After 9 years of regularly travelling the globe on business trips peppered scarcely with holidays limited to my annual leave balance… I’m finally on a flight where my true purpose is to travel, experience and write. For a travel blogger, it’s actually been a while! For now, there are no agendas in call centres, no training sessions, no ‘Australian culture workshops’ for offshore staff… Just travelling and capturing my experiences for 10 days. What a relief.
For now, I’ve escaped the mundane, soul-crushing cubicles of the corporate landscape. As I write this, I’m amongst the low rumble of jet engines at 35000 feet. The familiar soundtrack of a dulcet 747 drone makes me smile as we cross the equator.
Interestingly… It was exactly 6 years ago to the date that I was on the same Sydney to Manila flight. I sat, crammed into a small economy seat and with an iPad balanced on a tray table as I journaled my insecurities about heading into a culture I knew very little about.
The Boeing I was on, pushed me north towards Manila, almost against my will. I was going there to meet business colleagues in person for the first time. People I’d had partially bonded with but in a somewhat crass and rudimental nature over the awkwardness of conference calls and cultural faux pas.
Never before had I been sent to a place so last-minute, so unprepared. I knew little of the Filipino culture and in the lead up I found it difficult communicating my travel plans over poor-quality phone lines, trying to articulate instructions with my broad Australian accent, so abrasive to their sing-song Americanised dialect.
Little did I know, that years later, I’d be on the exact same flight with my Filipino wife and daughter, returning to a culture that is now so familiar. A culture that’s not only part of me but one that runs deep in the blood and genes of my 3-year-old daughter, Lilly.
I’ve lost count how many times I’ve flown this route… I’ve had many hazy flights… miniature bottles of red, standard choices of meat or fish with dry rice and strong G&Ts in plastic cups. All of this blends with average movies on small screens and before you know it, you lose track on such flights.
The static dullness and lack of stimulus in-flight, rob your memory of any timestamps on which to recall what happened. Flights are a strange haze and before you know it you’re in another culture of bright Jeepneys that clatter down congested, poorly maintained roads, belching diesel among the neon street signs that beam down on vendors pushing their carts of colourful produce.
You inhale a spicy, dense humidity that clings to you. It’s the wet season in the city as monsoon rain falls in symmetrical streams, channelled by improvised, corrugated iron roofs… You feel as though crossing the equator has brought you into another dimension.
Yet, now, I feel as though I’m returning to my second home. A land that was so exotic and unfamiliar has now become my other life. I’ll be in Manila for 5 days, before heading down to the islands and exploring some of the Philippines best beaches and resorts. Stay tuned.