Tricycles, Small Dogs, and Unfinished Business
On the challenge of truly being on vacation when your mind is always at work
📍Coron, Philippines
I woke up at 4 AM with tired eyes and a foggy mind. The ferry ticket I had purchased in advance said to arrive two hours before departure, which was scheduled for 7 AM. The day before, I had arranged for a tricycle driver to wait for me outside the hotel at 5 AM, and I was hoping he would actually remember.
When I came outside, I saw him on his tricycle, asleep. I paused for a moment, stunned. Had he slept here all night? Or just arrived too early? I felt a small pang of guilt as I woke him up.
We rode through the pre-dawn darkness, a short trip to the port, where the guards smiled at me and announced that I needed to print my ticket. Another thing I knew and completely forgot. They directed me to the ticket company's office - of course, all the other companies' offices were already open, except mine.
I sat waiting on a cold bench, watching the clock tick slowly forward until the representative arrived at 5:30. I wondered why they told me to arrive before she did.
After receiving the coveted paper ticket, I returned to the terminal. I passed through a quick security check, paid a port fee of 20 pesos, and sat down to wait, as boarding wouldn't begin until 6:30.
Before boarding, they asked us to arrange all our bags in a row for inspection. I'm familiar with these checks from Mexico - usually, a large, impressive dog comes to sniff for drugs.
This time, a tiny, cute dog arrived. He enthusiastically sniffed the bags, then stopped at my bag, sat down, and raised his paw - a sign that he had found something.
My heart skipped a beat even though I knew exactly what was not in my bag! The handler smiled, gave me a small toy, and picked up the pouch that was attached to my bag - the handler's own pouch.
Was this some kind of test? A check to see if the dog was working properly? And why stress me out like that?
During the sailing, I was so tired that I planned to get some offline tasks done, but I fell asleep within seconds. The first two hours went smoothly, but then the sea awakened and the boat began to sway side to side. I opened my eyes only to feel seasickness rising in my stomach, and immediately closed them again. "Not this!" I silently pleaded, hoping the sailing would end quickly.
We arrived at El Nido, the place I'd heard the most about in the Philippines. My expectations were sky-high, like the white clouds above the beaches I'd seen in pictures.
And this time I decided - I'm on vacation. Period.
In Coron, the previous island, I missed activities I really wanted to do because... well, because of me. I thought I had more time, so I took the first few days easy and invested in setting up my Substack. Apparently, it was so important to me that I forgot I was on vacation.
During those days on the previous island, I convinced myself: "You're not on vacation, this is your life now." I tried to save money, tried to find balance, tried to create a vacation-work routine. But what really happened was that I completely missed my vacation, and I was left with "unfinished business" with Coron, which only means I'll have to return here to complete the mission.
I learned a lesson. As a beginning nomad, I still haven't figured out how to balance vacation and work. Mainly because all I've managed to do so far is work from morning till night. And that's also what I want to do - I still have so many tasks!
But as always, a conversation with my big brother came at exactly the right time.
"You need Input," he reminds me, "you need something to write about."
And suddenly I remembered, that's why I'm here. I'll always have tasks, but I worked all month precisely to be on vacation now.
So here it is, I'm allowing myself. I'm on vacation.
I put my suitcases in the hotel and went out to get to know the new city, this time with relaxed shoulders and a clear head. Ready to absorb the world through my eyes, not through the camera, not through the computer. Just to be here.
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