For as long as I can remember, Farah and I always had our annual bestie trip. When I was a student, she’d dragged her ass to visit me wherever I was – England, Italy and Ireland. When I started working, it was Japan and Thailand. When I was 7 months pregnant, she was my guardian angel and accompanied me to Krabi – she didn’t have too, she did it cause I was basically a walking watermelon and I knew deep down she wanted to make sure I was safe.

And then I became a mom, I felt so guilty putting off our annual trips, but she never made me feel bad about it. ‘I swear babe, after I am done breastfeeding I will be ready to go’. She waited, ever so patiently.

Then when it was time, we made plans to go to New Zealand. Just the two of us, two weeks, far away from almost everything that pissed us off on a daily basis. We were ecstatic. Then my leave was rejected.

At this point I felt so bad I didn’t know how to tell her, but we’ve been friends since we were 13 so there’s no such thing as hiding anything. She STILL understood my situation. When I had a work trip, I asked her to follow me but I warned her, ‘I’m probably not going to be around much, but you can do whatever you want and we will meet up when work is out of the way’.

She booked her flight ticket almost right away and true enough, I only saw her in the morning and late at night. She never gave me any attitude for it, she was there when I was under so much pressure and basically had to hold my head when I had nothing to do but bawl my eyes out. She was there, all the way through.

Our plans came to a halt again when I had to move to the Netherlands, by then I thought I will never be around to give us this well-deserved bestie trip. I started to lose hope and just told myself it’s probably better to just go with the flow and don’t think about this trip ever again.

Farah, being Farah, of course she was going to come and visit me. She did and before she came our hopes were rejuvenated for this trip. We toyed with a few places, almost made the booking and finally she said ‘I want to go to Switzerland’.

It was a no brainer for me, if this woman asked to go to Alaska I would happily agree, I will dig whatever money I have left to make this trip possible for us – and it happened. IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. So off we went to Switzerland.

It was honestly one of the best vacations.

I realised a few things during this trip

The first was about money, time and health. When we first start travelling together money was always a huge barrier. As grateful as we were with the ability to travel we obviously couldn’t do everything we wanted. I remember praying for bigger and better trips once both of us are financially stable.

….and when money wasn’t really an issue, it was time. From family commitments, workload and leave approvals, I realised you can have all the money in the world but it would still be a problem if time wasn’t on your side.

Then it made me think about health – which would be a bigger barrier if one day we are not able to travel if our body won’t allow us to move as freely as we want – the thought of this made me realise perhaps if money and time isn’t on our side there are still ways to work things out and just be grateful with whatever resources we have. After all it isn’t really about the place, it’s the people you’re with.

As much as I was counting my blessings during this trip, I realised that during the most vulnerable and insecure phase of my life, I had my best friend by my side and we were having the best time of our life in this beautiful place….

…and I am grateful I was for the Flip. Our attempts in the past years for a trip were unsuccessful, there were so many barriers and rejections, but after we stopped pushing for it and with my best friend’s constant support and love, a greater opportunity fell onto our lap…what a flip!