posted by: Prime Sarmiento

Christmas is a time for reflection, to express gratitude for all the blessings that came my way; to honor the lessons from the trials that tested my strength.

I have so much to be thankful for this year – friends and family who love me, a stable and fulfilling career in journalism, a wonderful adviser for my graduate thesis (hello Ms. Sol!), being a member of the Philippine Network of Environmental Journalists Inc. (PNEJ) which helps me in my personal advocacy.

But most of all, despite my busy schedule and many personal/professional commitments, I’m thankful for having the time and money to indulge on my life’s greatest passion: traveling.

It must have been because I started the year right. It was said that what you do in a the first day of the year will set the pattern for the rest of the year.

Well, I spent New Year’s Day 2010 away from home. But I wasn’t sad or missed anyone.That was my first time to visit Penang, Malaysia and it was wonderful! I didn’t only went on some serious food tripping (ohh I can still remember the sweet, but not cloyingly so, taste of Nyonya Kuih -little colorful Peranakan cakes, made of rice and/or cassava and flavored with pandan, brown sugar and coconut cream), but also marveled at the temples, mansions and Peranakan shophouses.

The arty tripper in Penang

So yeah, my Penang trip proves that I’m arty-farty and a culture vulture and a food tripper too. (It makes sense. I’m an anthropologist who’s keen on especializing in food anthropology).This perhaps describe me most as a traveler and as a blogger.

In fact, I replicated my Penang experience a month later. No I never boarded a plane to do this. During the Lunar New Year, I took a 15-minute cab ride to Binondo – Manila’s famed Chinatown and joined Ivan Dy in his famous Chinatown food tour. I must have gained like 20 pounds on carbo-loading. I ate a lot of siopao,dumplings and hopia, explored Binondo’s eateries while at the same time learned more about my Filipino-Chinese heritage.

I came from a devout Catholic family and while others go to the beach during the Holy Week in the Philippines, our family stays home to pray and cook some food to give to poor people as a form of charity. On Maundy Thursday, I joined my parents for our annual Visita Iglesia – our mini-pilgrimage in some of Manila’s historic churches.

The summer months of March to May is the best time to travel around the Philippines. It may be the hottest time of the year, but it also assured that no rain or floods will disrupt your traveling. For this year’s summer travel, I joined a tour group and traveled 11 hours on bus and went all the way north for my first Ilocos tour! This is where I had the chance to see Bangui’s windmill, Southeast Asia’s only wind energy farm, eat loads of empanada, bum around in Pagudpud beach and photograph centuries-old churches including the beautiful Baroque-style Paoay Church.

The month of May is the time for Fiesta, harvest season in the provinces, a time to honor the saints for the town’s bounty. I went to the town of Lucban in the province of Quezon to join the renown Pahiyas festival. I admired and photographed the elaborately decorated houses festooned with kiping and brought home bags of garlickly longganisang Lucban and boxes of sweet espasol.

In June, I went on a mini retreat in Baguio for a few days to finish an important witing project: the draft proposal for my graduate thesis. I believe that something as important as this deserves my undivided time and attention. And Baguio with its cool weather and bohemian vibe is the ideal place for a retreat.

I joined my coleagues at PNEJ in August for our first field trip/seminar on climate change in the province of Albay. The province known for the beautiful but dangerous Mayon Volcano is also renown for being a model of climate change adaptation. And instead on delving on how climate change -and the natural disasters it will bring – create more victims, I’ve seen how the local government and the community is doing everything possible to cope with what seems to be the inevitable.

My lil sis returned to Manila for a brief vacation. It was time for family bonding and for our annual family vacation we chose to go to Bohol! We visited the Chocolate Hills and the tarsier sanctuary. I ate a flower salad in Bohol Bee Farm (they’re yummy and not just for vegetarians) and had some swimming lessons with my dad at Alona beach.

My lil sis and I also explored the historic walled city of Intramuros in Manila (I will blog on this later) by joining Carlos Celdran’s tour. After my lil sis went back Ireland (where she’s now based), I went to Baguio (for the second time this year) where I joined my friends Avie and Dee and hanged out in Rumours in Session road. Avie and I had coffee and strawberry cheesecake in The Manor, visited Bencab’s Gallery and browsed at Mt Cloud Bookshop.

But my biggest trip for the year occured early-December, two weeks before Christmas, to attend the U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico. I was there to cover the event for PNEJ (I’m the web editor of the group’s website), Of course I also managed to visit some of the renown Mayan ruins including Chichen Itza. But I’ll be writing about that in my future blog posts.

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Looking back I never thought that I traveled much and in the end learned a lot about myself, being a traveler and a journalists, for the past 12 months. And for that I will always be grateful. Here’s hoping for more travels in the new year.

I hope that you too had and will continue wonderful journeys. Please share your stories here. 🙂

Merry Christmas everyone!