My fascination with going to India started even before I was fully bitten by the travel bug. Five or six years ago, I deemed going there as almost next to impossible, as there were so many factors to consider: the long-haul flight, the expensive airfare, being heavily tied up with a demanding corporate job, and the fact that for a country as massive as India, a mere five-day trip simply wouldn't cut it—unless you go there just to snap a photo of the Taj Mahal in Agra.

However, life circumstances have a strangely beautiful way of conspiring to bring me directly to the very country I had long sought to see.

Apart from the thousands of limestone karsts and small isles dotting the whole of Halong Bay, there were small islands that also provided additional attractions like the Dau Go Cave (Wooden Stakes Cave). According to a local story, while planning a counterattack against their Mongolian enemies in 1288, the men of General Tran Hung Dao hid an enormous number of wooden stakes inside that cave. The wooden stakes were then streamed into the Bach Dang River to serve as obstacles against the attacking Mongols. It was a risky plan that tricked the enemy, as the men of Kublai Khan got entangled with the wooden stakes while crossing through the treacherous riverbed, drowning a number of Mongolian warriors.

When one mentions 'rappelling', I always remember the classic scene in the first Universal Soldier film where the characters of Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme attempted a daring Australian rappel assault straight down the Hoover Dam. Though our experience at the 155-foot-high Pulangui Bridge at Quezon, Bukidnon ain't nowhere near a UniSol's feat, I definitely felt a massive rat throbbing from inside my chest as our guide prepared my safety gears.

"Are you nervous?" he repeated to me. "Are you nervous?" I gave him a thumbs-up sign, completely betraying what I was truly feeling, just before I kicked my feet off the edge and catapulted my body mid-air. With only a single sturdy rope saving me from a three-second free fall into massive broken bones or worse—death—I quietly recited a short prayer.