Hi, I'm
Maaya.

The person behind this

I'm Maaya — Filipino, currently calling Brisbane home since 2020. Before that, I spent most of my twenties in Manila, planning trips on a budget and convincing my father to join me on backpacking adventures across Southeast Asia. He said yes more times than I expected.

By day I work a regular job. Outside of that, I travel whenever I can, take photos of things that catch my eye, and write about it all before my memory decides to delete it. I have a weakness for good coffee, local markets, and buying one too many pasalubong on the way home.

This site is genuinely just a place where I put things I want to remember — and hopefully things you'll find useful or interesting too. I've been to 14 countries so far. There are still a lot more on the list.

Words & stories

The blog started in 2016 as a simple travel diary — I was forgetting details of trips almost as soon as I got home. The food I ate in Macau. The name of that temple in Myanmar. The exact feeling of standing at the Bagan hot air balloon launch at 5am wondering if this was a terrible idea. Writing it down fixed that.

It's a public diary that happens to have photos in it. I write about places I've been, things I've eaten, and occasionally thoughts that don't fit in a caption. It covers Southeast Asia heavily — Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand — plus Japan, the Philippines, and now Australia. I try to be honest about what I loved and what I'd skip next time.

Photography

The photography side of this started quietly — mostly phone shots that I edited too heavily and posted on Instagram. Somewhere along the way it became a proper thing. I now use proper gear. The look I'm going for: warm, filmic, slightly underexposed. A little like a memory rather than a record.

I shoot travel and street photography — markets, side streets, people going about their day, quiet corners of places that don't make it into the blog. You can find the full collection in the gallery, and more recent shots on Instagram at @foto.maaya. For travel and life content, I'm also on @ayawillgoplaces.

Guides — coming soon

I've been meaning to write proper destination guides for a while — the kind with actual itineraries, costs, transport tips, and the honest things I wish I'd known before going. Japan is first on the list, followed by the Philippines and Southeast Asia. Watch this space.

Places I've been

Mostly Southeast Asia, with Japan creeping up the list fast. Australia counts now that I live here. Still a lot left — China and Japan are next.