Last Updated on January 22, 2022 by Tina
I just joined a challenge on WordPress, the Bloganuary. The goal of the challenge is to help jump-start blogging habits in the new year while connecting with other great bloggers from around the world. Each and every day during the month of January, they’ll post a prompt to the community site, as well as send it out via email. The prompts will either be a question or a directive, helping to serve as inspiration for blog content that day. This started last January 1 but I have read about it only now. There are still a few days before January ends and the prompts are quite interesting so I’ll try and catch up. January 21’s prompt is about time travel.
This is a very good question. And I have a few choices as answers. My best friend and I often talk about the past, and we would look back to the time when we had the most money. It was 2012 when I was working for a foreign company. I had a very high salary, a mobility allowance equivalent to 15% of my monthly income, and had annual bonus equivalent to 20% of my annual income. Well, I didn’t get exactly 20% of it, because 30% of my bonus went to tax. Yup, that’s how high the income tax is in the Philippines. Anyways, when we talk about the past, we always say why didn’t we go to Europe when we had lots of money. Europe is our dream destination.
2013 is another option. It was the year when our company retrenched the majority of the workforce and I was one of those retrenched. I received a huge amount of retrenchment package, large enough to spend for a year or more backpacking. I could have done that and started a travel blog. Maybe if I did that, I might be earning a lot from that blog already. Maybe I am in Thailand right now, or Laos, or Spain, or South America, living the nomadic life. Sadly though, I didn’t know much about backpacking back then. So instead of traveling the world, I used the money to build my house and my business. The business was doing well until the pandemic happened.
Another year I would love to go back to is 2016. Back then I used to think it was the best year of my life. It was the year I started traveling solo. It was also the year I met my Egyptian friend and we went on so many crazy adventures. It was a good year and I don’t think I would change a thing if I ever go back to that year. I just want to experience that year once again.
But if I have to choose only one, I would love to go back to 2019. For me, 2019 was way better than 2016. It was the year of so many travels. A year of many great and unforgettable experiences. 2019 started with a solo trip to Siquijor, my second favorite place in the Philippines next to El Nido. I met a Taiwanese girl and together we explored the island. And then in May that year, we went to Bali for my best friend’s bridal shower. I was only with them for a day though, and the other days I was on my own exploring the island.
That same month, I accompanied my nephew to Singapore. The trip was a gift by my mom to him, and he chose me to go with him. It was on that trip that I met an amazing guy, the person who made my backpacking trip to some parts of Southeast Asia the following month less scary and more fun. Less scary because I knew that if something happens to me, I won’t be hard to find because there is someone who knows my whereabouts. He came to meet me in Thailand, and we traveled together to Taiwan for his birthday.
I really love all the things that happened to me in 2019, so if ever I get to travel back to that year, I would only change one thing that year. And that is to tell my friend not to go to Malaysia. The accident could have been avoided and he wouldn’t have to go through that tough time in his life.
What about you? What year would you like to time travel to if you could? Would you change a thing?
