Let's Split Up!

Recently, our family started planning a trip for my aunt’s birthday. It’s a special one because she just got her senior citizen ID so everyone wanted to celebrate it with her. In our family, birthdays like this aren’t just a simple greeting or a video call. If we can, we show up.

The only challenge is that she lives about 668 kilometers away from us.

Distance has never really stopped our family before. So now our whole clan... cousins, aunties, and everyone in between, is planning to fly there to celebrate with her.

Thinking about this trip made me remember the times we’ve already traveled there before.

One of my favorite memories was when I went there with the “thunders”, which is what I call my grandmas and aunties. It was before my cousin’s wedding, and instead of flying, we took a 13-hour bus ride.

At first, I thought the trip would feel exhausting. Thirteen hours on a bus doesn’t exactly sound exciting but being with them changed everything.

The thunders are actually the most entertaining travel companions. They carry so many stories and they can turn the simplest moments into something funny. I remember laughing almost the entire ride because of their little clumsy and forgetful moments. Someone would forget where she placed her bag, another would repeat the same story again and someone else would suddenly remember something from 30 years ago. Instead of feeling tired, the trip felt lighter.

Last year, we visited again during summer, but that trip had a more meaningful reason. We went there to commemorate my uncle’s death anniversary. That time we flew by plane, and I was the one who organized the whole trip.

I handled the flights, schedules, and coordination. It took some effort, but seeing everyone arrive and spend time together made it worth it.

And apparently once you organize a family trip successfully, that role stays with you forever. Maybe that’s also why when this new trip came up, I was once again asked to organize the flights.

This time around twenty of us are flying, so planning hasn’t been easy. Everyone has work schedules and different responsibilities. Finding the right date alone took a lot of back and forth.

When we finally settled on a date, I asked everyone about their preferred flight time. No one could really decide. Everyone had different suggestions, and it started to feel like we might never finalize anything.

Then one of my aunties suddenly said something that made me think.

"Let's split up!"

At first, I thought she meant splitting the tasks but she actually meant splitting the flights.

Another aunt immediately asked why we needed to do that. Wouldn’t it be more fun if we all traveled together?

That was my first thought too. Our family trips have always been fun because we share the journey. When we travel by private vehicles, the ride itself becomes part of the experience. We laugh, sing, talk about random things, and sometimes even tease each other the entire way.

My aunt explained her reasoning.

She said it’s for security purposes. Families should sometimes travel separately. Different flights, different airlines, or different times, just in case something unexpected happens.

I knew this is something royal families and wealthy families practice. They avoid traveling together as much as possible so that if something happens to one plane, not everyone is affected.

Hearing that made me pause for a moment.

Maybe we’re royalty and I just didn’t know it? Maybe this is my aunt’s subtle way of saying we’re rich rich? Lol.

But of course, nothing like that happened. We’re basically just a big family trying to celebrate a birthday together.

Still, I found it interesting how differently people think about the same situation. Some of us think the best part of traveling is being together in one place at the same time. Others think about safety first, even if it means splitting the group.

In the end, everyone agreed to travel separately.

And while part of me still thinks it would be more fun if we were all on the same flight, another part of me appreciates the thought behind it.