About

Jea Wanders is a travel blog that features travel stories, guides, itineraries, as well as honest reviews for accommodations and restaurants. It also contains important tips, recommendations, photography, and more! This blog aims to help other travelers by sharing detailed and information-packed blog posts through the author’s firsthand experiences.

“Jea” means Jec & Dea as one. Jec takes photos and Dea writes about them. They are a married couple that explores and discovers together. The blog was originally started as How She Wanders prior to their union.

They started as backpackers traveling across the Philippine islands, until the pandemic changed the way they travel. Public transportation became more complicated due to travel restrictions and requirements. Their recent journeys are mostly staycation, foodie, and road trips within their province (Bulacan) and nearby provinces using private transport.

About the Author

Hi, I’m Dea Mariano. A traveler, foodie, and a registered electronics engineer based in the Philippines. I often travel with my boyfriend (now husband), Jec, who’s the one responsible for majority of photos in this website. We’ve been traveling together since 2014, one province or two at a time.

As an engineer who wasn’t trained for essays, writing is actually not my thing. Indeed, traveling could turn anyone into a storyteller, 100% guaranteed! 😎 That said, please bear with my grammar mistakes as I’m also not a native English speaker. Nevertheless, I will always do my best in expressing my thoughts as effectively as possible.

Frequently Asked Questions

When did you start traveling, and how often? It was year 2014 when Jec and I went to Villa Escudero in Quezon Province for a quick “nature date”. Since then, our interest in traveling grew bigger and we didn’t know we were already traveling once or twice a month (alongside our office work). It’s either we will travel on weekends, or take a vacation leave (or both). Back then, traveling on weekdays to avoid the weekend crowd was just in our daydream.
Year 2019 until present, we finally managed to work remotely so we can travel anytime especially on weekdays. However, covid happened 😅

When did you start blogging, and why? I started blogging year 2016 when I was bombarded with queries about our trip to Kalanggaman Island. My friends suggested I should make a blog for convenience. Eventually, it became a creative hobby documenting and immortalizing our travel experiences.
Year 2018 when I decided to make this hobby self-sustained, and that’s when howshewanders.com was born.

Who do you travel with? I always travel with Jec. Oftentimes, we travel with friends and families.

What is your ultimate dream destination? Locally, it’s Batanes. Internationally, we’re dreaming of going to ISRAEL ❤️️

What do you do for a living? Currently, we are working as Design Engineers in an Electronics PCB Company based in France, in a work-from-home setup (we’re still based in Bulacan). Unlike before, we can no longer work from anywhere unless we buy laptops worth 6 digits each (we can work hard for it!), because our job requires such high computer specs for such dense designs (we’re currently using company-owned desktop computers). So now, weekday travels will be very limited, but not impossible since we have 12 vacation leaves a year. We are grateful for having a work-from-home job without having to change careers! There are no job opportunities for our engineering field here in our province and we don’t want to go back to the crowded metropolis, that’s why work-from-home is our hope. And we thank God for this blessing!

What was your life like before traveling? My life back then was focused on my professional path. I studied Electronics Engineering and finished the course in just 4 years (thanks to our school’s trimestral system 😉). After graduating (May 2012) and passing the Licensure Exam (April 2013), I rested for a couple of months while searching for a job. I got hired as a design engineer in an R&D company (June 2013). Office-dorm-office for about a couple of years, I somehow got bored and got curious about traveling. So I started to use up all my vacation leaves — and even sick leaves for vacation (I was that stubborn before so please don’t follow my example!). It became a habit to travel once or twice a month. It was enjoyable, yet, hard. I’d take vacation leave to have a break from work and relax, but I’d come back to work dog-tired (though at least fulfilled 😉). It was like that for a couple more years. Then life happened and I had to resign after 4 years in the company.

Few more FAQs (from people I met personally):

Why not try using your looks to draw more audience to your blog? (rephrased and translated into English)
I believe we all have the freedom to choose. And with regards to using my looks, I choose not to do it. Let me share my valid reasons: First, I’m a weirdo 🙃 I suck at the most basic which is taking selfies and I’m too lazy to comb my hair. Second, I want to focus on highlighting the places, food, and experiences more than my appearance. And last but the most important, I’m following guidance from my Creator. I’d like to try my best in observing His “healthy boundaries”, just as a little girl restricted by her parents to cross the street. So when He tells me to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, I’d like to follow 😊 And as I further mature in faith, I learned that everyone is allowed to do anything, but not everything is beneficial [1 Corinthians 10:23].

I love what Venus Raj said when asked why she stopped wearing bikinis: “It’s not because I want limitations. It’s because I’m getting mature and I’m having convictions. Anything that I feel not Biblical, it’s conviction. In the past, I fought for my crown. Today, I no longer desire for an earthly crown, but for an eternal one. It has become my life mission to share the true Giver of eternal life, the One who fought all the battles for me: Jesus Christ.”

Even so, if I want to look good, fashionable, and “proper”, I suppose I could still do it without having to expose “so much” 🙂

Why not try venturing out into beauty contents? (rephrased and translated into English)
I definitely could try it! But if I do that, I’m gonna be dishonest. Imagine me featuring the kind of products that I don’t use (e.g. make ups, lotions, whitening, etc.). Plus it would be awkward for me to blog about something I’m not familiar with. I don’t even know how to do makeup. 🙂

Note: I know they asked me these questions with good intention. I appreciate them. And I’d appreciate more if my choices will be respected.

A question I wish people asked me: 😉

What’s your passion? While on the surface it may look like traveling is my passion, but deep inside it’s not. Although it is important for me because it’s something that keeps me creative and more active. I could tell it’s only a hobby. Passion is a deep word for me and I don’t want to answer it dishonestly and out of convenience. My passion, I’d say, is Christ. Because He’s the only one who can satisfy the deepest longing of my soul as He is the one who died for me on the cross. That’s an important thing I can’t experience from traveling that’s why I can’t make it my passion. Traveling, just like every temporal thing in this world, cannot “fully” satisfy my soul. Only God, the Creator of every good and beautiful thing can do that — not the creation 😊