The Quest for the Tourist Attractions

Being a tourism research officer is having a combination of fun, satisfaction, hunger, fatigue and frustration. It is true that you can go to a lot of exciting and beautiful places. But it can also take away a part of your innocence. Not that type of innocence! What I’m saying here is innocence in a clean sense. When I was a child, I would get all excited and fired up whenever there was a trip to a beach resort. Never mind if the sand were black nor were plastics swam alongside me. The thing was, it was great feeling the excitement of getting near a beach and then swimming in the waters.

My work took away that excitement. Sometimes, my job required that I stayed in a very nice beach for a maximum of five minutes and then move on to another site. It was like having a cake in front of my face but not actually eating it. But I would never change that job for anything. The frustrations and loss of innocence were mere flukes in the overall experience and adventure that I got while discovering the entire length of the Philippines.

Plus, I actually fulfilled my college dream to travel around the country. Back then, I was planning to work my butt out for at least ten years, save lots of money, then spend them all on a long term journey to the nooks and crannies of the country. What do you know, I got to fulfill that dream on the second month of my work, three months after graduation, and I even got paid to travel! My whole life as a tourism research officer was a fulfilled dream that was supposed to take place ten years after.