May 2, 2023
EDIT: This was written in 2016. A lot has changed in my life. I moved to Vietnam, went back to teaching, and lived the expat life. In November 2021, my two cats and I moved to Munich, Germany. You can follow me on Instagram: @jonajournals for more current life updates. I am […]
May 2, 2023
EDIT: This was written in 2016. A lot has changed in my life. You can follow me on Instagram: @jonajournals First, let me tell you a little story. My older sister, a single mom who is raising her two sons alone, bought a piece of land some months ago. She […]
May 2, 2023
EDIT: This was written in 2016. A lot has changed in my life. I moved to Vietnam, went back to teaching, and lived the expat life. In November 2021, my two cats and I moved to Munich, Germany. You can follow me on Instagram: @jonajournals for more current life updates. Some […]
April 24, 2023
April 22. Mama said I was born in the afternoon at home with the help of Nang Lodi, the midwife in Tuburan. There are so many things going on in my life right now. I’m gloriously 37. With that age comes a bit of life experiences that I wish the […]
April 19, 2023
Unlike California’s glitzy coastal cities, Sacramento’s Central Valley location gives it a sincere, small-town, inviting, and unpretentious feel. In this article, we scoured independent guest reviews after independent guest reviews and compiled the top boutique hotels in Sacramento we could find on Booking.com, and to make it more fun, we threw […]
April 12, 2023
Top bars in the Philippines earn from $3 to $11 million per year. Sounds profitable, right? But as an expat, you may face challenges. First, these are legal requirements that may differ significantly from those in your home country. Let’s take a closer look at the process of opening a […]
April 7, 2023
Traveling to other countries has been an integral part of human history, with people traveling for various reasons such as leisure, work, education, and trade. One critical aspect of international travel is obtaining the necessary visas for the destination country. In today’s increasingly interconnected world, the visa application process can […]
April 5, 2023
“Timan-i, stranger ka didto.” Remember, you’re a stranger there. The first lesson arrived in a text message from Mama who had no other choice but to accept that I am not settling down just yet, and that I’d rather spend my money travelling than buy my own lot to build […]
April 5, 2023
She sighed. She was crouching on the floor, shifting some leaves with her frail-looking wrinkled hands. She then slit the middle of one elongated leaf, which looked like pandan, and inserted the base of another. She repeated the process until she made a beautiful mandala of leaves. She then pushed […]
April 5, 2023
The locals endearingly named it the Bu—a chill, celebrity-packed beach town that radiates as a carefree, sunny state-of-mind beach town in California. Although the bustling Pacific Coast Highway runs through it and there is no actual town center, the charms of this famous beach town—with a population of around 13,000—is […]
March 23, 2023
The closest to coliving I did in my adult life was when I tested the teaching waters in Vietnam and became a volunteer teacher for three months in Hanoi back in March-May 2017. I found this opportunity on Workaway, a famous website for cultural exchange and volunteering programs in many […]
A Developing Country Citizen’s Perspective: What’s Wrong with “Leave Everything Behind and Travel the World”