I’ve been seeing so many images on social media of people across the globe going about their daily lives without masks. And I heave a sigh of relief. More and more, I have been seeing friends traveling not once, not twice, but three or four times since countries started opening up their borders to vaccinated travelers, and my wanderlust is reignited. When I was asked to write about places I would want to visit at the moment, it was easy to come up with my top three—South Korea, Africa on safari, and a Silk Road tour (from China to Venice).

South Korea

The pandemic saw us locked up in our homes for close to a year, if not more. Trying to stay safe was the priority but a close second was keeping sane. Thank goodness for K-dramas and Korean reality travel/cooking shows. My mind was able to wander through space and time. So, it’s no surprise that South Korea tops my list of places to go, if given the opportunity to travel right now. 

Africa on safari

At the start of the pandemic, when we didn’t really know what we were dealing with and given the numbers of death and rate of contagion, the possibility of one’s life ending early became all too real. In the lockdowns, we ended up thinking of many things, including things we had accomplished in life and what else we yearned to do. And I had plenty on my to-do list, one of which was to go on a safari. To see Africa and catch a glimpse of what it was like to be in the great savannah eons ago. Pandemic hit and I thought, maybe I wouldn’t get to see it. So, to be given a chance to do so this time around, would be a gift.

A Silk Road tour

I first came across the words Silk Road in my high school history class. In passing, I learned that it was a global trade route used by ancient people to do business. It was long but it was only when I got older that I realized just how long! Marco Polo’s adventures made it even more real. Then a series of documentaries allowed me to have a visual reference for all the text in the books I’ve read. A long list of travel shows also showed me the beauty of the different countries to which the tradespeople traveled through the centuries. I even saw one show searching for Korean traders along the Silk Road via frescoes on ancient walls, identifying them by what they wore, such as hats and garments. How cool is that? I wonder if any ancient Pinoys were documented.

But why do we travel? Well, we have been traveling for up to 90,000 years if we go by the generally accepted theory of the Out of Africa migration of modern man. Studies show climate change made the environment inhospitable and drove our ancestors to find greener pastures. In fact, we do know now based on recent dated archaeological evidence, in the form of a human foot bone fragment found in Cagayan Province in the Philippines, that this migration even reached our shores 67,000 years ago.  Even today we still have a continuous flow of Filipinos moving abroad for a better life. A 2020 Philippine Statistics Authority report pegged the number of Filipino Overseas Contract Workers at 1.77 million—and that’s just counting documented workers.

I started traveling because my parents took me and my siblings on vacations abroad. For me everything was new, so it was like an exploration of sorts, but since I was with my family on vacation, it was all mostly leisurely. I am sure the conditions under which the explorers of old sailed to unknown parts of the world would be anything but leisurely. No doubt stronger motivation than just fun drove explorers to the “ends of the earth.” Sure enough, most traveled for “God, gold, and glory.”

I have not told the half of what I saw. —Marco Polo

In today’s post-pandemic world, we still have everything at our fingertips. We can book any mode of transport, find the cheapest accommodations, and read up on the various sites we must see while visiting a “destination,” then post them all on our social media platforms to share with the world.

But for me, I am just so curious. I want to know how the world has changed. What has remained? Are all my old haunts still around? Have these establishments managed to survive with countries closing borders and all the restrictions on travel these past years? And how have people changed? Most of all, how has my outlook in life changed after the pandemic? Has my view of the world changed? As I grew older, traveling was about experiencing and learning. For the past couple of years, I have been cocooned in my home, experiencing and learning online about topics (among others) somehow related to the countries I mentioned earlier, the places I want to visit. The common denominator of all my questions is curiosity. I don’t know the answers to these questions but I am very interested to find out. So, for me, people travel to go. They travel to the state of the unknown. That is the essence of why people travel.