I wish I kept a travel journal since childhood. All we had were photos which unfortunately drowned in our home in Malabon, and my memory is a house ransacked by time each day, so I am listing some of the magical moments related to travel here. So I won't forget.

• First time to ride a plane Boracay, chewed gum to help me with ear-popping
• First time to ride a small plane Palawan
• Scaling the great wall of china
• Impromptu trip to Sagada from Baguio with the gf
• Swimming in the falls in the loboc river
• Fed the cows in quezon
• Saw a craft session involving the ates in quezon making souvenir bookmarks by meticulously cutting dried palm leaves to bahay kubo shapes
• Seeing a pink mango in Tiaong
• My cousin flying an authentic Australian boomerang and having it hit my younger cousin. blood everywhere
• Rolling down a small hill in Auckland
• Riding a raft in Lake Pandin, Laguna
• Swimming in Mt. Pinatubo's crater
• Checking out the glory that is The Louvre
• Getting lost inside Tiergarten Schönbrunn, that zoo in Vienna. I went to the toilet and when I went back outside, my family was gone. I couldn't find them, and it was raining and was so cold so I took shelter inside the monkey house. I fell asleep inside, and when I woke up I was still lost. They found me there after some time.
• Nakifiesta pahiyas festival lucban, found someone bearing our surname, tried to find a connection, ate at their house
• Swam in the river with a floating dead dog
• My first time to climb a mountain. i didn't think I could do it, Tarac ridge, Mt. Samat, Bataan. Three days, I cooked tuna carbonara in the mountains! Second time was in Anawangin
• Being given a carton of milk (which we refused) in the train station in Paris by this old guy who took pity on us as we shivered and shared a baguette to save money
• Watching performers in costumes dance in Orchard while I ate my wafer with blueberry ice cream, by my lonesome in a foreign country at night
• Being chased by ducks in Lake Taupo
• Feeding lambs in Hobbiton
• Seeing a giant cat in one of the stores in Baguio
• That gokart racing thing in Subic, reminding me why I shouldn't drive
• Eating sundot kulangot in one of the boats in Burnham Park
• Cockroach in my hair while biking in Burnham Park, it was my second time to bike and boys kept shouting at me and I thought they were just papansin when one of them said "miss me ipis sa buhok mo"
• Locked in a bathroom in amsterdam because my mom pushed me inside without reading the instructions in the door
• Non potable! in Italy I sat on this bridge and a boat filled with cute Italian guys kept on motioning for me to jump. Flustered, I refused with the first Italian word that came to mind. No, no, non potable!
• Seeing topless women in Boracay with the manongs positioning themselves near the women so they could ogle them better. then that live show involving two caucasian strangers who met in some bar and proceeded to get it on in the sandy well-lit shoreline, before doing the nasty in the sea, then separating like friends after
• Sniffing and tasting the roses in Lake Taupo
• Lake Taupo library, with the comics and magazines
• That time in some museum in Thailand when I saw a huge water monitor lizard crossing from the bushes to some place at the back of the museum where it encountered a lot of screaming, heh
• Seeing a tarsier
• Caving in China
• That scary masquerade-themed resto in Venice
• Surfing in la union, then surfing with the PSA in Real, Quezon
• Sleeping in the sand in Nagsasa, waking up and feeling like I slept for days when it's really just an hour, falling asleep again, waking up again, repeat until around 5 pm, when we contorted our bodies into gymnastic positions and made a human pyramid near the shore
• Seeing koalas in trees
• Sentosa adventure: Luge, Cable car, that really high glass thing, Rialto-like shooting and quantum x-type of ride, Segway (with mom falling)
• Seeing jumping kangaroos in the wild
• Flower garden in Lyon. "Coca-cola" the host's daughter asked me
• Acquiring chicken pox back in MNL after our host's kid in Paris spitted on us, pretending he was a dinosaur. Paris was our first stop and it was magical that the symptoms didn't show while we were abroad (3 weeks)
• Pink Point of Presence in Amsterdam! Weed paraphernalia everywhere
• That dog frigtening my brother near the famed Spanish steps
• That cold topless beach in Quimper where I felt overdressed with my sleeveless top and capri
• Feeling lost in Camiling, like in TGIS the movie
• Seeing an owl in Manila zoo, I think
• Anne Frank's house
• Seeing a white peacock in that HongKong park/bird sanctuary
• That woman asking me in French where I got my baguette and me asking her "Parlez-vous Anglais?" she replied: Yes, yes I speak English, where did you get your bread? And me answering with my hands motioning to the right but telling her it's to her left. Confusing her, mostly. Haha.
• Eating strawberries almost as big as my face and langostini in Brittany, France
• That old French woman motioning with her hands across her face and pointing to me. Maybe my face was dirty.
• Camwhorage with Kung Fu Panda, Beetlejuice and Frankenstein at Universal Studios Singapore
• Being weighed at that place where witches were persecuted in Europe: Oudewater Witches Weighhouse in Holland
• Eating gelato, with the cup really filled, in Quimper
• Mom almost being left at the station with all our bags because of a dispute regarding our train seats
• Seeing black swans and cygnets in Rotorua, NZ
• Drinking water from the vatican fountains
• Seeing that movie poster involving two women atop each other all over Rome, and near the entrance to the Vatican
• Seeing the beautiful Boracay sunset
• Being in EuroDisney, being the only one screaming even after ride was over at The Mummy Backwards. I only knew this because I felt that we weren't moving anymore, and when I opened my eyes, everyone had already gotten off the ride and was staring at me. fun times.
• Entering a hobbit house in Hobbiton
• Seeing a polar bear for the first time!
• Entering Shrek's castle and hearing the Singaporean tour guide talk about flogging. Awkward.
• Madame Tussaud's wax museum!
• That museum in Hong Kong where I lay on a bed of nails
• Posing with a baby elephant in thailand, because the guy made me
• Seeing a real live panda in china
• Being followed by a giant parrot fish in Diver's sanctuary, Anilao, even when the water was knee-deep
• Riding shotgun in that buggy with Kate maneuvering our way through Bohol's hill-like terrain.
• Touching that bear?fox?cat? in the HK zoo
• My first cable car ride in HK
• Segway in Sentosa!
• Next stop: Fi-REN-zay
• That time when it rained hail in Sagada while we were inside Lemon Pie House, playing with Vivian the kitty
• Zorbing and ATV-driving in Boracay
• Eating perilla seeds in Singapore and thinking all the time that it looked like frog eggs
• Eating steamed oysters for the first time (I don't eat them steamed), at Boracay
• Eating the most refeshing grilled pork with clear kaffir lime and cilantro dressing in Thailand
• Dropping my camera in the Great Wall because of my excitement and still being able to use it after. It wasn't shockproof. Days later it will give up on life, but I was still able to use it for the duration of the trip.
• Being held hostage by that saleslady in one of the shops in China, who didn't want to give up on the sale and wanted to come with me to the money changer. She was scary and relentless and I was bullied into buying shoes I didn't need. The lesson is not to ask for sizes if you're not that interested.
• Stalking monks in Thailand
• Trying all the ice cream in China, including this Haw flakes one
• The numerous golden buddhas and intricate temples in Thailand
• Conquering my fear of deep water and underwater creatures by snorkeling in Diver's Sanctuary, Anilao
• Riding and sleeping in the Eurail, with this woman waking us up by crushing her large empty water bottle and trying to fit it inside the tiny trash bin. In the middle of the night.
• Riding the luge in Singapore and then in NZ, being passed by kids because I drove so slowly
• Operating a dishwasher for the first time in NZ
• Performing a hongi with several Maori men and women at NZ. The little boy beside me was crying and frankly, I was as scared as he was.
• Seeing black and white cows dotting the green fields in NZ
• Eating a sandwich in one of Melbourne's laneways while two women snogged each other in front of me
• Scouting for silver earrings in Ibay's Silver Shop in Baguio. My ears were pierced for the first time that year (my parents wanted me to have a choice). I went crazy trying to pick the perfect silver stud and ended up with the woman symbol. I was 12, I think.
• Feeling like a time-traveler in Vigan. We ate empanadas and slept in that house where Tom Cruise stayed while filming Independence Day. We would scare ourselves silly that night, during the brownout, while my uncle hid under the piano and played it in the darkness.