When traveling, it’s really not just the place that makes the trip but the people you travel with. I would love to go back to Hong Kong again and do more things I wasn’t able to do, but all in all it was a memorable trip. It now feels a bit surreal to be honest, because now I’m back to adjusting to work and responsibilities and clients that it seems like those days filled with crazy and exhaustion and tension and fun didn’t happen. But it did and I have all the memories and the photos and the tiny life-changing moments to prove it. I just can’t wait to do something similar again: to go out for another few days and leave work behind in order to embrace newness and all the fun foreign things.

Traveling with friends is great; traveling with that one person you love is amazing. A little over a year since we started dating, I’ve traveled with C to a country abroad and it’s a different experience. Different anxieties, different problems, different fights, different firsts. I’ve come to realize more things about myself and more things about us that I believe the trip made our relationship stronger since we’ve returned home.

Maybe the best thing about traveling with your significant other is that no matter what happens, you know you’ll always have somebody. Sometimes it means getting lost together, or ordering the worst (or best) food together. Sometimes it means sharing your funds and budgeting together or worrying about airport taxes together. At one point it doesn’t matter whose money was whose, whose food was whose, whose baggage was whose. You’re in that new country together and the whole trip is something you share and experience with the person you love and it makes everything extra special.

I enjoy traveling to new places alone, but there are things that makes the trip more exciting with a special companion. Someone will challenge what you think or comfort you when you’re disappointed over something, or share your burden when you’ve made a mistake. It was so wonderful spending four days in a different country with C that we’re going on another trip on November. I need to cherish these opportunities because at one point we’d both have to spend a year or so apart for graduate studies. We’re just lucky enough to be enjoying this together at this point in time.

To my past self: things do get better. :)