One Year of Traveling Rewind — Introduction

I recently got back from my South America trip. Thinking back, it has been exactly one year of traveling which I left for the Philippines mid-April in 2018.

13 countries, 24 cities, and 356 days later, I created a zoomable map.

My flight routes in the last 365 days

I used to get away for the standard 3 weeks out of the 52 weeks. Those were the fragmented pieces of information. It was my attempt to get out of the monotonous working routines to see something new and to feel alive. It was my NyQuil Cold & Flu — a temporarily relieve of the 9-to-5 symptoms.

Now I was lucky that I had these blocks of memories that I can look back on. I took on these adventures that only happened in TV shows by biking in Vietnam, Scuba diving in Thailand, and road tripping in Brazil. I was also glad that I did not hike up mountains for days during my traditional 3-week-a-year vacation. Inca hike was meaningful, but it was nowhere nearly as enjoyable.

With abundant time during this trip, I then realized that traveling should be a byproduct of whatever I was doing, not the other way around.

Throw back to the time in the Southeast Asia

If I recall correctly, there were also recent grads leaving their 9-to-5 to write blogs because they did not quite enjoy the 49 weeks out of the 52 weeks. I realized that was not for me. I was interested to learn more about the Inca history and the Vietnam war. Of course, learning about the local culture was always the goal for all the traveling. What was left was these abundant time and I miss being challenged. Bumming around, I realized that I need to set a goal for each week. My attempts to generate goals were futile, and the goals were obvious and easy-to-reach —biking down the death road, finding the cheapest food, napping on the beach etc… However, these all lack a higher meaning. Before, napping on the beach was to escape the cold and the daily work. Soon, there is no difference between napping on the beach or on the couch.

There was a need to do something meaningful. All of sudden, I am not jealous of people who are traveling any more; I am jealous of the traveling Instagram photographers, web dev digital nomads, eCommerce gurus in Bali. They had a task set to do, and traveling was merely a byproduct of what they do.

I found this place on 9gag and set out to find it in person.

In the following months, I hope to jot down many aspects of my travels — the good and the bad. Hope to write about the best beaches in Southeast Asia, my favorite adventures in South America, and all of the menial problems that I ran into.