Welcome back to another week of Tank Travels!

I recently came to the sobering conclusion that my future children are going to hate me. I’ll have so many stories to share with them about the tales of my youth, and they are never going to want to listen to them.

It seems like every week in Asia I manage to outdo myself, and this week was no different. During the week, I all but gave up on my classes, but I did work 30+ hours on my startup, so at least I did something productive!

I continued to meet some awesome people this week. Notwithstanding the amazing souls I met while traveling (they’ll get plenty of love later), I met some fascinating folks while in Singapore. Two of my favorites were a Singaporean who is working on a medical health tech startup (the only Singaporean I’ve met who is interested in entrepreneurship), and a French guy who recently recovered from a life threatening injury to his neck a couple years ago.

The solo travel bug bit me again this week and I ended up in Cebu, Philippines for the weekend. Only barely though.

My flight was a mess. First we entered a holding pattern above some mountains outside of Manila and I swore we were about to crash on a few turns when some gusts of wind hit the plane at strange angles.

You know it’s bad when people on the plane start visibly praying that we land in one piece.

The delay from the holding pattern caused me to arrive at my layover in Manila only 14 minutes before my flight was supposed to take off to Cebu. When I found out that the flight was taking off from another terminal I was fairly certain I was going to kiss my weekend goodbye.

By some good fortune, my flight to Cebu was also delayed, so I ended up making it to the terminal with time to spare. However I arrived at the hostel at 11:00pm so my Cebu experience would only get started Saturday morning.

Or so I thought.

I went up to the bar at the hostel to grab dinner and there was some dancing going on. I was ready to call it a night, but I joined in anyway. You never know right?

Within 10 minutes I met this local girl named Joyce who introduced me to her friend group of 5 other locals.

Within 20 minutes I had plans with Joyce and one of the other girls, Lily, for an island getaway trip the very next morning at 7:30am.

Within 40 minutes my new best friends and I were on our way to a club a short drive away from the hostel. No motorbikes this time unfortunately—the 7 of us crammed into a pickup truck.

Within an hour I was convinced that Filipinos are the nicest people on the planet. What the heck! At the club, my friend group kept introducing me to people, and people kept coming up to me. We danced until 3:00am at which point we realized that for a 7:30am wakeup call, it was probably time to go to sleep.

Against all odds, all 3 of us woke up in time for the bus ride from Cebu to Bantayan Island, an island a few hours drive, plus a ferry away from Cebu. We caught a couple extra hours of sleep along the way, and I got to talking to Joyce about some of our life goals and learning about the culture in the Philippines.

One of the more eye-opening things about the ride there was how poor the infrastructure was once you left the city. This was my first time outside of a major city in Asia and damn. Lining the roads for miles and miles was an ideal backdrop for a Save the Children campaign. It really opens your eyes.

When we arrived on the island, we rode into the main street, which is pictured above. Yeah it was pretty popping. I think this was the first time since arriving in Singapore that I really got to slow down. I honestly forgot what it felt like to not have city noise buzzing in the background 24/7.

To give you a feel for the family-like atmosphere among locals on the island, we ordered some lunch at a restaurant and asked the owner where she thought would be a good place to stay.

She then called up some resorts to find us the best option, but instead of using a cell phone, she used a walkie-talkie 😂.

Five minutes later a guy driving a truck picked us up and drove us to the resort to show us our potential room.

We agreed to the price for the room, and then he drove us back to the restaurant, just in time for our food being ready.

Wow.

We spent the rest of the day on the beach, taking photos (my favorite part), and just chatting it out. I probably said some version of “I cannot believe I ended up on this island today,” about 15 times.

Never could I have guessed this is how my trip to the Philippines would have ended up.

At night we ended up on the main street where pretty much the entire island decided to show up. One of the cooler things that I liked about Filipino nightlife was that they do a lot of live music, and after a while, they force invite people to come onstage and sing a song of their choosing. Of course I had to give it a shot, despite being both a terrible singer and going right after this girl who probably could have been nominated for a Grammy.

One final club on the island capped off our night. It was so much fun singing and dancing along with all these vacationers, although I didn’t take any videos there. I was too busy living in the moment.

The next morning I had to wake up at 4:30am to catch the bus back into Cebu for checkout at the hostel. The good news about waking up so early was I did get to catch this beautiful sunrise on the water during the ferry ride.

As I’ve said before, my favorite part of traveling is meeting locals because I’ve found it is the best way to connect with the culture and get a feel for what it is like to live in a given country. The fact that I met Joyce, Lily, and their friend group so immediately and that they invited me on their spontaneous vacation excursion was all I could have asked for in a couple days’ visit to a new place.

Because of school, my time is limited. I don’t have the luxury of seeing or doing everything each time I travel, but it more than makes up for it when I can fully immerse myself in the culture for a brief period of time. My heart is so full of the Filippino love I felt both in Cebu and on Bantayan Island.

Another interesting note from my trip is how much Filippinos seem to love white people. I’d love to chalk this one up to my charisma and good looks, but honestly I think white people are just kind of a fascinating novelty to many of them. Here are some examples of things that happened on this trip that have never happened to me before.

• At the club on the first night, random people grabbed me to take photos with me.
• When I arrived at the hostel, one of the hostel reps bought me a shot. I thought she was just being nice, until she bought me dinner as well 🤔.
• At the beach, this guy was clearly trying to be a wingman for his sister with me. She was like 17 so I said thanks but no thanks.
• Everyone stopped and stared at me everywhere I went.
• I got 152 likes on Bumble in one weekend, compared to like 1 per day in the US.

I’ve heard of this happening to white guys in Asia, but it didn’t really happen in any other country I’ve visited so far. Obviously I’m not complaining about it one bit, but it’s quite fascinating. I didn’t say, or do anything different, but I just happened to be the only white guy in a sea of Filippinos. If I’m ever desperate to find a wife, I think I know where to go 😂.

I feel like I learned so many lessons this week that it’s hard to pick just one.

My belief in solo traveling was reinforced this weekend.

I learned to not let things you hear about certain countries deter you from going. More than once I was warned, “don’t get kidnapped” by people who have never been to the Philippines and clearly have a false conception of the people there. I have never felt safer and more welcome traveling anywhere in my life.

Well, apart from the flight there.

Above everything else, I learned true genuine kindness.

Kindness that resonates with our natural human desire to feel an unconditional, unrestrictive connection with others, and to feel like our wants and needs are heard and prioritized.

Kindness that puts others first without care for how it affects you.

Kindness that makes me count down the days until I visit again.

Answers I’ve received to my question: “If you have one piece of advice to share with the world, what would it be?”

Be kind. Everyone is dealing with a lot of shit. Treat people the way you want to be treated - Lily from Philippines

Kindness goes a long way. Pay it forward - Joyce from Philippines

You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather - Joyce from Philippines (who clearly didn’t understand the concept of “one piece of advice”)