April 27: Cymru - Caerdydd / Cardiff

Tiger Bay was once a busy dock, home to many migrants, and birthplace to Shirley Bassey. Now it has been changed beyond all recognition and has been renamed. There are many things I find appealing about the place, most notably: the wonderfully titled, Mermaid Quay; the ultra modern Millennium Centre, adorned with an enormous facade bearing the legend (in both English and Welsh) In These Stones Horizons Sing; and down near the water's edge, a pair of life-size polsihed ebony stone statues of two immigrants chatting to each other from an earlier age. The female statue, sitting on the fence and looking over her shoulder out to sea, represents the many Somalians who came here - the male statue represents the many Irish immigrants who joined too.

What is it that makes us want to leave homelands and places of birth to voyage far away in distant lands? Is it the sole purpose of money? Is it for the prospect of a better life? Or is there some deeper level that guides us? I think back to my own reason for this current journey, and the roots behind this trip can be traced back to last September whilst exploring the jungles of Borneo with a friend. During one particular day trip, some 3,000m up in the foothills of Mount Kinabalu, we pursuaded our taxi driver to take us to the Sandakan War Memorial Garden on our way home.

What we experienced there became the catalyst for this trip. During the final days of World War II almost three thousand Australian, British and Dutch prisoners of war were marched to death in just six days throughout humidity and high altitudes that had made us both vomit and sluggish during our brief visit. We were given the slightest of insights to some of the hardships that these men had endured all for the banner of freedom. Later that night, at sunset, we talked about the freedoms we both had - chiefly the freedom to dream and the freedom to do whatever we wanted with these dreams, to act on them and to try to make them come true.

And yet, despite the abundance of freedom that we observed in our lives, both of us had been guilty in not always acting on our dreams - albeit because of being too lazy to try, to hesitant, too fearful of failing, or even employing procrastination (waiting for a more favourable time). We both made a pact to kick-start one dream, to initiate it through small, simple steps.

Dreams are the precious songs of the soul which ask us to listen. No matter how trivial or impossible that dream may sound to us - or even foolish to another - each is, in some special way, important to our own individual needs. All we need is little patience to watch them grow.