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By Mihar Dias October 2026
A 16-year-old Thai boy, known online as Queue, took his grandfather 2,000 kilometres to see the Merlion. He did it by third-class train. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19JoNt9FPC/
Queue planned the whole trip himself. From Nakhon Pathom, just west of Bangkok, they rode the cheapest seats on Thai railways all the way down to Su-ngai Kolok, at the country's southern tip. They crossed into Malaysia on foot, took a bus to Pasir Mas, then a train south to Johor Bahru for around 390 baht each. A 50-baht bus carried them over the Causeway. Singapore hotels were out of reach, so they slept on our side of the border, and a man Queue respects like an older brother helped cover the rooms.
Then came the moment it was all for: an old man standing in front of the Merlion. Queue, filming only to keep the memory, can be heard asking his grandfather to act naturally.
I have read many grand statements about filial piety. Few have moved me as much as that small request, because it shows what the trip was about. It was never about the Merlion. It was about a grandson wanting to freeze a moment in which an old man's world became larger than it had ever been.
Some of us make the mistake of thinking love needs a budget. This boy shows that love needs a plan. He had no wealthy family and no airline miles. What he had was the willingness to sit on hard seats for hours, work out every connection, count every baht, and then count them again. Anyone can buy a ticket. It takes devotion to build a journey out of almost nothing.
This story touched me personally. I have long carried my own dream: to send my father to Mekah for his pilgrimage. Mine is a bigger budget than Queue's, and it has taken many more years of savings. Anyone who has worked towards such a journey knows the arithmetic. You set aside what you can, month after month, and the destination sometimes feels impossibly far. There are seasons when you wonder whether the dream is outrunning the calendar.
Queue's story reminds me that the dream is not only the destination. It is also the saving, the planning, and the refusal to say "someday" and leave it there. Whether the journey is 2,000 kilometres by rail or a pilgrimage across oceans, what matters is the same: we owe our elders more than gratitude spoken at family gatherings. We owe them experiences, while they are still here to have them.
And there is a lesson in how modestly he went about it. Queue never expected anyone to see his video. He simply wanted to keep the memory. Yet it passed 760,000 likes, and thousands wished his grandfather good health. People weren't responding to production value. They were responding to something many of us fear we have neglected: the unglamorous, faithful act of showing up for the old people who raised us.
He has since launched a YouTube channel to document their next adventures together. I hope he keeps going. I also hope the rest of us take the hint.
So here is my applause, young man. You had no money and no flights, just a grandfather who had never seen Singapore and a grandson who decided that was a problem he could solve. You have done what many of us with bigger wallets and longer résumés keep postponing.
The rest of us should stop saying "one day" and start saving.
Mihar Dias (mihardias@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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