Marlee Silva: 'How walking across Singapore with my oldest friend changed my outlook'

Alexander Campbell and I met in Miss Zajakovski's kindergarten class at Yowie Bay Public School in 2001.?

I can't remember the moment exactly, but I believe my friendship with Zan (as his family has always called him) may have been sparked by a comment from him, an avid Cronulla Sharks supporter, about my Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs-branded backpack, and blossomed through a shared love of rugby league and his dedication to pushing me out of my comfort zone.

His house was where I had my first sleepover and on that occasion, much to my parents' horror, his older neighbour made a particularly big impression on me when he taught us how to make homemade fireworks we called 'sparkler bombs'.?

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I was the kind of kid who usually wouldn't dare think of doing something without my parents' permission. I was terrified of anything that might be dangerous and ¨C most likely influenced by my dad being a police officer ¨C I lived in constant fear of getting in trouble.

This meant I wasn't easily swayed by peer pressure, but for some reason, Zan is one of the few people I let get to me.?

For many summers of our childhood we'd ride our bikes and scooters for hours on end, going well past the geographical boundaries Dad had set me that morning or embarking on impromptu bush walks down by the Port Hacking river, where Mum had explicitly told me not to go.?

Even back then, it was clear Zan was destined to not follow the path most travelled. He never seemed worried about what anyone else was doing and had so much clarity on where he was going.

He did a year of exchange in high school to The Netherlands and came back to teach us how to swear in Dutch, with wild stories of clubbing and experimentation, oozing an infectious desire to see all the world has to offer.?

In adulthood, Zan's discovered his greatest passion ¨C and, I think it's safe to say, his purpose in life ¨C is long-distance walking.?

To date, he has walked the breadth of Nepal, across Europe, 800km of the Colorado Trail in the US and from the Flinders Rangers back to Sydney.?

He does it all on his own, with a backpack, a one-man tent and sleeping bag, a few bottles of water, a phone charger, dried food if he's a few days in between towns and a very good pair of shoes.?

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Each time he's told me about a new trek he's off to conquer, I am naturally compelled to ask, why?

Why, when there's plenty of good plane, train and automobile options to travel across the world, would you choose instead to walk? And to camp, sometimes in monsoon rains, scorching heat and even snow, with feet and shoulders that must ache after trudging along, day after day. Why??

To answer that once and for all, just as a younger Marlee pushed her fear to the side and followed Zan on those bush walks near our childhood homes, this time I packed my own backpack and joined him for a couple of days in his latest and most ambitious quest; to walk around the world.?

That's right ¨C Zan is now nine months in to walking?around the world, which he thinks he'll be able to do in four years on the move. He started in Sydney at the front steps of the Opera House, made it up north to Darwin, hitched a short ride on a boat to walk a number of islands in Indonesia and had a final 36-hour ferry ride to meet me in Singapore.

And when I saw him at the ferry terminal, he had the same smirk across his face 12-year-old Zan would when he'd convinced me to come on one of his adventures.?

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After three days in thick humidity, sometimes scurrying across main highways, other times in rainforests accompanied by monkeys and warning signs for wild boars, I walked from the southernmost tip of Sentosa Island to Pulai, Malaysia with my wild walking friend and, aside from some blisters and wobbly toenails, the lessons I've brought home with me have left me a walking convert.

In the Instagram age, it's easy to get caught up in the aesthetics of travel. Planning the perfect carousel of candid postcard pictures to make your friends at home jealous seems to be a motivator for travel planning that's crept into our culture.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good travel post, but being off-grid for large chunks of the day, in the meditative state of left-right-left-right for hours, had me feeling more present and immersed in the countries we were walking across.?

Zan has said to me before that through all the communities he walks through, what's enabled him to go on the journeys he has, particularly with no consistent income and in the face of some treacherous weather, is the kindness and generosity he finds even through language barriers, as the people he meets offer him a place to sleep, a meal, a ride into town or even just a friendly conversation.?

In this point of our global history, in the darkness that seems to be revealed in our news cycle every day, Zan's optimistic ideal that most people are good felt na?ve to me.?

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But being on foot through suburbs not listed in 'Must-Visit Spots' articles online, seeing curious schoolkids poke their faces out of classrooms as we passed, having passing conversations with the average person who inquired about what we were doing, showed me he was right.

On my second night with Zan, we had one of the best meals I've ever eaten when a kind but determined woman in a back street in Johor Bahru pulled us in to her restaurant after 38km of walking. We were tired, but the cold beer and hot noodles comforted us. As we laughed and reflected on the old times, we caught the attention of a man at a table next to us.?

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For the next hour, the man sat with and spoke to us about his passion for making good in the world, his excitement for an upcoming trip to Australia to visit his brother, and asked all about what was motivating us with our travels, finishing his chat by offering us his email if he could ever help us with something.

It was not the most life-changing of conversations, but it was simply not one I would've had the chance to have with a local if I wasn't travelling in this kind of way. It's warm and unique moments like that which make for the kind of trip that leaves you with a greater value for the simple things and for being a wide-eyed traveller more than a tourist.

It's a great honour to have any friend who's been in your life for over two decades, but it's particularly special to be able to tell the world about a friend like Alexander Campbell. Whether it be trying to convince me his footy team is better than mine or to get me to embrace the uncomfortable and see the world on my own two feet, I'm grateful for the ways he's always challenged me and I'm sure he will continue to do so.?

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So go for walk with an old friend, get uncomfortable and offline and maybe you'll be reminded of the good that's still out there or even simply the good you still have thanks to the people in your life.?

You can follow along Zan's journey via his Instagram and website, and through his travels, he also hopes to raise money for the Fred Hollows Foundation and support their work in curing preventable blindness in developing communities.?