When you go to places that you’re unfamiliar with?

When you go to places that you’re unfamiliar with?

Have you ever experience traveling first time? Well how do you feel?

I was 18 years old when I begun my first travel out of my country Philippines. My aunt who lived in Nigeria with her husband and two kids offered their living accommodation to me, well the plan is I will work to earn more than I could get from home. I’m excited.

I’m kind of person who likes challenges and working in a foreign country could be the biggest one. So I prepared myself for it.

But even you are so determined to leave your love ones and go thousand miles away, loneliness prevails. It took me two months to adjust my feelings from loneliness to self-pity to depression to get use to my situation.

Rewind

I’m happy living in the Philippines with my family and friends. I’m very skilled and I worked with different kinds of industry, from food to factory to marketing. I love my mom and younger sister so much that I dream all good things for them.

My love to them leads me to travel to Nigeria.

Fast Forward

Nigeria is the country located in West Africa; it’s a neighborhood of Republic of Benin, Togo and Ghana.
It’s the third country (my own thought) that produce oil and with the biggest contribution in oil industry.
This country welcome investor from all over the world, majority is USA, China, and India.

I arrived at Port Harcourt International Airport, a place that can accommodate very few international flights. KLM and Air France fly to and fro from this airport. Approaching the airport! I was scared! In fact it’s a mixed emotion. I don’t know is it excitement, loneliness, curious, happy, challenge all emotion. If I can post all emoticons here I’ll do it.

Up coming!

After 7 years of stay, I’m very comfortable living here despite of security risk I will never leave Nigeria. This is the place where I earn good living for my family back home. This is the place where I learn to do not under estimate yourself as the competition is high and you’ll have to make every effort just to be competitive in your industry. Lastly, this is where I learned the true meaning of humanity, where you must treat everyone, white or black equal.

Nobody’s above somebody.

Fishing trip to Ghana

The Republic of Ghana is a country in West Africa. It borders Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) to the west, Burkina Faso to the north to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south. Please click here

I have had the pleasure to travel with Supervisor and two of my colleagues for a business plus holiday trip to Ghana last year 2008.

As I mentioned above, Ghana is part of West Africa and like Nigeria, I have the passport that allows me to enter all West African countries without acquiring a visa.

People are very friendly. I met couple of friends from Lebanon, France and mixed with Ghanaian having there best time in Ghana. We stayed at Golden Tulip hotel, a five minutes drive from Kotoka International Airport and located at Accra, the capital city of Ghana.

Accra is the finest place to meet locals and buy native Ghanaian art and craftwork, especially at the Centre for National Arts and Culture, popularly known as Arts Centre. It is’sIt’s located next to the Kwame Nkrumah Musoleum, off the High Street in Accra. You can find practically anything such as sculptures, game-skin drums, exotic beads, and fabulous and colorful expressive Kente cloth. The Makola Market, also abundant in goods and bargains, is a fine place to experience a true West African bazaar.

We go round the city, passed through the National Stadium with 40,000 seats capacity.

But upon all the beauty structures of Ghana, there is something I will never trade of, it is the Ocean. My boss hired a fishing boat cost for thousand bucks or more per day. It is beautiful and very classy. The “The Hooker Tema”

From six o’clock in the morning till four o’clock in the afternoon, all you can see is the huge waves, big ships left and right, few small islands, speed boats as if it’s chasing us, and the sunset is so awesome.

When I asked them which part of the sea are we, they smiled at me and said “you are now out of Ghana, welcome to Ivory Coast”. When I heard that, my heart beats felt so fast, so excited knowing that I am like a free bird flying above the sky and no one can stop me.

I am just lying on the above deck and posing like a million dollar baby while watching my friends trying hard to catch the blue marlin fish. Whoa, when they finally caught the big fish everything on that moment stops as if it is the unbeatable fight of the most powerful man in the world.

I can’t wait to show my baby Ian the world.

Ian’s first trip to Boracay, Philippines

It was late April 2008 when I decided to pampered my mom with nature treat because she does great job for taking care of my first son while I am away from home.

Before then, I was browsing on the internet about Boracay and how to get there. Internet is my best friend. Every time I want to know something and go somewhere beyond my reach, I can easily get there and that is the power of internet.

Facts about Boracay is available here

But seeing it on the screen is not enough satisfaction and so, I bought a package tour for 4 days and 3 nights for myself, mom and my son. It cost about 8,000 Philippine pesos per person including the air ticket, land transportation and pick up, hotel accommodations and free breakfast.

Currency converter here

Our flight was early morning of Friday and the local airport was too crowded, we missed our first flight Cebu Pacific, so I have to look around where I can get another flight, luckily there are travel and tour's agent outside the airport that helped us to get another schedule on that very same day. We pay the extra cost for the ticket and gets ready to move inside the airport. Reaching inside there is no electricity. They said there is a power failure and trying to repair it on that day. So the issuance of boarding passes was manually and the queues were too long. What can you expect, it was summer time and most foreigners were heading to the beach. But with all the discomfort and uneasy feeling waiting for our turn to board the plane, I can see the excitement to each and everyone's faces, because we knew that once we landed to our destination, all our body pains will go.

Right, we arrived late night of that Friday, and my son still awake observing the lights on the street and people dancing along the shore. As if we did not experience sweating and headache while transiting. We woke up too early the next day, to notice the sun rise and it was the very unforgettable moment with my son Ian.

I will definitely go back to Boracay this year.

Philippines, Pilipinas

Funny, the first time i travelled to Africa and the first question Africaans will asked is "Where you from?", and I proudly says " I am from Philippines!". They pronounced it as philippians (pi-li-pians) , and i will correct them repeatedly. Hard for them to pronounce but no matter how they call it, word does'nt matter as "Philippines" can be describe more than a words.

This place I called home, my country and my resting place.

Some are the facts about Philippines:

• There is two official languages in Philippines, the Filipino (based on Tagalog) and English with eight major dialects Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano, Hiligaynon or Ilonggo, Bicol, Waray, Pampango, and Pangasinan.
• Religions are Roman Catholic, Evangelical, Iglesia ni Kristo, Aglipayan, other Christian, Muslim , other 1.8%, unspecified 0.6%, none 0.1%.
• Government structures is Republic
• Capital is Manila
• Currency code- Philippine peso (PHP)