It’s a funny place to begin a travel journal—inside a toilet stall at a Nando’s, halfway between Wolverhampton and London. Not exactly the poetic kickoff I’d imagined. No sweeping views, no neatly packed suitcase posed beside a coffee cup. Just me, my mildly anxious stomach, and a thought I couldn’t unshake. Someone before me didn’t flush.

Travel doesn’t always begin with beauty. Sometimes, it begins with discomfort, questions, and quiet reckonings in places we’d rather forget.

The water worked. The tissue was stocked. There was no sign of a mechanical failure—just a small act of disregard. And I know, I know—it’s such a minor thing. Hardly the stuff of grand revelations. But in that moment, as I stared at the consequence of someone else’s non-action, it landed a little heavier than it should’ve.

Is this laziness? A sense of entitlement? Or maybe just an absence of awareness—that someone else comes after you, that someone else inherits the space you leave behind?

It got me thinking. We’re always walking through one another’s spaces. Public restrooms, shared buses, quiet queues, hurried hallways. We enter, we leave, and somewhere in between, we leave a trace. Sometimes visible, sometimes invisible. A piece of trash. A kind word. A half-done task. A tension in the air. Or maybe, like this, a toilet unflushed.

And in a strange way, maybe that’s the metaphor I needed to carry into this trip: flush your presence. Be mindful of the ripple you leave behind. Take the extra second. Do the invisible kindness. It’s easy to be nice when others are watching—but the real test of decency, I’m learning, is who you are when no one is. The person who cleans up after themselves. Who acknowledges the next stranger. Who sees the shared nature of every space we pass through.

So here I am, beginning a journey back to the Philippines—not with a sunset airport photo or a well-lit travel montage, but with this awkward, very human, in-between moment. Maybe that’s the kind of travel writing I want to create—not just highlights and destinations, but the pauses. The funny stops. The bathroom stalls and bus stations. The reflections you’re not supposed to write down, but do anyway, because they’re honest.

Travel doesn’t always begin with beauty. Sometimes, it begins with discomfort, questions, and quiet reckonings in places we’d rather forget. And that’s okay.

Because every trip, like every life, is made of more than just the postcard moments. It’s made of stalls and steps. Of delays and daydreams. Of wondering why people do what they do—and choosing to do better when it’s your turn.

Tomorrow, the flight leaves. But the journey? I think it already started.