Hi, I’m Ivy.
Some friends say that if you say “Ivy Lee” quickly, it sounds a bit like Emily.  
I once lived in South America, where I was given the Spanish name Benita. In Tuvalu, they called me Pitaasi, which means jasmine flower. While traveling in Sri Lanka, a taxi driver misheard my name as Vivi. Over time, I’ve realized names are just names — soft labels drifting across borders.

I studied horticulture, plant medicine, and molecular biology. I’ve worked as a research assistant, a planner for a nonprofit, and editor-in-chief for a travel magazine. These days, I’m a mother, a travel writer, and an irreverent moderator of a LINE group named “Value Breakdown.”

Since my university days, I’ve written online — often disjointed, emotional entries only my friends could decipher. Unlike perfectly curated travel blogs, my posts have always been messy, heartfelt, spontaneous. But maybe that’s what makes them feel human.

After graduating, I volunteered abroad for two years — half a year in Paraguay and then in the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu. Paraguay was tough. I cried nearly every day and leaned on others more than I ever had. The reality hit me harder than my stubbornness could absorb, and my broken Spanish didn’t help. But that baptism by fire gave me the courage to keep exploring.

In Tuvalu, life was equally stark but in a different way. Scarcity shaped every day — eggs and fruit were fought over in the market, and my picky eating habits melted away. I made peace with green peppers and spring onions. I learned to sit with deep loneliness and surprised myself by surviving it — even growing within it.

I’ve traveled to a modest number of places, but always with a greedy longing to go further, to see more. Travel, to me, is a dream I’m always in the middle of — foolish maybe, but filled with a quiet, persistent desire to keep moving forward.

Words are my obsession. Every journey becomes a story, a soft narrative I offer to my readers. Friends tell me my travel writing makes them feel they’re there with me — walking the streets I’ve walked, tasting the dishes I’ve loved, even meeting the people I’ve met. Some have followed my steps to places like Tokyo, Myanmar, the U.S., or even the far corners of Xinjiang. That thought makes me smile. It also keeps me going — toward new places, better photographs, deeper stories, and conversations with strangers who might just become lifelong memories.

I love striking up conversations on the road — like with the British woman in a Bangkok hostel bunk below me, with whom I chatted until 1 AM, or the Tao elder I unexpectedly spent a tranquil afternoon with in a Lanyu village pavilion, watching the Pacific breeze.

In recent years, my travel style has shifted toward impactful journeys — I believe doing small good things while traveling makes the world more beautiful. I’ve purchased items at Sri Lanka’s elephant orphanage to support their care, bought handmade crafts in Sydney’s weekend markets that fund local schools, donated supplies in Zimbabwe, stayed at social enterprises in Nepal, and visited informal settlements in Kenya.

To me, responsible travel doesn’t require grand gestures. Even small decisions — refusing to ride elephants for entertainment, reflecting on how our presence affects local communities, wildlife, and ecosystems — can be powerful. Kindness on the road is everywhere, if we choose to carry it with us.