Time freezes in this serene setting, dominated by lush green grass in front of a circular lake entirely surrounded by heaps of towering trees. We were only here for a couple of hours, but it seemed like more than enough time to properly clear my mind of all big city worries. Prior to our visit, I had only heard and read about Lake Apo. I expected it to be much larger, so expansive that you wouldn't have to hear the exuberant yells of children echoing from the other end.

In reality, it was much smaller and significantly more charming. I could clearly hear the kids playing from the opposite side, where a few traditional nipa huts dotted the lake's edges. These are the exact kinds of tiny houses I often fantasize about having as my retirement home. I thought to myself, "I could retire here." A small wooden cabin and the peaceful atmosphere of this location would serve me exceptionally well.

During the four mornings I spent in the city of Hanoi in-between my jaunts to Halong Bay and Sapa, my favorite part was walking around Hoan Kiem Lake. Being under sunny skies, feeling the winter wind, and being embraced by the twelve-degree Celsius cold was the perfect condition to romp, stomp, and get to know a new city. The occasional showers, which showed up at an interlude of a couple of hours, had me sheltering under the tall trees that surrounded the lake. Otherwise, I would have gone round and round the lake. Sometimes I would walk toward a random street, ending up on another side of the Old French Quarters, but each time I would always follow a path back to Hoan Kiem Lake.

After achieving a zen state of mind at the ninth-century Buddhist temple complex of Borobudur, we proceeded to another throwback landmark from that century—that time, the Hindu temple called Candi Prambanan. My interest level in seeing more temples that day fluctuated below the 0.50 mark since I had already had my house-of-worship fix. However, upon stepping out of our van, the sight of the sharp tips of Prambanan's stupas ushered in a new wave of curiosity as to what fascinating discoveries awaited me inside.

The weather in Hanoi hovered down to twelve degrees according to the app on my phone; whether it was accurate or not, my pulsating fingers were telling me there was no need to question its veracity. So, while waiting for the van to pick me up at the office of Sinh Tourist, I walked across to a small noodle joint and ordered a bowl of hot Pho Ga. My newfound friend in the city, Hoang, had told me about the snow that had fallen in Sapa a few days before; she advised me to add extra layers of clothing. I told Hoang the cold never bothered me anyway. It was a lie; as I sat quivering, waiting to sip on some hot Vietnamese chicken noodles, I imagined how much coldness awaited me in Sapa.

When in doubt, ask around—and inquire I did, not just to anybody but to travel experts in that cool travel community I was a part of. Paul and Joshua, two fellow travel bloggers who had recently spent a week in Yogyakarta, were quick to recommend that hostel when I made an inquiry about a place to stay while in Yogyakarta on our Facebook group. It was the community I was talking about, composed of travel addicts who capered rehab by constantly wandering on the road. Edu Hostel was the top choice, and after making a quick study of a handful of other options, I booked that hotel online a week prior to my departure for Jakarta.

As early as six o'clock in the morning, I was already at the Gambir train station, excited for my first 'long train ride'. Even though I was a train veteran with thousands of railway miles under my butt courtesy of our own LRT and MRT lines, the trip to Yogyakarta from Jakarta would be my first time trainspotting for more than seven hours. I had already pre-booked a ticket for myself via Tiket.com for 300,000 IDR one-way (1,500 PHP) a few weeks before I departed for Jakarta. So when the ticket counters opened a quarter after six, I hurriedly entered the station and found a seat where I just sat and waited for the 8:10 AM train to Yogyakarta.

A night bursting with conversations over beer, pizza and fried pepper while the Brass Munkeys performs some fine fusion of blues and jazz in the background, is a hands down great night to stay awake till 4:00 am. It is with difficulty level of 8 to gather drinking mates from my travel junky circle of friends since most of the time, others are away hitchhiking a ride to a mountain town, while some are getting drunk in a pub district of a South East Asian city. This is where the organizational skills of Gaye Emami comes in handy operating like a mind controller in setting up this meet-up to welcome a poet-slash-nurse friend from Australia, and aside from knitting all our schedule together, she came up with a great suggestion for a venue: TAGO Jazz Cafe.

I was resting my feet during those remaining few days of 2013. They had gone through miles and miles of pavement and off-road rambling around new cities and towns I had visited during that travel-blessed year. Among my favorite walks of the year was along the charming colonial buildings of Yangon in Myanmar. It felt like being transported back in time; although a few modern structures had already been erected, the old buildings from yester-decades still filled the streets of the city. It was a different feeling being in a country I had deemed impossible to visit a few years earlier because of the political upheavals going on at that time. I, like the rest of the world, was glad that Myanmar had finally opened up and let its unique qualities be known to all of us.

A year ago, Typhoon Pablo walloped Cateel, Davao Oriental, and Compostela Valley. It was one of the strongest storms to hit the country to date. I remember the owner of the restaurant where we had a drink the night I was in Cateel telling us over a bottle of San Miguel Light—as he joined me and Nunoy—about that horrifying night last December.

"My brother-in-law, who is a member of the US Navy, called my wife the day before," he narrated to us. "The typhoon was so huge that the US Navy and the US atmospheric office started monitoring it. He warned us to get away from Davao Oriental. I was able to send my wife to Davao the day before. That morning, I tied up some of the restaurant's stuff. People who saw me asked what I was doing; nobody thought at that time that Pablo would be that strong."

I could not wait to start writing about my trip to Yogyakarta, but a lack of time and too much procrastination in between disallowed me from diving straight in. However, I was able to put together, in a hurried state, a music video of the random footage I had taken while walking around that interesting city and visiting the temple complexes of both Borobudur and Prambanan. As a preview of my future blog posts about that journey of mine, here it was with The Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn!" serving as the soundtrack.

I had always worried about passing immigration since an experience in Hong Kong a couple of years prior, making it my biggest concern for my trip to Indonesia. Since I had been working as a freelancer for a few months at that point, I no longer had a company ID to present. As I arrived at NAIA Terminal Three, it was all I could think about. While lining up to pay the expensive travel tax, I was distracted by a Spanish-looking mestiza girl in front of me. I quickly assumed she was heading to either Bali or Phuket. That was why I felt a bit surprised when I spotted her again with her friend lining up at the check-in counter for Jakarta.