She spent much of her time in South America, learning Spanish, exploring the great outdoors and getting familiar with Latin American culture for eight months.

“I didn’t want to spend my 20s hanging out in a cubicle,” she said.

She decided to head out at that stage in her life because she was passionate about traveling and she did not have that many financial responsibilities.

Traveling full-time made her more resourceful and better at problem solving, she said. And, when she returned to Singapore in September last year, prospective employers were intrigued.

“A lot of them were very wistful and said they wish they had done it when they were younger,” she said.

She found a job in a hedge fund after three months.

On top of that, she now runs a blog on the side. Called Koala Travels The World, she collaborates with tourism boards and writes guides to countries such as Bolivia, Swaziland and Uruguay.

Here are her best tips for going on a long traveling trip.

1. Set a savings goal

Most fresh college graduates get excited about their first paycheck and spend it on brunch, taxis, shopping or parties. But Chua knew she wanted to be able to travel full-time and started saving from her very first paycheck.

In Singapore, it’s also common for young people to live with their families, so she was able to save on rent by staying with her parents.

However, she emphasized that part of saving was about doing a lot of research.

She read many travel blogs about the experiences of full-time travelers and used that research to set a budget of about $50 a day for her big trip.

2. Break up a big goal into smaller ones

Chua put her project management skills and finance-savvy into travel budgeting.

First, she charted her spending to figure out exactly what she was spending money on. She then decided on her budget, and made small savings goals for each quarter.

After that, she broke that down further into months to make her mini-goals easier to achieve.

It wasn’t easy for her: It took four years to save about 50,000 Singapore dollars ($36,000).

“It was definitely a challenge to save that,” she said. But, she added, if you have a goal that you’re working towards, then it’s easier to find motivation to work toward that goal.

3. Make your spending work for you

Travel hacking has become popular, especially in the United States. It’s essentially accumulating points on credit cards and turning miles into free, or very cheap, flights.

Chua said it has been “a bit difficult” to travel hack in Singapore compared with the United States, but it’s still possible.

Once again, she researched the best credit cards for her needs, and spread her spending across three cards.

With that, she racked up enough points to fly around the world twice.

She cautioned, however, that people need to be very familiar with the cards’ billing cycles so as not to end up paying more in late fees.

4. Be flexible about your travel plans, but not your budget

Chua said that she was pretty easygoing with her travel plans — stopping in unexpected places to see friends and extending stays when she found places that she liked.

“Don’t overplan — that takes away the whole fun of travel,” she said.

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Aaron P. Bernstein | Reuters

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington,  July 25, 2018.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Tokyo on Saturday for talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other officials ahead of his fourth visit to North Korea for denuclearization talks with its leader Kim Jong Un.

Despite Kim’s pledge to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, Japan, Washington’s key ally in Asia, still considers North Korea to be a “dire threat,” and is pushing ahead with plans to bolster its ballistic missile defenses with Aegis Ashore batteries that can target warheads in space.

Speaking to a pool reporter en route to Tokyo, Pompeo said his aim in Pyongyang was “to make sure we understand what each side is truly trying to achieve.” He also said he hoped to be able to agree a “general date and location” for a second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim following their first meeting in Singapore in June.

Pompeo’s last visit to North Korea failed to make progress with Pyongyang denouncing him for making “gangster-like demands.”

Recently, he angered North Korea by insisting that international sanctions must remain in place until it gives up its nuclear weapons. On Wednesday, he said there was unanimous support for this at last week’s U.N. General Assembly, even if Russia and China “had some ideas about how we might begin to think about a time when it would be appropriate to reduce them.”

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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross signaled on Friday that Washington may flex its muscle with additional trading partners in order to exert pressure on China to open its markets, saying that a “poison pill” provision in the recently completed pact with Canada and Mexico could be replicated.

Ross said in an interview that the provision was “another move to try to close loopholes” in trade deals that have served to “legitimize” China’s trade, intellectual property and industrial subsidy practices.

The United States is now in the early stages of talks with Japan and the European Union to lower tariff and regulatory barriers and try to reduce large U.S. trade deficits in autos and other goods.

If the EU and Japan signed on to provisions similar to the one in the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), it would signal that they are fully aligned with Washington in trying to increase pressure on China, the world’s No. 2 economy, for major economic policy changes.

The provision in USMCA, which is expected to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, effectively gives Washington a veto over Canada and Mexico’s other free trade partners to ensure that they are governed by market principles and lack the state dominance that is at the core of President Donald Trump’s tariff war against China.

Under the provision, if any of the three countries in the USMCA enters a trade deal with a “non-market country,” the other two are free to quit in six months and form their own bilateral trade deal.

“It’s logical, it’s a kind of a poison pill,” Ross said.

Ross, asked if the provision would be repeated in future trade deals, said: “We shall see. It certainly helps that we got it with Mexico and with Canada, independently of whether we get it with anyone else.”

He added that with a precedent now set, it will be easier for the provision to be added to other trade deals. “People can come to understand that this is one of your prerequisites to make a deal,” he said.

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Reuters received multiple messages via email and social media from foreign banking and legal professionals expressing shock at the decision.

A spokesman for the U.S. Consulate General described the rejection as “deeply troubling.”

“This decision is especially disturbing because it mirrors problems faced by international journalists in the mainland and appears inconsistent with the principles enshrined in the Basic Law,” he said.

Reporters Without Borders called on Hong Kong authorities to reverse their decision.

“This is clearly a form of retaliation for his involvement in the public talk organised in August by FCCHK, which angered Beijing by featuring a pro-Hong Kong independence activist,” the group said in a statement.

“Such action is yet another proof that the Chinese authorities are extending their policy of intimidating foreign journalists to the territory of Hong Kong,” it said.

The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) said it was shocked at the move and urged the government to reconsider and explain its decision.

“If left unexplained, it will give rise to worries that it is an act of reprisal against Mr Mallet, further undermining public confidence in freedom of speech and the press,” the HKJA said.

Twenty-two lawmakers from Hong Kong’s democratic opposition called for Mallet’s visa to be reissued.

“It is sending a very wrong message to the international community that Hong Kong is just another city in mainland China,” veteran Democrat Party legislator James To told reporters.

Some pro-establishment politicians backed the government’s move, however, saying strong messages had to be sent that Hong Kong had zero tolerance of independence calls, government-funded broadcaster RTHK reported.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement the visa rejection, together with the unprecedented banning of the Hong Kong National Party, showed a quickening downward spiral for human rights in Hong Kong.

“This is shocking and unprecedented,” it said. “The Hong Kong authorities’ visa renewal rejection — without explanation — of a journalist who’s done nothing more than his job smacks of Beijing-style persecution of critics.”

The FCC, whose members include senior lawyers, scholars and government officials besides journalists, has long portrayed itself as fostering and defending free speech.

Mallet has worked as a journalist and foreign correspondent for more than 30 years, first at Reuters and then for the Financial Times, including more than 12 years in Asia.

—CNBC’s Paula Sailes and Vivian Kam, and Reuters contributed to this report.

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The lone remaining Republican swing vote in the battle over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh announced her support for the judge on Friday, saying she believed one of his accusers but that the allegations of sexual assault against him did not meet the “more-likely-than-not” threshold she required to sink his confirmation.

Susan Collins, R-Maine, seemed to refer to a theory first broached by a Washington Post columnist and later promoted by conservative pundits and Kavanaugh himself: Perhaps the accusations against the judge were a case of mistaken identity.

In a carefully choreographed, nearly hour-long address, Collins described the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who told lawmakers last month that Kavanaugh assaulted her in the early 1980s, as “sincere, painful and compelling.”

“I believe that she is a survivor of a sexual assault, and that this trauma has upended her life,” Collins said in the speech.

But Collins stopped short of saying she believed Ford’s testimony entirely. Ford told lawmakers last month that she was “100 percent” sure that Kavanaugh was the person who assaulted her.

Collins raised doubts about that part of Ford’s testimony, noting that Kavanaugh “forcefully” denied the allegation, and that a number of alleged witnesses could not corroborate that the incident occurred.

“The facts presented do not mean that professor Ford was not sexually assaulted that night or at some other time,” Collins said. “But they do lead me to conclude that the allegations fail to meet the more-likely-than-not standard.”

In his own opening statement to lawmakers last month, Kavanaugh also raised the possibility of mistaken identity. He said he was not “questioning that Dr. Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time.” But, he said, he never sexually assaulted anybody.

Lawmakers have been caught in the midst of the #MeToo movement, which has spread a spotlight on sexual abuse. The movement has also led to tension in cases where the evidence is uncertain, as Americans weigh the movement’s emphasis on believing those who say they are victims of sexual abuse against the rights of the accused to a presumption of innocence.

Collins noted that the Senate confirmation process was not a criminal trial but said that “certain fundamental legal principles about due process, the presumption of innocence and fairness do bear on my thinking.”

While she blasted the confirmation process as a “caricature of a gutter-level political campaign,” she said that if any good had come out of the process it is that more attention would be paid to the problem of sexual violence.

“Every person, man or woman, who makes a charge of sexual assault deserves to be heard and treated with respect,” Collins said. “The #MeToo movement is real. It matters. It is needed and long overdue.”

But Collins said that the confirmation process had raised questions about Ford’s account. For instance, she said that it was still not clear who drove Ford to the party at which she claims Kavanaugh assaulted her. She also said it was odd that none of her friends called her the next day.

“Even though she left that small gathering of six or so people abruptly, and without saying goodbye, and distraught, none of them called her the next day or ever to ask why she left, is she okay,” Collins said. “Not even her closest friend, Ms. Keyser.”

In announcing her support for Kavanaugh, Collins effectively ensured that he would be confirmed to the Supreme Court. The final confirmation vote is expected to come as early as Saturday.

Trump appointed Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy in July. Kennedy had long served as the court’s swing vote, particularly in civil rights cases. Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the court would solidify a conservative majority on the court for the foreseeable future.

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