Posts tagged flexibility

You never know who you’ll meet or what you’ll find.

Before I left, I did a good amount of research. I knew some of the things I wanted to do: see Palawan, see the rice terraces in Northern Luzon, see my family. I wanted to plan some specific dates just to give myself deadlines so I’d stay on track and also to be able to get good deals on tickets and hostels/hotels and such, but I had a bunch of people tell me I shouldn’t. Luckily, even though I disagreed with them, I was lazy at the time and I just didn’t bother. I’m very glad now that I did it the way I did.

Still though, I thought I had a rough schedule in mind. Ideas of where I would be at certain points in my trip. I thought that right now I would be in the rice terraces - I’m not. Not even close.

Pretty much the minute I landed, everything changed. Met an awesome couchsurfing host, left my CS host early because my family had a birthday party that I found out about at the very last minute, learned that the roads up in Northern Luzon were pretty bad because of the rain and recent typhoon (the rice terraces in the north were going to be my first touristy destination) so now I’m planning to go to Palawan first, stayed in Makati City two days longer than I originally planned because I met some people, felt sick one day so I stayed in my hotel and did nothing, stayed in Taytay for 5 extra days because my cousin is leaving for Saudi Arabia for 2 years and I want to be here with her for her last week in the Philippines.

My situation is unique because I’m planning to be here in the Philippines for 4 months. I have a lot of room to be flexible. Adjust your flexibility accordingly.

Anyway, in summary, fuck deadlines. As they say, it’s about the journey, not the destination.