25,000 Miles In Her Shoes, Part 1

…Until April 2000, when my parents and grandparents gave me, as a turn-of-the-century gift, a plane ticket to visit States again. It was my first time traveling without my family, and it was a very glamorous introduction to independence, which is why I think I’m hell-bent on being alone and self-sufficient today. I was nine years old then, and though I remember being with my grandmother a lot, I was shuffled from city to city and state to state, staying in with relatives and friends I first didn’t know, but eventually grew to love. I made new memories in LA, San Diego, SanFo, Vegas and NYC again, and visited for the first time the states of Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida.

I have really great memories of this USA trip, like feeding ducks and geese by a lake in Maryland, buying an orange popsicle from an ice cream truck, marveling at the Smithsonian museums, walking to find a Starbucks in Manhattan, seeing the Twin Towers for the first and last time, and bearing the Manila-like heat in Orlando. This trip also gave me my first episode of homesickness, and after a month and a half of being away from my parents and my brother, I cried myself to sleep every night in Pennsylvania where I was staying with my aunt. But the episode lasted as quickly as my tears fell from my face, and towards the end, I recall missing my family a lot, but not really wanting to go back home.

A year after, on November 2001, I traveled to Hong Kong for the first time with my parents, my brother and my grandparents. In this trip, I remember being in Bossini a lot and cringing at the Chinese’s brazenness to spit wherever they wanted. Hong Kong then was booming, but the values of the people living there were still struggling with tradition. When my family came back the following year in 2002, sanitation improved, but I think it was only after the SARS epidemic in 2004 when Hong Kong transformed to the glitzy, Asian shopping capital we know it to be today. During our second trip to Hong Kong, we also dropped by the Chinese city of Shenzhen, where I remember being toured around by this tall, impossibly sexy Chinese woman whom my brother and dad had massive crushes on.

On April 2004, I went back to the States, and this time with my mom and my brother. I struggled with this trip, because I was used to being alone most of the time when I last went to America. Security in the States became drastically strict after 9/11 too, so air travel never became hassle-free again. My brother and I were also in the middle of a really bad sibling rivalry phase, so I imagine the trip wasn’t so fun for my mom either. I do remember going to at least seven theme parks on this trip, including Hershey Park, where the air all over smelled deliciously of melting chocolate.

My brother and I grew up trying to quench an insatiable itch to see the world. To this day, random destination shout-outs are common over dinner, and we’re always racking our brains where to go next. It’s somewhat easier now, because we can actually afford some of our travel impulses. The InterCons and the Marriots of the world were out of our reach sixteen years ago, but what’s important is we never gave in to just staying put.

Travel is one of the best kinds of education you can invest in, and I’d like to think that because we grew up understanding just how big the world is, the bigger we also allowed ourselves to think, desire and ultimately, achieve.

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