Travelogue: Par Deux

Once you google 'travel with your significant other', thousand articles and pictures would show up telling you to do this and to do that. Then, I questioned myself. Why do people really want to travel with their lover? I stopped at one quotation. The one from Mark Twain. I follow, I do, I repeat what Mark Twain said, "I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate then than to travel with them."

That is why I want to know him furthermore. How? Travel together is the simplest way. Taking him in a journey together is a best answer. It is not because the questions like 'how compatible you are in a scale 1-10', 'how to handle each other when they get you on your nerves', or 'what would it be like to be in one place just with your significant other'.

For me, it is not that. It is more than that. Traveling together basically putting trust not only into you two, but into each other's family. As someone who's grown up with a strong eastern culture, you know that family permission is important. It is not tacky, it is what it is, it is culture, it is value, it is norms, and you've grown up with that for a reason. Once your parents love your partner, they will let you go anywhere you want. Trust is rooted from responsibility. And that, my Darling, is something you need to value the most from someone which is hard to earn.

Anyway, something worth having is worth trying. Let your family know with whom you travel. No need to play hide and seek with the aim to get good pictures in Instagram. It is your relationship that is more important than impressing strangers who's double-tapping your picture (eventhough uploading pictures about your journey is definitely not a sin). To point it over here, nothing is more comfortable than making a partner, a family. A family proves their love through responsibility of which you can find when you travel together. Trust will come along in that journey.

Make sure that you do it right with your partner. Travel because you know you already become that whole package, not because you try to empty a vessel inside of your heart. Travel because you are ready, not to fancy anything to anyone. Travel to get lost, to get to know other people, to make you more informed, to make you learn, to be more thankful, to realize that you are blessed, and to know that you are loved.

After a day or two into deep thinking when we were hiking together, I realized that it came out as an answer, I am happy being around this guy. How do I know that? Because I count my blessing and be thankful for what it is. When I travel with him, I know I was right about all those things: traveling is the purest act of rebellion that teaches us about life lesson like 'we own only what we carry', 'we talk kindly to stranger', 'we love the unfamiliar', 'we trade a role for reality', and 'we get lost willingly'. One last point I want to address, travel par deux taught me not to be afraid of the unknown and sometimes 'planning it well' just does not work. Life is not working as you wish, and this journey made me smiling because I know even if life could be that fucked up I still have him around (to bite that fucked up life back) and that is enough.