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Meet Marya The BeauTraveler

My name is Marya. It's like Maria, but with a "Y" instead of "I."

Whenever someone asked me "Y" it's spelled that way, I always told them that it's because I'm nowhere near the holy virgin Mary, but neither am I a prostitute like Maria Magdalena.

I am sort of somewhere in between.

The BeauTraveler is ...

I was the first generation of my family who went to the university and lived overseas. Born and raised in the western part of Java, I was quite an oxymoron.

I am a hybrid of a devout Muslim mother and an agnostic father. I grew up having to go to Koran school almost every day after school, went to a Catholic school only for me to end up transforming into the female version of my father.

My flight to Istanbul in 2010 was the very first time I got on the plane. I stayed in Izmir for the summer after getting a scholarship to learn Turkish in Izmir for three months.

In 2013, I moved to Saudi Arabia to work as a flight attendant, only to quit a couple of years later. After a couple of years working in corporate, I decided to start my freelancing (and blogging!) journey in 2017.

The BeauTraveler does...

I have the privilege of a loving home, so when I got mental breakdown because of my job in 2017, I decided to quit and go back to my parents' house to sort things out. In the same year, I initially started a blog called "Ransel Ungu", which means purple backpack in Indonesian. Later in 2018, I rebranded the blog into what we know now as The BeauTraveler.

While developing my blog as a business, I also started working as a virtual assistant and freelance copywriter for various clients. So that's how I began my journey of working from home.

When I started earning a regular income from my freelance jobs, I began traveling again. And this time, I usually travel for a longer period with more places to visit and explore.

Before the pandemic hit in 2020, I finally accomplished my goal to visit the 10 ASEAN countries when I made my last Indochina trip for 2 months.

Later that year, I co-founded Savviesticated with my sister Uun and my friend Gema, an Indonesian-based virtual assistant agency that serves clients globally.

The BeauTraveler Loves...

Despite loving the chance to travel and explore new places, I am actually a homebody who often acts as a couch potato at home.

I'm a crazy cat lady who has six cats at home. Two of my cats were born when I was in Brunei as a part of my Borneo trip, so I named them Brunei and Borneo.

Apart from cats, I also love Teh Kotak and Arsenal FC. My goal is to one day visit the Emirates Stadium and watch them live in North London. So far, I only got a chance to see them play live for pre-season against Atletico Madrid in Singapore.

Despite being a lazy ass, I actually enjoy watching sports and I'm quite active in volunteering for sporting events in my country. By far, I got a chance to volunteer as an Accreditation volunteer for SEA Games 2010 and also a Liaison Officer for Sri Lanka NOC in Asian Games 2018.