The Philippines

San Juan, La Union

February 9 - March 16, 2025

Two unexpected love stories that started and ended quickly. A time when my heart hurt too much in too short of a time span. A time when too much happened. But a time also filled with memories and feelings I’m ultimately grateful for.

San Juan was a truly interesting time. I feel like so much happened in these 5 weeks, and all of which was so unexpected. The first of the unexpected, was even ending up in San Juan in the first place. After Taiwan, I had always planned to come to the Philippines, but I was planning to land in Siargao and make it home for a while, while I figured out my life. But instead, I ended up finding the perfect place to do this while still in Taiwan, and unexpectedly, met a guy there, while I was really trying not to meet a guy. I ended up coming to the Philippines with him, to La Union.

While I was really trying not to meet a guy at the time, because I was in fact trying to settle down to process a 4 month travel relationship that just ended, you just can’t help who you meet and when. And so when I met someone I instantly connected with just 3 days after things had ended with my last relationship, I decided to keep appreciating and enjoying the rare connection, but just as friends. But after 3 weeks of hanging out together in Taiwan with this level of unspoken something beneath it all, we ended up deciding to go to the Philippines together. I was coming anyway, he wanted to take a few weeks break from living in his small town of Taiwan, and he figured, why not the Philippines?

Deep down I think I knew it was too soon for me to try and be with someone again, yet I really liked him and really wanted to go with him. I felt like I was at this crossroads between deciding what I knew was right for me (not going with the guy and giving myself more time on my own), and doing what my heart wanted (going to the Philippines with the guy I really liked). It’s a common mistake of mine, to go with my heart wants over what my brain says is right (one day I’ll learn this lesson), and this time, it was no different. I decided to go the Philippines with the guy and just enjoy the time for what it was.

And so coming to the Philippines with someone was already unexpected. Going to La Union was unexpected, since my original plans were to head straight to Siargao. And, wouldn’t you know it, how quickly things ended with him, was unexpected.

While we had gotten to know each other in a pretty deep way as friends in Taiwan, what we didn’t know was how travel and day-to-day life would work together. And as it turned out, it didn’t work so well. He liked to wake up at 6am and do, do, do throughout his day. And I liked to take things more chill - do things, but also leave time to just be. In fact, the way he constantly filled his day and was thinking about the next thing, felt to me like he was always in search of a distraction from just sitting and being with his feelings and life. And this, to me, is completely opposite of how I like to function.

While our time together started out really nicely, over time it led to him feeling like we were too different, and eventually to him simply not liking me as much anymore. And to be honest, it was a huge ouch. It was maybe the first time I had spent a lot of time with someone where they ended up telling me that they simply just didn’t like me as much anymore. I, on the other hand, felt a connection in a specific, deep way with him, and it really hurt to hear that he felt differently.

After he left, I felt a lot of sadness. Emptiness really. Not just about us not working out, but also about some things I realized about myself. I was trying to process, while also trying to keep on going.

Enter the unexpected part four. As I was still grieving this relationship while also trying to enjoy my time as much as possible with some genuinely great people I had met, I completely, unexpectedly met another guy. Only two days later.

Enter Kevin. A small group of us from the hostel went out one night, and one of them brought his friends he had met earlier in his Philippines trip. Kevin was one of these friends. That night, I could tell he was interested, but I kept thinking I had too much stuff of my own going on and needed more time to process. But an hour of dancing later, what do you know, I decided fuck it. This guy is cute and sweet and affectionate, and so I’m just going to go with it. Even though I knew yet again, that I was going with my heart and not my head, I just wasn’t ready to learn my lesson yet.

After that night, we continued hanging out throughout the week, and it was honestly such a nice week with him. Really the best week. He’s half Filipino, half Swiss, and was staying with the Filipino side of his family in La Union. He knew I liked local experiences, and so he invited me over to join a lot of things with his family. We watched his cousin’s basketball games down the street, his family prepared a huge traditional Filipino feast for us, we died laughing while drinking San Mig Lights in the backyard with his cousins, and we partied, dancing the night away at the Tree House. It was truly a time when I got to experience local life, not only as a stranger who so kindly got invited by locals to join in, but almost as part of the family. It was really different, getting to actually know someone in the family, and it was a time that was so special to me in this Philippines trip.

Not only was time with his family special, but he was also so sweet and affectionate with me. Everything with him just felt so good and easy and natural that week. I’m a big physical touch person and almost always feel like I’m the one that initiates it more, and with Kevin, it was maybe the first time ever that I felt like someone liked it as much as me, and that I could just relax into it and not have to think about it at all. I really appreciated how I didn’t have to think about much at all that week, that everything just felt good and easy.

I wasn’t looking for a rebound, and in fact I don’t think these are good to have. But perhaps Kevin functioned as the perfect inadvertent rebound. A week later, I found myself not even thinking about the first guy anymore, despite how hurt I had felt at the time. But knowing how much I didn’t want to get hurt again when this inevitably ended, I tried not to get attached to Kevin, tried to keep myself at an emotional arm’s length. And while I think I was mostly successful, after enough time with someone that you like, it’s really hard not to catch any feelings at all, and in the end, perhaps I did get a little bit hurt again.

But it’s honestly hard to say the reason why I felt hurt in the end. While our first together was perfect, he became unexpectedly distant during the second week. And while I always knew that we were going to end, it was perhaps the way that it ended, that led me to feel hurt. I honestly couldn’t figure out if I had started catching real feelings, or if I was mostly disappointed with how the whole situation ended up changing. I think it was a mixture of both, but perhaps mostly the latter.

While there were many mixed emotions throughout this time, I look back on it with so much fondness and gratitude. So much gratitude that I was able to experience and enjoy local life with him and his family. Gratitude that I got to experience such sweetness and affection. Some sadness about how it ended. But overall, a memory in the Philippines that I’m really grateful for.

Kevin aside, life in La Union also changed so much for me after Yvan left. I moved to the dorm in the hostel we had been staying at and met so many good people there. So many interesting and different types of people, and both foreign travelers and Filipino travelers. I finally got into a good routine of working at the same coffeeshop everyday and catching sunsets, dinner, and drinks with friends afterwards. I became better and better friends with the locals and felt like I was becoming a part of the local community there. And I made a genuinely good and close friend, which is really such a difference maker when traveling.

I got comfy in my life in La Union, and honestly got a little lazy to leave. I was sad to leave the somewhat consistent life I had created there, but I knew I didn’t love it enough to stay long-term. And so I kept saying that whenever I felt ready to leave, I would. But I kept never feeling quite ready, and kept pushing it back another few days and another few days. But eventually the day came. I finally felt ready and I booked a flight for the next day to Palawan.

La Union was truly an interesting time. It was a time when so much happened. And so many different memories. I look back on it with a deep fondness and appreciation. A time when I really got to experience a lot. But also a time filled with sadness, where I grappled with a lot of tough moments, and was left with a lot of things to process. It was a time filled purely with so much. And despite all ofit, I’m more than grateful for the time and memories there.

Palawan

March 17 - April 4, 2025

Palawan was finally the time for myself that I had been really needing. It was a time when I realized how utterly exhausted I had become. From everything. Emotionally exhausted from all of the ups and downs and heartaches. Realizing I wasn’t sure if I was fully happy traveling anymore. Feeling a little lost with my direction and where I was heading.

I had a closed heart and I felt a level of heaviness in my chest where I didn’t feel settled. I felt like I couldn’t fully relax, and I didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t feel like that girl that used to have this openness towards life and people anymore, that romanticized this ideal type of love, that was ready to embrace anything and everything that came her way. I felt closed. I felt like I had experienced so much hurt after hurt, that I didn’t have the capacity to love, or to be open, anymore. I had known for a long time that I had needed to take the time on my own, to process and to heal, and this time I had finally reached the limit and was giving myself a forceful break.

And so I took an intentional break from life in Palawan. A break from boys, a break from anything that gave me any added stress. I set a very intentional month where I wouldn’t have anything with any boy, and would remove stressors from my life as much as possible. I needed to give myself the much needed time to process everything that had happened the last months and truly be able to heal and move on, and start from an emotional clean slate again.

I went to Alimanguan, a tiny town within San Vicente on the West Coast of Palawan. When I first arrived to find that there was literally nobody else at the hostel and almost no other travelers in town, my first reaction that perhaps this was a little too quiet for me and I wasn’t sure if I’d like it. But after settling in for a couple hours, I realized perhaps this is exactly what I needed. I don’t even know how long it had been since I last had this much peace and quiet alone time to myself. I had to acclimate to enjoying this kind of solo company again, but then found myself so grateful for the space that I would be allowed to have there.

Alimanguan was a really great start to the healing and processing journey. I surfed great, uncrowded surf everyday. Normally surfing is one of the only times where my mind is completely blank with nothing on it besides the waves. But even during my first few surf sessions, I found myself thinking. Thinking about Kevin, about the last couple months still. But by the last couple surf sessions, I found my mind completely blank again, and it was a beautiful way to see the progress I was making in my own processing.

Alimanguan is a very off-the-beaten path place that very few travelers visit. It was here that I met Roberto and Alfonso, who would become my good friends for the next couple weeks as we continued to travel together.

The first person I met was Roberto, and it was just the two of us in this whole town for a few days. It was a wholesome few days, where we’d eat together at the only restaurant in town, Turtle Resort. A really good restaurant with local Filipino cuisine right on the beach. And we’d talk about life, and have all sorts of nice chats. I really appreciated having good but very chill company there. Where I could still mainly do my own thing and process life, but also have a friend to enjoy simple meals and sunsets with. His friend, Alfonso, whom he’d met earlier Manila also joined us in the end. And in the end, I’d have a really good friendship and vibe with him, sharing so many laughs and jokes like I hadn’t with somebody in a long time.

Alimanguan was a really lovely time. It was a very small local town on the coast where you could also surf, but that very few people knew about. It didn’t even feel like a surf town. Just a local town where you could also surf. Life was simple there. I would surf every morning with just only a few locals in the lineup, I would setup my workstation on the deck outside the hostel for the day, since there was no one else staying there, and I would go to eat every meal at Turtle, the only restaurant in town. A simple but delicious place right on the beach. I really loved these days in Alimanguan, and feel grateful for the much needed time and space it gave me then.

Then, Alfonso, Roberto, and I caravanned to Port Barton, where we were all planning to go for our next destination. Port Barton was a lovely time, but perhaps a precursor for what would end up not being such a lovely time. In Port Barton, I saw Alex, my roommate and one of my best friends from home, and it was like seeing a ghost when we first saw each other. It was honestly so, so lovely to see him, and so much good but condensed catch up time. He was only there for 2 days though. Too short, but we said we’d see each other a few weeks later again in Siargao.

Port Barton was also lovely with the boys, Roberto and Alfonso. We had our daily routine of getting 2 for 1 daiquiris at Happy Bar on the beach at sunset, and then taking our pick of which nice little local restaurant we wanted to try. I also met Emily again here, a really good friend of mine from La Union times, and I was so, so happy to see her again. It was lovely to spend time with her, and one night when her and the boys overlapped, she hooked up with Roberto, the known manwhore of the group. They had a great time and I was happy for them, but it would eventually lead to a friendship that turned kind of sour between me and Emily, and for that I feel was really a shame.

With the friends, Port Barton times were lovely. But, Port Barton itself, I would say was somehow not my favorite. You would think I would like it because it’s a small town with a relatively local village feel, but though small and rustic, there was too much development and tourism in a way that didn’t mix well with the local life. And something about this mixture yet division, created a vibe that I didn’t really like.

When in Port Barton, me, Alfonso, and Roberto decided to go to El Nido together to catch the Manu Chau concert (me gustas tu!!). I was really excited to experience El Nido and the concert with the boys, as it was a place I didn’t really want to go to before, but thought would be fun with this nice crew.