Wanderlust Buddies

This weekend turned out to be one of those times when you realize just what amazing friends you keep- people who love to travel, who will not think thrice about incurring debts (I say thrice because we do think twice about it) just to cross over the Atlantic, who dream of seeing all the continents (at least two want to end up in Latin America), and whose notion of envy is piqued by someone taking Singapore Airlines because we're all just really so used to flying budget.

What's even more amazing is that it was actually an "overlapping circles" night, i.e. people brought other friends over- Turtle & I invited Ikka, Lira took Jenette, at least four of them met Gwen & Froi for the first time -- & everyone ended up having a blast- laughing much and often.

Last night, the talk was about
...places in the Philippines we have yet to go to, either together or individually (El Nido in Palawan tops the list, followed by Vigan and, er, Baguio)
...future travels- long and short ones (Sagada, Batad, Bontoc, Davao, London, Italy, Japan, the Himalayas)
...past dalliances (Laos, Nepal, Colombia) and ice creams, nay, gelattos that make you think you're in Italy, along with airplanes and luxury flights and baggage allowances. There were fish lumpias, tuna sisigs, bottles of beer, fake mojitos, siomais, noodles.

Stories about lamang lupas were also swapped (Lamang Lupa, definition: creatures of the dark, traces of which just ought to be buried beneath the ground *Turtle, if you're reading, pahiram muna*), along with drunk texting anecdotes and jaw-dropping tales about other people publicly ranting about their, um, lamang lupas on Facebook, photos included (apparently, that happens. So careful how you treat your respective sinisinta at iniirog right now). Oh yes, grave grammatically-erroneous statuses were also the subject of much giggling (Jenette: "'I'm depress' LIKE!").

Looking around, it was just really gratitude-inducing to be surrounded by these adventurous, smart, and funny human beings (Kitty & Nica also pretty much said the same things today on FB). It's like the Universe telling you, "Hey, hey the company you keep is not bad at all!" 

To that I say, "Cè zù tin ba deh." (That's a thank you in Burmese.)