How Chicken Feet Travels Began
I never set out to start a travel company or to be a travel consultant.
In fact, Chicken Feet Travels was born slowly and almost accidentally—from a life spent chasing curiosity, collecting stories, and trying to understand the places I was moving through. It wasn’t a business plan or a five-year goal. It was a notebook filled with names of guides and stories that stuck to me long after the trip ended.
After graduating university, I moved back to Singapore in 2010, teaching diving on the weekends and working at a superyacht startup during the week. Any time the startup had a quiet month, I hit the road. I’d scooter through volcanoes and valleys, dive in remote marine parks, trek to waterfalls and to meet traditional weavers—and I’d return to Singapore glowing with the best tan ever.
People started asking the question that would become my unofficial origin story: “Why are you always so tan?”
The answer was simple—Tioman, the Perhentians, Bali, Komodo, the Philippines, Thailand. Certifying divers. Trekking mountains. Eating with strangers who became friends. It was 2010–2012 and I was seeing the places that are now all over today’s “must-see” travel blogs—before the blogs. Back when Instagram had barely a million users. Back when every trip felt like a real discovery.
Somewhere along the way, my notes became a lifeline. I wrote down every guide who who taught me something, every driver that showed me a side of their region that wasn’t online, every divemaster who understood the sea in a way no agency training could teach. These were the people I trusted—and slowly, they all become a part of the network of people and destinations that we work with.
By 2013, friends began asking me to help plan their holidays. When they came to Southeast Asia, they wanted the “Jin version” of the trip. And when I traveled again—this time through South America on a long, unplanned journey that became 495 days of what I now call market research—I knew that Chicken Feet Travels had already begun to take shape.
A Dive Trip That Connected Everything
In early 2012, I organised a dive trip to snorkel with whale sharks and dive with mantas in Donsol, in the Philippines. The trip came together by word of mouth and everyone knows each other by one way or another. As with all group holidays, we all tried to stay connected but life gets in the way. About a year later, Simon and I reconnected because Mark was leaving Singapore and he had to get rid of all his opened bottles of whiskey.
We didn’t want to run a tour company. We wanted to build a way for people to explore with more care, more depth, and more intention. To connect travelers to the local guides who had quietly changed our lives. To design trips that respected culture, land, and rhythm—not just time zones and bucket lists.
Why Chicken Feet?
There’s a longer story here but the short of it is: Chicken Feet represents everything we believe in. Grit. Curiosity. Unpolished beauty. It’s not the obvious choice—but it’s unforgettable. Like the best adventures, it becomes part of our essence.
What Are We Here to Do?
We create unforgettable, logistically brilliant adventures that nourish both traveler and place. Every trip is designed from lived experience, guided by trust, and rooted in real relationships. We connect you with the guides who know the forest by foot, the reef by feel, and the rhythm of their community by heart.
From scuba diving in West Komodo with one of Indonesia’s first local dive pioneers to learning about textiles in Nusa Tenggara Timur—we’re here to show you that travel can be both transformational and deeply respectful.
We don’t offer trips we wouldn’t take ourselves. We don’t partner with anyone we haven’t personally sat and laughed with. Every trip is designed to do two things:
• Support the people doing good work on the ground
• Help you return home more awake, more connected, and more you.
We’ve seen what happens when tourism does harm. But we’ve also seen what happens when it’s done with integrity.
At Chicken Feet Travels, We Believe In:
• Going off the beaten path—but not blindly.
• Creating experiences that are joyful and just.
• Supporting the local guides, hosts, and communities who have supported us from the start.
Our mission is simple: design the best adventures in Southeast Asia, make a positive impact, empower our local partners, and inspire travellers to explore in a way that transforms everyone involved.
What Are We Dreaming Toward?
We believe travel can be a force for change—when it’s done with intention, honesty, and heart.
Our vision is a world where:
• Local guides are respected as experts and compensated fairly.
• Tourists become more like guests—welcomed because they choose to tread lightly, listen deeply, and spend wisely.
• Communities thrive not from mass tourism, but from meaningful, regenerative relationships.
• Every trip creates a ripple of trust, dignity, and transformation—whether it’s a weekend in the jungle, a two-week dive adventure, or a multi-month rewilding of your life.
We want our travelers to feel what we’ve felt:
• The peace of looking up at the stars without light pollution.
• The expansion when learning something from an indigenous tribe.
• The knowing that comes when you realize your presence made a place better.
And it all started with a question:
“Why are you always so tan?”
