Twenty-six years ago I bought my first piece of real estate. It was a timeshare condominium at a place called Cranberry Village in Collingwood, Ontario, Canada. With the purchase of the condo came a membership in Resort Condominiums International. RCI functioned as the pool of timeshare weeks where members could 'bank' their week and swap it for a week somewhere else. To facilitate choosing where one would like to swap to, a catalouge, complete with coloured photos and amenities checklists, was provided. Remember there was no internet in those days!
I would pour over the descriptions of the multitude of places for which I could trade my week in Ontario. At that time, I had never travelled outside of Canada and the USA; I hadn't even been to Hawaii! The place that excited me most was Penang, Malaysia. It struck me as the most exotic of all the spots in the RCI catalouge.
All these years later, I went to Penang to celebrate New Year's Eve. I am no longer the naive, inexperienced , young woman that I was twenty-six years ago. I have lived in Botswana, Japan, Spain and,currently, Singapore. I have travelled to Australia, South and Central America; I have even been to Hawaii! Penang did not disappoint. :-)
