Hsui's peace and quite proved short-lived, however, and he found himself embroiled in events that were unfolding in Tiananman Square. Instead of covering the forum he took his cameraman out onto the streets and began filing stories about the protests that had rocked Beijing since April of that year and were soon to come to a bloody climax.
Within a year of making a splash as one of the few local reporters to have covered the bloody crackdown, Hsui decided to quit TTV and took up an offer to host the 1990 Miss Taiwan competition, which was being held in Paris.
Instead of returning to Taiwan directly he decided to travel back home overland. He first crossed Europe, entered and exited the Middle East, traveled through India, Nepal and Tibet and finally arrived home two months later via China and Hong Kong. Although he didn't know it at the time it was an experience that would shape his future career as a traveler/travel writer.
"I was in no hurry. I had no job to go back to and simply decided that I'd become a backpacker for a while," Hsui said. "I had no idea and certainly no plans to make a living out of traveling when I set out."
Since he discovered his true calling Hsui has visited 160
countries and documented each and every one of his trips on both film and photograph. In all he's filmed more then 3,000 hours worth of footage, some of which has been used by television companies, but much of which sits in his apartment along with all his other mementoes.
"I've always traveled alone, which does have its drawbacks. I quite often rely on locals to film me and they don't always known how to use a camera and I have had people film their feet rather then me," he said. "But I've managed quite well so far and have enough film to start a small television station."
There's footage of him being tackled to the floor by an adult female tiger and there's a hilarious scene in which he's fishing for piranha in the Amazon and inadvertently falls off the boat into the carnivorous fish-filled water. Hsui also has plenty of more serious National Geographic-like footage, which was shot whilst living with tribes in sub-Saharan Africa and in the depths of the South American
jungles.
Of course, Hsui's life as a traveler hasn't always been fun and games. His luggage was removed from an airplane by state security forces in Paraguay; he was nearly robbed and beaten to death by a gang of thugs in Mumbai; and he got caught up in a civil war whilst visiting the Congo and was forced to hide in a cave only meters from where rival factions were exchanging gunfire.
But while he modestly shrugs off these incidents as "experiences," he still balks when he recalls his first trip to Mongolia, where he had an unforgettable and rather unpleasant experience with a local homebrew known as horse milk wine.
"Oh! It was terrible, they use a recently skinned horses' hide, fill it with horse milk and let it sit for a few days. Of course, it ends up like runny stinky cheese and as a guest I had to drink three huge bowls of this stuff," Hsui said. "It's not something I plan to do ever again."
RSS