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About Me
Hi I’m Tey,
I am a Filipino.
But what does that really mean?
My mom is Ilocana-Gaddang from Northern Luzon.
My dad is Waray from the Visayas.
Both were in the military, so we moved from city to city across Luzon.
I grew up playing volleyball, wearing different school uniforms, speaking different dialects, learning how to belong anywhere. In high school, I represented Cagayan Valley in the Palarong Pambansa. That opened doors. I got into UP Diliman, studied Tourism, and graduated cum laude.
I thought I understood the Philippines. I studied its festivals, beaches, and slogans.
I thought that was love.
But something deeper started waking up when I left.
After graduation, I moved to Thailand as an OFW. I started traveling, crossing borders, planning trips, and filming everything. I thought I wanted to be a travel influencer—and for a while, I was. I hit millions of views, gained followers, and felt seen.
But the more I saw the world, the more I questioned what I knew.
Like many, I thought the dream was to travel, work abroad, and create content. After college, I moved to Thailand as an Overseas Filipino Worker. I started backpacking, crossing borders, and filming my life. I hit 5 million views. I thought I made it.
But it was in Thailand that something shifted.
I watched how Thai people loved their country—how they spoke their language, preserved their traditions, and celebrated their history. They didn’t look west for validation. They looked inward.
i started noticing what my own content was saying—and what it wasn’t. I saw what the algorithm promotes. I saw what tourism hides. I saw how little I knew about the Philippines beyond what we were taught in school.
That’s when I realized: I had been colonized in my thinking.
Thailand didn’t just give me a job—it gave me perspective. It decolonized me. It made me ask:
What does it mean to love your country without romanticizing it?
What did we lose when our stories were rewritten?
What do we still carry?
Since then, I’ve been on a different kind of journey—not just across borders, but through memory, maps, and history. I stopped chasing viral views and started chasing context. From tourism student to travel blogger to aspiring geographer, I now move with different questions.
I don’t just want to go places. I want to understand them. Especially the Philippines.
I want to love the Philippines too.
But how?
This blog is me trying to find out. I want to understand my country. And I want to share everything I learn with you.