He Stole My Heart on a Sand Dune in Vietnam
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Who: Anna Faustino and Tom Rogers
Where: Mui Ne, Vietnam
When: 2014
Status: In a relationship currently traveling the world
(As told by Anna)
It was a scorching hot day in the sand dunes of Mui Ne Vietnam.
The afternoon sun was setting, and there was nothing in sight except for sand dunes and groups of tourists scattered around them. I was on a sand sled, going downhill at full speed, when I noticed a man out of the corner of my eye doing the same thing. But there was one exception — he didn’t have a sled.
This guy was literally tumbling down the sand dunes, but looked like he was having the time of his life. When I reached the bottom of my hill, I whipped out my Go Pro and filmed his sand dune descent. I laughed while filming and couldn’t help but to think, “Who is this idiot rolling down the hill?”
A few minutes later, he came over to borrow my sand sled. And as they say, the rest is history!
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After that day, we ended up traveling most of Vietnam together. Tom was riding a motorbike from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi and I was traveling the same route by bus. We would meet up at some of the stops, and sometimes I even hopped on the back of his motorbike to ride to the next place.
After a month of motorbike rides, endless conversations, laughs, and silly dance offs, I left for Laos and Tom continued on to Northern Vietnam. After spending three weeks apart, we decided to meet up again in Thailand, where we traveled all over Pai, Chiang Mai, and the Thai islands. Our connection was solid. We were attracted to each other’s sense of fun, adventure, and silliness, but moreover, we just simply enjoyed being around each other.
Soon enough, the day came for us to say our goodbyes. I won’t lie, it wasn’t easy. After almost two months of traveling together, I was heading back to the Philippines as I was nearing the end of my yearlong backpacking trip. Tom on the other hand, was only six months into his travels, and had plans to go to Singapore and Malaysia.
He also had plans to come to the Philippines, but as travelers both knew that plans could change anytime. As I bid him goodbye on the pier of Koh Phangan, I remember thinking to myself that I could possibly never seem him again. We kept in touch through emails and messages, and after a few months, Tom landed in the Philippines and never left.
Despite coming from completely different parts of the world, Tom from a small town in Wales, and I from the Philippines, we both had an immediate connection with each other — an electrifying strange feeling that somehow, we had met our match.
Tom decided to put a halt to his travels and base himself in the Philippines in order to wait for me. I was finishing my Master’s degree and working, and Tom got offered a job doing business development and data analysis for a tech start-up company. We were both making good money, but felt that something was missing from our lives. That’s when we decided to start our adventure travel blog, Adventure in You. Despite working full time jobs, it was our little way to stay connected to something that we both love, traveling.
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Months flew by, and after a life changing job offer for Tom, we decided to pack up our lives in the Philippines to get back on the road. Why? Because we realized that money wasn’t everything and that at this point in our lives, all we wanted to do was travel the world together. Just like every couple, we argue and disagree, but at the end of the day, we know that there is no one else we would rather be traveling the world with.
So now we explore together, in search of local living experiences, good food, and the best adventures. We know that falling in love while traveling can be tough, fleeting, and can sometimes even lead to heartbreak. However, sometimes, just sometimes, it actually works out.
How could I possibly have thought that the guy I met rolling down the sand dunes would be the same person I would travel the world with? We chose to forgo a life of financial security in order to live our lives in the pursuit of love, passion, and adventure.
After all, that is what brought us together.
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