How a Philippines trip — and many memorable meals — redefined home

“Get ready to eat!”

That’s what my mother told me in late 2022 when I learned my parents and I would be traveling to the Philippines. Before our trip this February, my parents hadn’t set foot in their home country for 25 years. I had never visited.

I was born less than two months after they immigrated to Kent, in 1998. I grew up a quintessential American kid in the Pacific Northwest, riding my bike along the Green River. In eighth grade, I skipped school and braved freezing temperatures to watch the Seahawks Super Bowl parade with my father in downtown Seattle. 

At the same time, I also grew up in a tightknit Filipino American community. Most of my elementary school friends were Filipino too, and we would eat the home cooked chicken adobo and other dishes our parents made for countless birthdays and Christmas parties. I learned Tagalog phrases by watching soap operas with my mom. 

When my friends visited the Philippines with their families and returned with stories of all the memories they’d made, I was happy for them. But I was also jealous that they had completed this cultural rite of passage. When I’d ask my parents if we’d travel there someday, they’d say it wasn’t the right time, or cite difficulties to afford the trip. 

I’d spent my life walking the line of my Filipino American identity, but never visited the nation where my parents were born and raised. In some ways, I felt shame burn in the back of my mind, as if I had somehow turned my back on my Filipino heritage.

To me, the Philippines was always a land across the sea, seen only through old family photos and TV shows. To my friends, it was familiar. 

Before my family packed for our trip, I couldn’t help but wonder: What took me so long? Am I — a woman in her 20s whose Tagalog has slowly dwindled to barely conversational phrases — worthy enough to visit my homeland?

I may never know why it took me this long, but I knew I had to let go of my insecurities and simply come as the most authentic version of myself. This trip was a chance to ascribe my own meaning to the places in the family photos and the culture that influenced my upbringing.

In February, I embarked on a journey to the homeland I had never visited, hoping to discover what it meant to call a place home. 

Across the Pacific

The Philippines, an archipelago of over 7,600 islands, is a 14-hour flight from the West Coast. White sand beaches and tropical forests sprawl across the islands, so different from the Pacific Northwest’s rocky beaches and temperate woodlands. 

My mother, an airline accountant by day and travel logistics mastermind by night, scoured the internet for the best travel packages and accommodations she could find. While we would eventually visit family and friends in Manila, she made sure all three of us would visit places we’d never seen.

Although we weren’t an outdoorsy family, we spent hours exploring islands and swimming in the Philippine Sea’s turquoise waters. We ended up off the coast of El Nido, Palawan, island-hopping aboard an outrigger canoe-style bangka, despite my penchant for seasickness. In a single day, we visited four different islands, explored a cavernous limestone cave and saw turtles while snorkeling. 

From El Nido, we journeyed to Bohol, home of the famous Chocolate Hills (their decadent name comes from the grass-covered hills turning brown during the dry season, not from the presence of actual chocolate). My dad and I braved several flights of stairs to make it to the observatory deck, where we watched the sun set over the green hills that spread out in every direction as far as the eye could see. 

“I would say it’s inner peace,” my mom said of the views of her homeland. “We can never experience that [feeling of familiarity] in the U.S. Just the sound of the ocean reminds me that this is where I came from.”

The beauty of nature was one thing to witness firsthand, but it was the generosity of the local guides on our island tours that stuck with me. Many guides spent years as fishermen before switching to the tourism industry. With the sea breeze ruffling their hair as they hopped around the bangka as easily as if they were on land, they told us stories, cooked three-course meals on the boat and played beach volleyball with us. By the end of the tour, they felt like family.

My parents called it the concept of “maasikaso,” or being attentive to others. They’d always said Filipinos were well-known for their generosity, but spending the day with our guides showed me firsthand what it means to take pride in serving others. 

When we journeyed to Manila to meet family and friends, all were eager to treat us to their favorite restaurants around town. Although the city was new to me, the food was deeply familiar. Between shopping for Filipino groceries at Seafood City in Tukwila and making trips to Jollibee (a fast-food chain more popular than McDonald’s in the Philippines), eating meals with loved ones, especially from my culture, has always been key to forming my sense of community. 

On our trip, my mom’s side of the family brought us to a Max’s Restaurant in Quezon City and ordered nearly everything on the menu, including the very same fried chicken, crispy pata (deep fried pork knuckles) and kare kare (a savory peanut sauce stew) that I grew up eating at the beloved chain’s location back home in Washington. Though I had just met these family members, we spent several hours exchanging stories and bonding over these comforting dishes that tasted like my home, too. 

Better than the pictures

One of my favorite childhood pastimes was watching my parents’ wedding video, which I played on our family VCR in the days before DVDs and online streaming. I watched my mom, dressed in white and holding a cascading bouquet of pink lilies, walk down the aisle of a dimly lit church. Near the altar, my dad waits for her dressed in a white barong, the traditional formalwear for Filipino men. 

My parents, both Catholic, met in the ’80s in a small church just outside of Manila. At a church luau, my dad took one look at my mom in her floral Hawaiian dress and “fell in love with me right then,” she said. In 1995, they married in the heart of Manila at San Sebastian Basilica, a majestic 19th-century steel structure with spires rising over 100 feet in the air.

When my parents asked me what I wanted to see during our trip, I only had one request: to see that church with my own eyes.

Nothing prepared me for the sense of awe I felt, standing on the black-and-white tiles of the aisle my mother walked down all those years ago. My mom was 27 when she married, just two years older than I am now. At 30, she was seven months pregnant, flying across the world to move to a country she had never even visited, with only my father and a few suitcases at her side. 

Initially, my father did not want to move to the United States, even though his father, already living in Houston, sponsored a petition for him and my mother. My father was satisfied with his government job in the Philippines, saying his master’s degree in economics would hold more value there than in America. He and his wife had a house, a car, friends and family. What more could he ask for?

It wasn’t until my father drove past the U.S. Embassy in Manila one day and saw a line of people long enough to circle the building three times that he understood. All of them were waiting for the same sponsorship opportunity my father already had. My mom convinced him to change his mind, persuading him that moving to the U.S. would give their unborn child better education and career opportunities. 

Ten years after immigrating, my parents passed their naturalization tests with flying colors. I remember holding onto my mother, a small American flag in my other hand, as she and my father took the oath of allegiance as new U.S. citizens, signifying that their life was here now, and they were committed to building their version of the American dream. 

“I made the right decision,” my father said to me recently. “To leave my personal preference [behind] and immigrate here to America, even though it was tough and we had to start our lives all over again. You’ve got a good quality of life now.”

All I could do was nod solemnly and thank him for the sacrifices he and my mother made for me. As if sensing my sobriety, he smiled and put his arm around my mother, seated beside him.

“You might be living an American life, but you’re still a Filipino. Your culture is not going to go away,” my father said. “You can become a U.S. citizen, but in heart and mind, you’re still a Filipino.”

“Kapatids”

When my parents immigrated to Washington from Manila over 25 years ago, they left behind friends, family and the only life they had known. Watching them reconnect with loved ones in the Philippines as if no time had passed showed me glimpses of their younger selves, and perhaps the life I would have lived if I had been raised in the Philippines. 

On one of the last days of our trip, my father met with two childhood “kapatids” (the Filipino word for “friends”) Joey O’Santos and Raymond Roasles, in Tagaytay, a province a couple of hours south of Manila. Although I’d never met them, they were my “ninongs,” or godfathers. The three of them laughed and joked, reciting a toast they made up in school. It was like no time passed at all. 

When I met my ninongs’ kids, one asked if I’d like to go barhopping with them later that night. Excited to experience Manila’s vibrant nightlife (and perhaps spend some time with people my own age), I eagerly accepted. My last few hours in Manila were spent dancing the night away with my newfound friends, creating new memories like the ones our fathers did so many years ago. 

Perhaps it wasn’t until that last night that I truly felt like I belonged in my homeland. That night of dancing was only possible because of the roots my parents had grown over the decades of their lifetimes, in the Philippines and America. 

Three months ago, I thought this homecoming would be a rite of passage, one that would prove I was Filipino enough.

But by the time my family packed our suitcases, many full of “pasalubong” (souvenirs) for our loved ones back in Seattle, I was the same me who navigates life as both the quintessential American and the daughter of Filipino immigrants. Perhaps sharing meals with my family and walking through the clear waters of the Philippine Sea simply allowed me to see the parts of me that had always been there, and how they can continue to flourish. 

I knew I would come back to Seattle and share my new memories with friends. Instead of using those experiences to absolve any guilt or doubt over my heritage, they only made me feel pride and joy in my multifaceted identity.

It took 25 years for my parents to return home and for me to set foot in their homeland for the first time. I watched the sun set over Manila Bay outside of my plane window, looking forward to returning to Seattle and the place I called home for my entire life. But now I had a new place that felt like home, one that I can’t wait to see again.