The Wandering Log

The hardest part of a walking journey isn’t the exhaustion — it’s when your stomach suddenly goes bad and there’s no restroom in sight. In this episode: managing your diet on the road, pure panic mode in the middle of nowhere, and why the courage to ask a stranger “Can I use your toilet?” is the ultimate travel survival skill.

Stuck waiting for a visa, I stumbled onto a massive indigenous festival in Sabah — rice wine, sacred buffaloes, traditional dances, and a warm Filipino community. Turns out being stuck isn't always a bad thing.

Stuck in Tawau, waiting on a visa that's taking longer than expected. In this episode: local food, port city prices, and why watching kids play street football every evening might be the most memorable part of an otherwise quiet week.

Seven hours of nonstop bouncing on a bus from Keningau to Tawau — made unforgettable by a Japan jersey in rural Sabah, a stranger who paid for my meal, and a beautiful coastal town waiting at the end of the road.

I thought Keningau was just a place to pass through. A huge local market, unforgettable fish balls, and some of the friendliest people on the trip proved me wrong — turning a quick stop into one of the most relaxing days yet.

A free ride turned into a passport stamp at a state border, a 100km drive to Tenom, dinner with a very accomplished family, a free hotel room, and coffee on a hilltop at sunset. Some days, the walking trip turns into something else entirely — and that's fine by me.

I overslept in Lawas and turned it into a full day of discovery: a busy Saturday market, a strange pear-flavored drink called TEBU, and a free meal — all because I said a few words of Chinese to the right person.

An unexpected reunion, a family pulling over for a stranger, and twenty brutal kilometers of dodging cars into deep grass — the road from Brunei to Lawas tested me and rewarded me in equal measure. Ending the day with fish cake, fish balls, and a whole lot of gratitude.

On a small island near Cebu, I met a woman who has lived essentially alone since age two — and is now fighting her way through university at 27, one paycheck at a time. In this episode: the village safety net that raised her, the illusion of the “normal” path, and what her story taught me about privilege and raw human resilience.

An impromptu extra night in Bangar turns into a full day of discovery — a chaotic morning market, a monument locals insisted I walk right into, and the Sultan's birthday festival lighting up the night with street food and conversation. Sometimes the best travel days are the unplanned ones.