Travel Blogging 4 🌙

It's calm out. The morning air is brisk and I can see shades of red of a sun about to rise. The city is still asleep. Lucky bastards, I think. In the sky, I can see this perfect crescent moon, next to the morning star. It's a gift to the early riser. Okay, I guess I'm a lucky bastard too. Our Uber picks us up at 05.30am.

I'm out in the world again, making new travel memories, while I'm not even halfway done writing up the travels of last year. But as it turns out, I need this. I need to travel in order to think, in order to feel, in order to be. Travelling keeps me going.

Writing in retrospect

In my mind, I'm still in The Philippines. To me, it was a place of rest, where I could take a step back, find a routine and recover from months of intense travelling. A place, where I could write and be close to the ocean. It's where I experienced my first tropical storm, where a dog stole my shoe (No one wears shoes in The Philippines, I had to learn that the hard way), where I've made so many friends and where I've learned surfing.

But beyond my personal experiences, only today do I get to really appreciate what kind of a place The Philippines is. The mystical mountain province, the recognizable purple yam called "Ube", or how Spam became a national treasure.
Balikbayan boxes, the outbreak of the volcano Pinatuba, the legendary tattoo artist Apo Whang-Od. The Philippines is a place filled with magic.

As I'm writing my travel blog with a considerable delay, I don't just get to take myself back to these places. I also get to learn about them, better understand their history and discover what they are really about.

Writing in retrospect is wonderful.