How this crazy trip began

For years travel has been an obsession of mine where I made sure every single  of hour of vacation time I had was put towards travel. Every trip I'd book a return flight and would have my entire itinerary pre planned and all accommodations already prebooked. I'd get there and since I rarely had much vacation time I was constantly on the go trying to see everything. I can honestly say I loved almost every second of those vacations but I was constantly meeting backpackers who were spending months backpacking across Europe/Southeast Asia/South America at a leisurely pace with no return trip booked and I would instantly become insanely jealous of them. I'd find myself tempted to quit my job and travel like they did, then once I was back home I'd dismiss the idea since it was too impractical. While it sounded nice in theory I couldn't just walk out on my job, I had an apartment that needed a minimum of 2 months notice to end my lease and I had a great relationship and was not willing to do long distance for months at a time.

Well fate, divine power or something must have heard all my excuses and took care of it for me. My boyfriend and I had dated for nearly 5 years and when he went back to school we had decided we would move to southern Ontario to be close to his family (who I adored and saw as my own family) once he graduated. He graduated May 2015 so we gave the 60 days notice to our landlord, I gave 3 months notice to my employer and was able to spend 2 months training my replacement and then on May 29th we moved our stuff into storage - we were planning to stay with his family till we had a place - and immediately after the moving was done he dumped me. In that moment I became single,  jobless and homeless  which meant I had lost all my boring responsible reasons that I should not chuck it all in and go travelling.

I believe in life we are responsible for our own happiness. I got a shitty situation and I could have chosen to focus on all the negative things about my situation  but instead I chose to take the trip of a lifetime. I chose to buy a one way ticket to Manila to start a Southeast Asia trip. I chose happiness!