There is a certain kind of person who gets restless when she stays in one place too long. They call her a gypsy soul, a free spirit, someone who is always looking for the next place to be. I just call her me.

I don’t know if I was always like this or if I just grew into it slowly. But somewhere along the way, I realized that the feeling I was chasing, that light, free, almost electric feeling, only came when I had a bag on my back and somewhere new to go.

It Always Started in Singapore

Growing up in Davao, there were not many international flights to choose from. Singapore was basically our only direct option.

But honestly? I didn’t mind.

Every time I needed to just vanish for a while, to step outside of my regular life and breathe, Singapore was my first stop. I’d land, take in that familiar airport air, and feel my shoulders drop. Already, I was somewhere else. Already, I felt like myself again.

From Singapore, I would figure out the rest. Sometimes it was a quick hop to Malaysia when there was still a direct route from Davao. Sometimes it was further into Southeast Asia: Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, wherever the mood and the budget would take us.

Backpacking Was Never Just About Travel

I used to backpack a lot. The first time, I did two whole weeks just wandering through Asia on my own. No fixed itinerary. Just going. My husband joined me for the second trip, and by the third time, we had a whole group of friends with us, loud and full of plans we never fully stuck to anyway.

Each trip felt different. But that feeling of freedom? Always the same.

What I loved most was waking up somewhere new with no real plan.

Just a place. A day. And the quiet question of what do I want to do today?

No schedule. No expectations. Just the morning light of a place I didn’t know yet, and the feeling that anything could happen. One of my favorite trips was Vietnam in 2016, where we wandered from Hanoi to Halong Bay with nothing but a loose plan and a full heart.

Working Online Made It Possible

I think one of the biggest reasons I was able to do all of this was the privilege of working online.

Having that flexibility meant I could go. Not everyone has that, and I never took it for granted. Even when I came home at the end of a trip with barely anything left in my pocket, I was okay with it. More than okay, actually.

I am not someone who puts a lot of value on material things. Well, maybe at some point I was. I used to love collecting bags. It was a phase. But somewhere in my 20s, my values quietly shifted. I started caring more about experiences than things. More about memories than stuff. I think, looking back, I was just becoming more myself.

Still, not everyone understood that.

Some people would ask, sometimes with genuine concern, sometimes with a little judgment, why I was wasting my money on travel. I tried to explain it. That it was not wasting. That I was investing in something real. But eventually I stopped trying to justify it.

You cannot explain the pull of wandering to someone who has never felt it. So I just kept going.

Travel in My 30s Looks a Little Different

These days, I still travel. At least three times a year, me and my husband make sure of it.

But it looks a little different now. No more heavy backpacks hauled through airports at midnight. No more figuring out where to sleep when we land. I have a destination in mind now, a country, a general plan. The difference is that once we get there, we still wander. We walk until our step count hits almost 30,000 in a day, turning corners just to see what is there, stumbling into food stalls and side streets we never planned to visit. Kind of like that time we went to Isla Jardin Del Mar and just let the day take us wherever it wanted to.

The backpack is gone. The wandering heart? Still very much here.

More comfortable, yes. But just as spontaneous. Just as free.

The Hard Part of Being a Gypsy Soul

Being a gypsy soul is not always easy.

It is not always easy to explain to people why you need to go. Or why staying still feels heavy sometimes. And why you feel most like yourself when you are somewhere unfamiliar, figuring things out as you go.

Some people look at you like you are running away from something.

Maybe sometimes you are. But mostly, you are running toward something. Running toward yourself and toward the version of you that only shows up when she is a little lost, a little free, and a little far from home.

What Wandering Taught Me

Every trip I took changed me a little.

Not in dramatic ways, and not the way travel bloggers like to write about it. But quietly. In the way that you come back a little softer, a little more curious, a little more okay with not having everything figured out.

Wandering taught me that I do not have to be one thing. That I can be someone who loves a cozy home in Davao AND someone who disappears to Singapore on a spontaneous trip. Both things can be true.

The gypsy soul does not mean you have no roots.

It just means your roots are strong enough to let you wander.

To You, If You Feel This Too

If you have ever felt the pull to just go, to just disappear for a little while and come back to yourself. I see you.

You are not too much. You are not hard to love. Running away has nothing to do with it.

You are just someone whose soul needs a little space to breathe.

And that is okay. More than okay, actually.

Pack the bag. Book the flight. Wake up somewhere new.

You will know what to do from there.