Travel

It has been a long while since we last traveled somewhere outside the country as a family, and with these past two years of quarantine plus a great amount of stress from some other matters, my mother wanted to travel somewhere to have more happy memories. With vaccines now widespread and the world slowly opening up, we thought it’d be a great idea to try and travel somewhere soon.

Apparently, things still aren’t as easy for us as there are some hurdles that we all still need to overcome. Since we’ve already been to a few countries in Southeast Asia and my mom doesn’t want to repeat traveling to the same country(s), we decided on three possible destinations in East Asia: Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. Here’s a few things we found out while doing research in those three countries.

But first, Dubai…

Why did we start thinking about traveling again? Well it all began when my mom’s more well-off friend invited her to go to Dubai. Of course, she liked the idea and so we started collecting the requirements for her Dubai visa. 

My mom is deathly afraid of traveling alone though, and her friend who was part of a 10-day package tour wouldn’t offer to pick her up from the airport or accompany her back. As an alternative plan, my mom wanted to bring my brother and I and we’ll just go do our own thing there. Sadly, Dubai is extremely strict with their visas, and since my younger brother is unemployed there’s just no chance that he’ll be able to join. My mother also just can’t leave him behind. 

Due to that we decided to cancel Dubai and look for another destination.

On a final note, my mother tried contacting her “friend” for info regarding the visa and everything… but she never responded. Maybe that friend only invited my mom to brag about their Dubai trip and didn’t expect her to actually accept.