Fifteen years in Nanjing, twenty-two stamps, one very full camera roll.

For fifteen years, home base was Nanjing, China, where I worked as an English teacher. School holidays became my travel windows — a week here, a long break there — and in 2013 I booked my first solo trip with a half-charged phone, a paper itinerary, and absolutely no idea what I was doing. That trip broke something open, and I never really stopped chasing the next one.

I'm currently on a personal sabbatical — a deliberate pause after over a decade of classrooms, to slow travel properly instead of squeezing it into holidays. These days home base is the Philippines, my home country, where I've settled back down between trips. Travel Diary is where I keep the real version of these journeys: the food worth the wait, the neighborhoods that surprised me, and the mistakes I'd love for you to skip.

I still keep a phone camera within reach for the short travel clips I post on WeChat Channels and Instagram. If you've ever wondered whether a place is actually worth the layover, you're in the right place.

"I don't remember every hotel I've stayed in. I remember every meal that made me stop talking."

New here? Start with the stories below, filter by the kind of trip you're craving, or just ask my AI travel buddy in the corner — it knows where I've been and is weirdly good at planning.