About me

Traveling is a very rewarding and educational albeit expensive hobby.   Ok, I can’t call that a hobby, more of a passion for most of us.  I guess I started traveling when I ran away from home, I had an argument with my dear departed father that went ugly, that was when I was about 16, a fresh high school grad...and a rebel at that.  I stayed for a while in a friend’s house, and then one day I stole my friend’s hair blower (sorry for that, I didn't mean it), sold it and bought a ticket to a far far away place called Baguio,  ahhh, the summer capital of the Philippines.   I don’t know why I chose it, maybe because it’s a cold place and somehow unconsciously it’s one of those dream place I want to see when I was young. 

I roamed around Bagiuo aimlessly for a day, nowhere to go, hangout in a park with my huge military backpack.  Darkness came, I felt cold and afraid, because an older guy was talking to me about offering a place for me in case I don’t have a place to stay. That made me uncomfortable, so I decided to take the bus back down to Pangasinan where a sister of mine was living.  I stayed with them for 3 months until a distant relative came who swayed me to join them to travel to Mariveles Bataan, I don’t even know where that is.  

Mariveles is a really nice place, we had some good time there but it didn’t last long, funds depleted, I decided to hitch a truck back to Manila.  My father convinced me to continue my university and so the early traveling stint ended there until I accepted a job overseas and the bulk of the traveling experience started.

So the out-of-the-country traveling experience started in 1997 I think, with neighboring country destinations like Hongkong, Singapore and Thailand, and then later, onto farther and longer journeys in the Middle-east, North Africa and Europe.