Asteeeg! Beyond traditional careers and conventional lifestyle

Last October, under the advice of my entrepreneur friend I took a three-week vacation to relieve some stress and to test 4HWW’s mini-retirement. Without much planning, I packed lightly, took a quick snapshot of my finances, and left word to a select few (business and personal) in case of emergency only. It was one of the biggest, most impulsive and best decisions I have made in years considering there were so many things up in the air at the time.

So the idea was to relax, step-back and see the bigger picture, and clear my head for goal setting. For this I needed new environment, and to see new things, new people. The hardest part was leaving my girl behind for awhile but with a good line of communication (only years and effort can develop) I didn’t need to take Tim Ferriss’ advice of “apologize but don’t ask permission” for making big decisions.

Mindanao was my main target, as my favorite couple has been inviting me to visit for years and I have never been in that region before. Something about Mindanao has always been mysterious and attractive to me. Notwithstanding news on patches of never-ending rebel encounters I have always believed anything bad about the Southern region was exaggerated. I was also more partial to articles about Mindanao being the breadbasket of the Philippines, the home of the best unexplored tourists spots and its potential to make Philippines an economic power.

So here are some notes…

Itinerary:

1. Boracay - 1 week
2. Cebu - 3 days
3. Mindanao (Cagayan de Oro and Iligan) - 1 and 1/2 weeks

Preparation:

• Contacted friends who would adopt me for a few days for each place I will be going to.
• Checked flight and boat schedules and their prices (Cebu Pacific Airlines is the best choice for price and convenience)
• Checked my credit card balance to be used for travel fees only.
• Coughed out P15,000 pocket cash which was suprsingly more than enough for three weeks.
• Packed 1 week worth of clothing (did laundry whenever possible), tons of notepads, and two books only.
• Backed up passwords I needed for when I check my multiple email accounts and secure websites of online businesses
• No laptop!

Resisting to make a travel article, I will just say just a few words about the places I visited:

Boracay: Everyone’s been here so not much to say. I spent most time in by-the-beach coffee shops (like Real Coffee) to purge all my ideas into paper so they would leave me in peace for further processing. To save, I often ate at a carenderia behind D’Mall which serves full meals ranging from 30-60 pesos. A small resort owner I know lent me a room so no rental fees!

Cebu: A blast. The night scene here is so alive and so accessible and so diverse. My friend, who adopted me, had a huge house on top of the mountain with fantastic view. The only problem with that is driving up when you had too many shots of Red Horse (that’s how they drink strong beer here). I missed the flight to CDO because my host and I got too drunk. It was a blessing because the 8-hour ferry trip I took was very relaxing.

Cagayan de Oro and Iligan: The potential for these places to be world class tourist destinations are unbelievable. Right now CDO has its popular white water rafting while Iligan has cold springs and waterfalls. Aside from my wonderful hosts, I met other young, laid-back and down-to-earth entrepreneurs in Iligan - a far cry from the serious kind you often see meeting at Starbucks in Manila.

Lessons:

• Learn the Bisaya dialect (two weeks was enough for me to learn a lot of the basics). It would help a lot next time when I play poker with guys here. Buang!
• Go back to Mindanao as often as possible. Visit Davao and Siargao for surfing (my friend said I may even get to hang out with Jack Johnson).
• Next vacation should be a full-month or even three. Now I fully agree with Ferriss that it does take that amount of time for a real mini-retirement - to open up your mind, get a new perspective, have new ideas, let go of non-productive behaviors and absorb the new environment. Any less time than that and it’s just sight-seeing.
• Indeed, leaving all your businesses for a few weeks is the best test for the systems you have in place. It will undoubtedly show if you own the business or the business owns you.
• Three weeks were not enough for any profound, corny soul-searching or even prioritizing projects but they were just enough to clear my head, spend time with myself and old friends and get revitalized to work.
• Do something crazy once in awhile, more often. Aside from the whole idea of this haphazard trip, I was surprised to be able to whitewater raft, zip line on Narra canopies, and do a 20 foot dive into cold springs.
• Traveling alone, fearful to most, is very fun and much cheaper.
• The world didn’t fall apart when I left everything behind for awhile.