Haven’t got around

Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.

Traveling has always been an enigma to me. It feels as if every road I take, though seemingly new, carries a strange familiarity—as though I’ve walked its path before. My mother often picks our travel destinations based on irresistible deals, and I simply follow along with my siblings. Yet, no matter where we go, these unfamiliar places awaken a peculiar sense of déjà vu, leaving me with an odd feeling I can’t quite shake.

Take, for example, the time I visited Indonesia. As our tour guide recounted the harrowing tales of volcano eruptions, I found myself vividly imagining being caught in such devastation, as though I had once lived it. Stories of the Majapahit Empire triggered fleeting glimpses of running into temples for refuge, desperate to escape invading forces. It was as if these weren’t just tales of history but fragments of a life I had lived before.

Another tale like Thailand, the tour guide was explaining about the ruins of the Buddhist monastery and temple, the one that stood out for me, the Buddha head stuck in the tree. As I turned to look at the back into the ruins, I saw a small me clad in an orange robe dying into the ruins as the invader bombarded the temple, the ceiling wall had fallen on my small boy and died.

Then there was the United Kingdom. Standing amidst the stoneage of the countryside, I couldn’t stop taking photos, overwhelmed by a deep connection to a past life as a druid. Similarly, in Mesopotamia, it felt as though I had once crafted jewelry to sell in bustling markets—an odd echo I couldn’t ignore when I stumbled upon jewelry designs eerily similar to mine in the British Museum during a visit in May 2024 for my sister’s graduation.

India left an even deeper imprint. A taxi driver remarked that visitors typically finish their prayers and leave the temple within half an hour. Yet my mother, sister, and I spent over five hours exploring every pillar and intricate carving, as if each corner held memories I had left behind centuries ago. Time seemed irrelevant as the temple’s energy pulled me into its embrace, blurring the line between present and past.

I can’t explain these experiences, nor do I know where they’ll lead me next. But traveling has become more than just a journey through new destinations—it feels like rediscovering fragments of a life long gone. And while I have no set list of places to explore, I’ve learned to embrace the mysteries of each unfamiliar road, for they seem to know me better than I know myself.