“Enough!” I usually get this comment when people around me learn that I’m packing my things to leave our small town to travel again. My sister would even spill the tea to me about our neighbors and family friends including my older brothers saying that my lifestyle is such a waste of money. I got used to all of that and just try to understand since I am raised in a culture and environment where young people like me are getting a career, building their own houses and starting their own family so I just shrug them all off. I used to think like that too before I discovered my love for traveling.

I first got into traveling to break that boring work, party routine I have in my early 20’s. I booked a long weekend getaway to Thailand that turned out to be so much fun. There were many spontaneous things that happened including life changing experiences. Traveling opened my eyes and changed my perspective in many different ways. I learned a lot of things I never had in 4 corners of a classroom. I got so much to be thankful because of traveling. I matured, became open minded, more accepting and totally became non-judgmental.  But I must say I have bigger reason why I am continuously traveling.

This is something personal and actually the main reason why I’m traveling none-stop. I don’t have good genes to begin with and three of my immediate family passed away due to terminal illness. With that, I decided to invest in two things my health and experiences on the road.

In May 1991 I was just 5 months old when my father passed away because of liver cancer. I never got the chance to meet him but I heard from my sibling that he is a kind-heart man with alcohol problems. In 2009, I just started university when my loving mother left me so I became an orphan. The same with my father, she died due to liver cancer. She’s not alcoholic but they said that her mother also died in terminal sickness. It is probably some sort of genes. The year 2015, I just got into traveling when my 37-year old sister finally said goodbye after 8 months of battling with lupus. She’s a very health conscious kind of person. She neither smoked nor drank and she loved vegetables. It just happened that she’s born with that illness.

Every time I go to doctors to get different vaccines for protection against diseases and boast my immune system, they ask me why I want to get this vaccine. I always mention to them that both of my parents died in cancer. They don’t ask any follow up question but instead they usually end up giving me recommendation for another vaccine. Recently I just finished my Cervical Cancer vaccine one of my gynecologists suggested me to get an MMR vaccine while the other wants me to get IPV also known as Polio vaccine.

Before my sister’s death, both of my parents live until their 60’s. I thought I might live that long and that’s enough for me to graduate from university, get a stable job, build a house and start a new family. It’s a very typical life routine. However because of this, I realized that my life might not be as long as my parents. As a result I started to invest in experience through traveling because if the heaven up above decide to just give me a short life at least I filled it with a lot of memories and worthwhile experiences.