The Weeks on the Road Behind a Trip to the Philippines
The long stretches in the truck that made a short Philippines visit possible, and why ordinary days together mattered.
Before one of my trips to the Philippines, I spent roughly two to three months on the road with about four days off during that stretch. The trip itself gave me seven full days there with my fiancée, not counting the travel days.
Seven days can sound like a short visit. It was. But it gave us time together between longer visits, and that mattered enough to make the trip.
There isn’t a fixed formula for how long I work and how long I go away. Each trip has its own purpose and depends on what I can make work. My first visit was two weeks in the Philippines after several months of working and saving. The shorter visit came later, as a way to keep spending time together rather than waiting until another longer stay was possible.
The work behind those visits is a familiar part of my life. For about three years, I’ve kept a trucking schedule with very little time off. In some years, the longest break I took was about a week around a holiday. Long stretches on the road are normal for me.
I work because I need the income. It pays for life and makes these trips possible. The time in the truck and the time in the Philippines are connected, even though they feel very different when I’m living them.
Once I got there for that shorter visit, we mostly stayed local. We cooked together, visited her family and went to a few places that were new to me. One of the things I enjoyed was flavored milk from a dairy co-op. Small things like that became part of the visit.
Much of the week was ordinary life together. We had time to make food, spend time with family and be in the same place. After being on the road for so long, I found that refreshing.
I don’t think of every trip as a vacation. Sometimes I do want vacation activities, and there’s room for those. On this visit, spending everyday time with my fiancée was a big part of why I went. Cooking together belonged in that week just as much as going somewhere new.
I’d like to have more choice about when I can take that time and less worry about making it work. Money helps with that. Right now, trucking is how I earn it, and the weeks on the road make these visits possible. The freedom I’m working toward would give me more room for ordinary days together.