The Travel

Last night I was wistfully staring at my passport… normally at this time of the month the ball is rolling already for the next escape to Bangkok for my monthly “business” visit to the La la land…

My last travel to Bangkok was my 15^th trip to Thailand from Sept of 2007. That would make it 1 travel every 2 months if I were to compute the average rate of the trips that I do on a yearly basis. I fell in love with Bangkok the moment I landed on September 09, 2007. The love at first sight that I have with THAILAND was mainly because of the following reasons : I felt that I was in a place closer to home, the Thai have great similarities with Filipinos in terms of facial features and body structure, raining at night and sunny by day (just like my home sweet home), hotels are affordable, food is cheap, and they have green mangoes with a dip that resembles bagoong!

But what do I do there? I shop! But before your imaginations runs riot about the “notion” of SHOPPING and associate it with being “Sosyal” or anything of the sort, let me give you a clear picture of what exactly goes on when we do our “business trip”.

Heading to the airport straight from work, we take 6 hours flight to BKK (that is IF I’m lucky enough to be ON-Loaded to the flight as I am always on the waitlist!). On board, airline food had already lost its appeal, you will force your self to sleep despite the snoring or the endless chatting of the people beside you. Staff passengers either get the BEST or the WORST seat depending of the flight book load. If the plane is light, you’ll get the former, if the plane is full you’ll get the latter. But if lady luck is on your side, you’ll get bumped up to business class, (of course, that rarely happens!)

Landing in the destination on an empty stomach and on sleep-deprived state is a normal case for us, except for the few times that we were upgraded to business class, I was so relaxed during the flight that I even forgot that I am traveling and I cant remember where I was when we landed. Blame that to stress and sheer exhaustion.

When we reach the hotel , we barely have time to eat. Changing from our travel clothes to our “palengke- get up” (which is shirt, shorts and slippers) we head straight to our “shopping place” where we will spend the next 7 hours non-stop hopping from one shop to the other, bargaining, sorting, and buying the most affordable quality items that we can buy for our fashion-addict “clients”, we do all these while eating our food in-betweens.

When we are done, (I mean when we spend all the money we have) we will go back to the hotel, pack all our things and purchases and head back to the airport! Yes oh yes! We seldom spend the night in Bangkok… we need to take the flight back to our point of origin that same night as we have to report to work the next day, and this time, snoring or chatting, turbulence or no turbulence, business class or no business class we are already dead tired to care.

The only consolation we get from these sacrifices is the knowledge that no matter how hard and complicated the course that we are taking, it will soon be paid off in Cash and in KIND. The exhaustions are wiped off as soon as we see happy faces of the people we vowed to served, our clients who never get tired of waiting for us to see and buy the things “we have got” from our trip; and our loved ones who benefits from the fruit of our “labor”.

It is so hard to go through the same ordeal over and over again. Just the thought of long flights, sleepless hours, exhaustion (not to mention jet lags that can last for daaayyyys), is enough to make me decide to just sit at home and laze around. But if these hardships could feed our family, if it will help us send our students to school, if this will guarantee a roof on our head and survival to all, who are we to whine? Besides, it’s not at all hard as it seems to be, it could be strenuous but we get the chance to enjoy the ride.

You see, our life is like a travel tour package, we get ticket to live, we board to risk, we fight the turbulence, we endure the inconveniences. Reaching the destination is like achieving success. We are rewarded as we welcome the challenges and we enjoy the fun that it offers, we explore, we bargain, we take and we give. We LEARN. WE LIVE.

When we go back to our Origin, although worn-out and totally exhausted, we are richer in more ways than one.

How about you? Have you ever “TRAVELED” ?