August 30, 2026

When Life Gives You Baha… Find Another Route 😂

The water looked like it was getting deeper the farther we went, so we had to turn back AGAIN.

craziest baha experience yesterday! 😭

we went out to attend a birthday party, and going out was already scary because it was raining really hard. but going home? even crazier. 😂

we already knew nlex wasn’t moving, so we took a route we had never tried before, and surprisingly, it worked! minimal traffic too, so we thought we were lucky.

then came the craziest part: actually trying to get home.

the streets near our house were already flooded, but we still tried. there was no electricity in the area too, which made everything even scarier hahaha. the first route we tried was literally around 2 minutes away from home, but the flood was so deep that i honestly don’t even know why we were still trying 😂 we eventually had to give up and reverse all the way back.

at that point, we decided to just find a hotel. while we were on our way, we ran into a rescue truck, and our plan was to ask if they could take us home while we left the car parked somewhere safe. unfortunately, they told us they were on their way to rescue people in another area.

that’s also when i realized there really aren’t that many hotels in valenzuela 😂 the ones we tried were all fully booked. then we finally found one that was open and had an available room… but we couldn’t even get there because the road leading to it was flooded. 😭 we tried so many different routes just to reach the hotel and ended up driving through places we had never even been to before. after all that, we eventually gave up on that hotel too.

after hours of driving, strategizing, getting stressed, and occasionally arguing HAHAHA, we decided to try going home again. this time, we took our usual route and actually got pretty close, but the water looked like it was getting deeper the farther we went, so we had to turn back AGAIN. 😭

then we tried one more route and WOHOOO, IT WORKED!!! we finally made it home after almost 5 hours of trying to find our way back.

one thing this experience made me realize again is how mabait talaga ang mga filipino. everyone we stopped to ask for directions or about the flood was so approachable, and you could really feel their concern for us, even though they were also dealing with the flood and just trying to get through it themselves. 🥹

dad was calm for the most part, though we know he was stressed too. mama, on the other hand, was definitely scared—I lost count of how many times she prayed out loud, which somehow became funny in the middle of all the chaos hahaha.

us siblings tried our best to bring some light into the situation. i stayed pretty calm through most of it, and tried to keep everyone’s spirits up. somehow, despite everything, we were still laughing and making jokes through it all.

because when life is already difficult, you don’t have to make it feel even heavier. sometimes you just have to laugh, stay together, keep going, and have faith.

and through all of it, we had each other, and we had God. 🤍

God is so good. thank You, Lord, for keeping us safe and bringing us home. 🙏

definitely one for the memories, so i had to capture whatever i could in the middle of all the chaos 😂😭: