The traveler-vs-tourist debate has been around for ages. To some, a tourist is somebody who is more interested in the destination and not the journey, who usually avails of pre-arranged tours and sticks with the guidebooks, who books accommodations beforehand, and who only admires the place and not make attempts to connect with the locals…
“Filipinos are annoying. Malaysians are ugly. Indonesians are lazy. Singaporeans are rude. Americans are dumb.” That’s what Google suggested when I typed the nationality (+ are) into the search box the other night. I was doing an online research about Malaysia for my travel blog when I spotted a search suggestion that I thought was a…
The rain was just about to pour when a man approached us. It was five past nine o’clock in the evening and my friend Ces and I were walking towards a cake shop along Tomas Morato in Quezon City. “Hello, sir,” said the man. “Can I ask you a small favor?” While he was remarkably…
Nine hours until my presentation the next morning when my phone made that awful sound, which at that moment was not very welcome. The clock had just struck midnight and I was still facing a blank PowerPoint slide, trying to find the first word. Still, I picked up the phone. “Hi. Is it a good…
I’m always afraid to take a cab alone. I just don’t feel comfortable being alone with the driver and the hold-up stories that I have been reading online are not at all calming. But it cannot be helped sometimes. Whenever I do, I take the passenger seat and start small talks with the driver just…
It was a weekly event. Every Saturday morning, all the kids in the neighborhood, including myself, gathered at the living room of my grandfather’s house to watch Maskman (a Japanese Super Sentai series similar to Bioman and Power Rangers). Just like every other kid there, I grew up in a poor family and my grandfather…
There was a tired silence lingering inside the van as we pressed the side of our heads on the glass window. Silently we admired the view of the many breathtaking places in Mountain Province as we drove from Sagada to Banaue. The hills, the hillsides, and the terraced hillsides; the mountains, the mountaintops, and the…
The oil on the pan was barely heated as I was cooking lunch when I heard two voices coming from one corner of the kitchen. It was my now 8-years old nephew with Min-min, a second cousin and his constant playmate, talking about something that he was preparing. “Don’t tell anyone, Min-min,” said my nephew…