemala City I decided I would spend more time in Guatemala after all, at least to make it to Antigua — the mecca of Spanish schools — to study. A big part of what spurred that decision was after I heard Monica’s Spanish. She spoke perfect, lyrical Spanish and I wanted to speak like that. It was music to the ears! And when I told my new acquaintances of my decision, their hospitality also extended to sending their Guatemalan driver and a companion with me to Antigua because “the chicken bus is too dangerous.” I’d ceased to be surprised by how far they could go with their generosity.

These are only some of the kind ladies having breakfast the morning I left them

I left Guatemala City feeling so incredibly unfortunate to have met these people, to have experienced some part of their lives even if it was for a short while, to have felt the genuine kindness of people who cared about the wellbeing of a complete stranger. They didn’t approve of me traveling alone, told me to go home, but helped me every inch of the way anyway, even if it meant putting themselves through some trouble.

When I told Tone, a Norwegian girl I met in Antigua, about this story, she said, “You see, that’s the beauty about traveling alone. You only get these experiences when you’re traveling solo.”

And you know what? That is absolutely true.