From Leeds to Life
We often hear of "life's twists and turns" and of people taking the road less travelled, or preferring the path that's off the beaten track. Our new column is devoted to youths with a different story to tell; their lives, off course. We kick off this week's installment with Richard Pillar's story, a Brit who left his home in the UK at 19 to travel alone. From Sri Lanka to Sweden, Mexico to Myanmar, Canada to Cambodia, he has visited them all.

By RICHARD PILLAR

Five years ago, I was 19-years-old and living in my hometown of Leeds, England in a run-down house I rented with a few friends. At the time it seemed as though the only thing that our parents cared about was for us to get a good education.

I felt otherwise. To be honest I didn't know what I wanted to do but I was sure I wasn't interested in textbooks.

I was not loud and rebellious, just a tad sluggish and this stemmed from boredom. There was angst in me. Yet, towards what or whom I cannot say.

Barely attending school, I was scraping together a meagre living tearing ticket stubs at the local cinema. Cruising through life on auto-pilot I would jot down my "escape" plan in a little notepad.

"Collect pay check. Ticket to London. Ticket to Mexico. Money for vaccination. Buy bag for stuff....."

It could have been anywhere really. I just wanted to leave. 

Mum didn't try to stop me but I could sense what was going through her mind: "Why Mexico? To do nothing? It's a waste of money. It's a waste of time!"

She cried at the airport as she watched her eldest boy go, with a backpack full of clothes and a bank account full of... come to think of it, my bag was near enough empty as well. 

A day later and I was in the Yucatan, soaking in the culture around me - the Spanish language, the Mayan civilisation, the afternoon siestas...

In the day, I caught and cooked fresh tuna fish by the Caribbean Sea. The nights were spent dozing in a hammock pinned up on the balcony of a ravaged guesthouse that belonged to a bizarre old lady who would pester me to read her scrapbook, which entailed accounts of how she drowned and became a mermaid.

Five weeks later, I found myself in the US. I was in Texas for over two months, mostly looking for work, which was hard to come by. Most of the good jobs - the pubs, kitchens, shops - were snapped up by the illegal immigrant (like myself). To survive, I had to be content with what was available. I remember spending one day licking envelopes at an anti-abortion organisation that distributed pamphlets dissuading mothers from abortions.

There was this one time, I found myself retrieving bright yellow bicycles. This was part of a community project to help the homeless and poor get around but in the process some were abandoned, stolen or just not returned. It was my duty to get them back (each bike was attached with a tracker), sometimes from really far flung places, and I was paid US$20 for them.

I flew to Seattle in search of work which was non-existent and was soon in Vancouver, Canada, doing odd jobs - painting houses, gardening, furniture-moving and finally, slaving away (but truly elated) as a deckhand on a small ship that took British Columbia's elite on fancy dinner cruises around the harbor.

Six months on the job, and I even got to be (or forced rather) Santa Claus, entertaining the kids on board. They weren't as charming as Santa might have wanted though: They complained about my nose ring, my accent, that I wasn't fat enough....

This nomadic lifestyle was inconsistent to say the least and at times it was lonely and difficult but I did my best to take it on the chin, viewing it all as an invaluable learning experience. Unlike my previous study efforts, this education which I was getting at the "School of Backpackers", seemed worth waking up for. 

My next destination: Southeast Asia.

As I gazed down on an ocean of clouds cascading down a Vietnamese rice paddy, as I rode an elephant in Thailand and went downriver in rubber tubes when in Laos,  I felt alive in a way I had never before.  

New and exciting feelings were flourishing inside me but in the heat of the moment I made the amateur mistake of following a girl back to Europe. It didn't plan out as how I had hoped and I found myself alone, waiting tables for rich golfers in an up-market Indian restaurant in the south of Spain. 

To nurse this broken heart, I looked for some solitude and peace in the wilderness of the Icelandic countryside where I found a job amongst the small staff at a simple family hotel beside an enormous glacier. 

Whilst surrounded by landscapes of inconceivable beauty I was still somehow trapped by how remote this village really was. On the verge of an emotional breakdown I abandoned my room-cleaning duties and escaped into the great unknown. I found myself down and out and completely penniless, hitchhiking across the country. Constantly contemplating my prospects I battled onwards through Arctic blizzards, ran out on restaurant bills and slept rough behind gas stations and on a derelict farm. 

I was in two minds. On the one hand I really thought it was about time that I just grew up, got myself an education and a normal job and pursued a more traditional route. On the other, I just couldn't face going home as there was still so much I hadn't seen. The idea of giving up was even more disheartening than having to wash in a public bathroom. 

I decided to further explore Scandinavia and ventured into the Arctic Circle. Sailing through the broken icebergs surrounding the great Norwegian fjords fed me with the tranquility that I thought I needed in order to come up with a solution to my dilemma.

It was here that I decided upon my next move. I traveled to the Netherlands and enrolled myself in a degree course in International Communications Management. I immediately met likeminded people from well over a dozen different nations and really came into my element.

I'm here now at Malaysian Today, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia doing an internship after two years living, working and studying in Amsterdam. 

In the two years - during my breaks - my undying wanderlust saw me in Hungary, savagely beaten by kebab shopkeepers and left bloodied, bruised and shirtless in a graveyard in Budapest; witnessed the devastation of the tsunami in Sri Lanka;  witnessed the huge contrasts that India offers; visited war torn Sarajevo; traveled to Myanmar; went sightseeing in Hong Kong...

From all my travels, I have learnt to see the beauty in even the worst situations. I have found experience to be the best kind of education. And I have come to accept that compromise is a huge part of life.