04-04052015TW

A Story by Gee Bee

Over the Holy Week, I took my first solo trip ever to the land of Boba Tea. I now dub it my Happy Place.

As with many of my foreign trips, Taipei held a lot of my firsts:

1. First solo trip

2. First solo trip abroad

3. First stay at a hostel

4. First bus trip to an unknown place

I didn't know what to expect in Taipei. But as always, I had the need, the urgent need, to leave.

Everyone asked, why Taipei? You could have saved a little more and go to Japan. Or somewhere visa-free. Being a Filipino citizen limits the places I go to, and it infinitely sucks balls.

But Taipei it was. Why? I wanted to go to Jiufen. I wanted to ride efficient trains again. I wanted to go somewhere familiar but not quite.

Then why not Hong Kong? Macau? Singapore? Malaysia?

I needed to leave, and go somewhere familiar but not quite, and somewhere I've never been to. Someone said, go somewhere new every year. And this year, it was going to be Taipei.

It wasn't the most beautiful city. By my admission, I've been to far more breathtaking places in my 22 years. I expected to find some sort of epiphany, a realization on this trip. Don't solo trips give you that enlightenment that you need?

I never really got one in my whole trip. But all the same, as I do with most of the places I go to, I fell in love. But it developed into an entirely different love - one that yearns, one that quietly tugs at your heartstrings and you don't realize how undone you are until you have it.

And I didn't realize how much of an effect it had on me until the plane started to get ready for takeoff.

Another expectation I had was that I was going to meet someone that was going to change my life.

Well, it wasn't exactly someone, but Taipei totally changed my life forever.