About

Hello. I am Kaiz. My nickname is really Kasey, but friends choose to call me Kaiz when they are too lazy even to say my two-syllable pet name. Most people pronounce it like dice, only with a K and a Z, but it’s actually maze (again, with a K), like a puzzle. I’m too shy to correct those who have already stamped Kaiz like dice on their minds.

My love for blogging started in 2003 when one of my college instructors introduced me to a modern way of keeping a journal through a digital diary or blog (weblog). Since then, I have created several accounts on well-used blog sites like Blogspot, Tabulas, Xanga, and many more. It was just July 2009 when I finally settled with WordPress and my own domain name, thus the birth of this travel blog. Sometime in 2011, having built this site on my own through tutorials and forums, I ignorantly deleted the website’s database, thinking that it was some random unnecessary file. Poof, the blog became koko krunch. Everything that I had worked hard for since I started was completely erased. Aside from my several hiatus, that’s another reason there are just a few posts on this website despite its age.

Now, who cares about history?

Fast forward to 2012, I married my boyfriend for almost six years, Rowjie. We share the same passion for food, music, traveling, and trekking. Though we’re working on it, we still don’t have a kid who we plan on naming Ky-mani (boy) or Margaja (girl). We currently reside in Mandaluyong while waiting for our dream urban residence to be completed (here goes a huge chunk of our earnings). Rowjie wants to have a dog as a pet, but our humble abode will not be able to accommodate it so much for a couch surfer.

If we are financially incapable of going out of town during the weekend, you can visit us and join us in watching our favorite TV series like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, The Entourage, and much more. Just do not forget to bring a box of popcorn and a few bottles of beer. *wink*

Our most unforgettable moment as a couple was becoming the stars in one episode of the defunct travel show Weekend Getaway.

I do not consider myself a seasoned traveler. I haven’t even been to La Union and Davao yet, goodness gracious! But my favorite trips (so far) include surfing in Siargao, celebrating Rowjie’s birthday in Batanes, and our annual Calaguas beach bumming.

Abroad, I have been to some parts of the Southeast Asia region, including Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. And I still dream of setting foot in Latin America to see its chicas calientes,  in New Zealand to see Middle Earth, Palau (just because), and Santorini (well, who doesn’t?) someday.

Our seven-day trek to and from the base camp of the tenth highest mountain worldwide, Annapurna in Nepal, is the most challenging activity I have done so far. As of writing, we have less than two weeks before we are Kathmandu-bound again, this time to complete the Everest base camp trek. I hope to return in one piece and get rid of it on my bucket list.

My experiences off and on the road have changed me a lot. I no longer care about shared bathrooms, bunk beds, and rundown hostels, about being cheap and sometimes filthy, about following itineraries and just going wherever my feet take me. I now carry only a few sets of clothes, prefer to enjoy the beauty of a single place than see everything but appreciate nothing, cherish every single moment of my trip, to just travel without any baggage.

There are still a lot of places that I want to discover and explore, new things that I wish to learn, and different cultures that I hope to understand. As I go on with my journey, I will try to document every bit of it and share a piece of my life with you that is traveling.