The country Finland and it’s Suomi language has always fascinated me for almost as long as I have been married. Always dreamt of visiting and discovering her beauty.
Singapore is where it all began
My fascination started when the husband started playing floorball or innebandy (in Swedish) when we first got married in Singapore. This game was highly popular with the Scandinavian expats there especially the Swedes and Finns.
This is the summer version of ice hockey which the Swedes and Finns are petty much born into. (My husband will never let me forget he has a gold medal as part of the champion team of the Singapore Floorball League ?)
The Finns in Singapore
There were many Finns working for Nokia then and naturally many of them joined my husband’s team. Their quiet demeanour and their ‘complicated’ sounding language- Suomi, has always fascinated me. Learning new languages highly interests me and as some of you may know, I’m can comfortably speak quite a few languages.
I find that the Finns were the polar opposite (no pun intended) of my tropical warm style in interaction. You ask a Finn a question, it takes them a tad longer than most to answer. It’s almost like they are giving you and your question the time and respect it deserves.
I remember feeling quite exasperated one night trying to have a light conversation in a noisy pub with a young Finn. What could have been a simple 5 mins conversation of a few polite questions took us 15 mins! Hahaha!
The holiday that changed it all
Anyway, in 2009 we went on holiday to a Malaysian island called Tioman. Tioman has been voted one of the best islands in the world for diving and snorkelling and I’ve been lucky to go there since 1995.
We bumped into another young family with 2 boys (we only had our 2 girls then who were 8 and 3) from Finland at our resort a few days into our holiday.
If you don’t know my husband and I, we almost always make friends with people we meet on holiday! Well, this case, Olli and Mirja were not what I thought were typical Finns. They were very friendly and pretty talkative for Finns! ?
I had booked a private boat tour for our family. They accepted my offer of sharing my private round island tour so they can get “free” translation from me.
A few days later and many more moments spent together, we said goodbye. Thanks to Facebook, we have been keeping in touch and can see our family grow older over the years. Their boys have turned out to be fine young men and so have our girls become young ladies.
The opportunity presents itself
An opportunity to fly via Helsinki presented itself to me last year. I decided the extra cost to detour was worth it. It meant I finally get to visit Finland and to finally meet my new old friends again. It’s been 9 years of just seeing their beautiful country through photos and videos on Facebook and I felt like it wasn’t enough.
So here is my weekend travel vlog and some photos staying with my friends, The Kytokaris, in Laampalaa where they are. We did as much as possible in that short 2 days and yes, I did the whole traditional Finnish sauna where it’s originally from. ? You can see all that in the vlog below.
Now enjoy the tour on video..
If you can, please enjoy my “Weekend Discovery Trip to Finland” Vlog:
If you have enjoyed this travel blog, how about coming along with me to discover a little bit of Andalusia, Spain? I have written a blog post here.