Post-grad transit: 20 destinations in nine weeks

MANILA, Philippines - I went because there were butterflies in my belly. And something was tugging at my heartstrings. I had spent too many nights wide-awake, just thinking about leaving the city, where all my fears lived. I finished school last year, and the people around me started getting real jobs, and that made me panic. Because there I was, just floating, dreaming, taking photos, having delusions of grandeur, and hoping like a madman that the dots in my life would start connecting. I was lost, and maybe a bit bored. I wanted to leave with my camera to places we hadn’t gone. I had a serious case of wanderlust and I was constantly looking for an adventure. I couldn’t wait anymore. So I decided to go.

It turned out that that was the hardest part. After deciding that travel would be my priority for 2012, the rest was just saving up and saying yes. I started the year on the road. I said yes to a traveling assignment for a magazine, and I ended up spending more than a week on a bus traveling overland to explore Northern Luzon. It was a caravan of sorts — I was stuck in that bus with a lovely set of people who were there just because they loved being on the move. I met travelers and daydreamers. I met someone who’s been to every province in the Philippines; a guy who hitchhiked from Boracay to Batangas because he was out of cash; a girl who had to travel with chickens to get to Bangkok. For more than a week, there was nothing but talk of places left to visit, places we’d seen, and the misadventures people had staggered.

Fisherman waif: Hannah took the opportunity to take photos of different sights and sounds around the country. Photo by Hannah Reyes

I saw local places very little traveled by, awesome wonders I had never heard of before. And every day I’d be on the road for five to 10 hours, and while in transit, I started to question and reimagine the way I lived my life. I figured that since 2012 could possibly be the last year ever, I might as well do what I wanted to do. And if it shouldn’t be the last year, well, at least I could say somewhere in the future that I had fun. A win-win situation. I wanted to see things for the first time. Traveling whenever possible was the way I chose to do this.

My love affair with the Philippines has just begun. I realized how little I knew about our islands. Over the last nine weeks, I visited 20 local destinations, give or take a few. I celebrated Panagbenga and explored an abandoned hotel in Baguio; learned to skim on locally made skimboards in the beaches of Catanduanes; went whitewater rafting in Kalinga; negotiated with armed men at an island in Caramoan; climbed a 600-year-old tree in Baler; fished with local boatmen in Nueva Ecija; learned jungle survival from the Aetas in Olongapo; and went on an off-road drive in Pinatubo — all while getting a tan and lugging along my equipment.

I’m back in the city today, and I still don’t know if I’m getting anywhere by going all over the place. But I do know this: my qualms about where I’m headed have become smaller compared to the motivation I have to just explore with complete abandon. I worry that I’ve gone mad. But when I’m on the move, that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. It’s just me and my camera, and an adventure waiting for us.

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For more of Hannah’s adventures, go to theyellowadventures.blogspot.com.

From cliff dives to city festivals, Hannah and her friends took the roads less traveled. Photos by Hannah Reyes