Been almost two months since we arrived home. I remember being asked, “When’s your next trip?” by everyone, and we have not even settled in yet. Because the past three years we rarely settled anywhere for long. And everyone seems to know this for a fact.

“I need a vacation from vacation. No travel plans yet”, was my usual reply. And I could tell in their faces that they were waiting for some kind of catch. So I followed this statement with, “For real!”.

Fifty-four days doesn’t seem much compared to two hundred eighty (the longest we have been ‘on the road’), but our Eurasia-Caucasus-Southeast Asia trip was equally tiring. Aside from the constant move, flying to different countries every two weeks, our daughter Luna turned the trip’s complexity up a notch. The planning and execution mainly revolved around her hyperactive self.

She’s no longer the infant who’d stop crying when given a bottled formula. Nor the toddler who’d busy herself with bottle caps and plastic bags and other trivial knickknacks. She’s the child I chased around the hectic Blue Mosque in Turkey. The child who insisted on climbing a snake-infested trail to the Georgia-Azerbaijan border by herself. The child who wanted to descend a dungeon in Armenia where Saint Gregory the Illuminator was imprisoned for years. The child who pleaded to sit on an elephant statue atop a temple at Nepal’s Bhaktapur Durbar Square. And the child who chased Phuket’s waves without even looking back.

I reckon you get the picture.

Down The Slow Lane

So the past two months I’ve been catching up on sleep. And catching up with folks and friends. Not counting the nights I stayed out late to watch much-missed rock gigs, our days dragged on. The hubby worked on delayed projects while I accepted new ones. Luna began to understand the concept of having a house. All of us adopted a routine.

We’re finally sinking into normalcy.

Time and again we say we have nothing against that. Even if we’ve been pretty much nomadic since the hubby and I met, we know deep inside that we’d want settle to down someday. Somewhere. And with Luna’s age approaching nursery school level, we are aware that preparations have to be made.

Yet here we are, suddenly preoccupied with a different kind of preparation. The kind that’s for another long trip!

Unpacked And Ready To Go

We’ve barely unpacked. I guess subconsciously, I had a premonition that the travel bug will strike unexpectedly. That the craving to travel more will resurface sooner than foreseen.

Is your life full of travels too? I recommend it to be. Because travels enrich life, and it obviously makes for great memories.

If you’re not up for planning, perhaps you could try your luck with a raffle like the Shop Ayala Malls, Travel Asia Promo wherein shoppers could exchange their P500 worth of accumulated receipts (from stores in participating Ayala Malls) for an electronic raffle coupon. You and a friend or the whole family could win a trip to some popular Philippine or Southeast Asian tourist destination. Promo runs from July 1 to September 30 and you might just bag a prize.

I’ll probably try my luck too. Because there’s nothing I want more than free and spontaneous adventures!

But for now, I’d have to plot our nth escape from the mundane. Our nth “last hurrah” before domesticity.

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