I flew to the Philippines for a quick holiday in April to visit my relatives and have a quick getaway in Boracay.
MANILA
I only had 8 days in the city and my cousin, who I usually hang out with to go out on trips, was working and wasn't able to take leave, so I mostly had chill out days and shopped. In addition to that, I was actually in town during a major holiday where the malls and amusement parks were closed, so I had limited places to go to, but I still had fun.
For the first two days, I mostly shopped and caught up with my cousins. On one of the days, I met up with Mildred after her work and went on a massive food spree. We had dinner at Banaple in Alabang Town Centre and we got the same thing that we would always order. Breaded Chicken Fillets in the yummiest Milk'shroom gravy for me, and a simple but great beef tapa for her. AFter dinner, we went down to another one of our usual spots, Mochiko! They have the coolest mochi ice cream balls. And after that, we headed down to another cafe called Le Petit Cherie at another part of Alabang. She had this massive caramel bannaa crepe and I had the most amazing Rocky Road Cronut. It was a work of art.
My cousin and I planned to go on another food spree and shop, but all the malls were closed. Thankfully the wakeboarding park we've been meaning to try out was open, so Mildred and I went on a 1-hour roud trip up to Nuvali, Laguna. You could say that we might have been a bit over prepared for our short little road trip. We got our giant Starbucks drinks, bought toiletries and snacks from the gas station, and got this massive tub of my ultimate favourite Potato Corner fries, that we finished before we even reached our destination.
We went to Republ1c Wakeboard and it was great! It was really inexpensive, compared to Singapore and Batam at least, so we booked two hours, put on our lifevests and headed down to the cables. When you first walk in, you'll see this massive lake where all the pros are shredding and doing tricks. And then you walk further in, and you'll see the tiny lake where all the beginners go. Basically they set up this one cable, and riders just attempt to go from one and to the other. I say attempt, because most people weren't able to make it. Since it was a holiday, there were tonnes of people and we had to queue for quite long before we get our turn, but when we finally get to go, it was so fun and was such an adrenaline rush! Mildred just went to try it out with her friends two days before we went, so she was a bit better, but after two hours, I finally managed to go from one end to the other! It was such a huge accomplishment, I just wanted to keep going, but we actually stayed until they had to close for the night.
I went back to the wakepark a couple of days later with my younger cousins, because I desperately wanted to wakeboard again, but Mildred was working. So I had another mini roadtrip, with two 13-year olds this time who could not stop talking about "the cutest loveteam of the century", and the driver and I would just roll our eyes at every squeal they'd let out from going through Daniel Padilla's photos. Thankfully, there were significantly less people at the wakepark and we were able to go on the cables more often. We booked two hours, but ended up staying for almost four! I finally managed to do a proper graceful stance on the wakeboard and go form end to end, but of course, only my shitty fail was caught on camera. Joan actually managed to learn pretty fast and got to the end in almost two hours! Denisse was really nervous throughout the whole thing, but I'm really proud of her for trying something new! I managed to convert these two homebodies to actually go out and do some activity!
BORACAY
We got home pretty late from wakeboarding, and we actually had a really early flight to Boracay in a couple of hours, so my cousins and I decided that we would all just stay up and sleep while traveling instead. I bought sugar-high chocolate snacks and cookies and just made jokes all night, which I sort of regret cause we ended up being unable to sleep until we got to our hotels in Boracay. From the house, it was a 30-minute ride to the airport, a 40-minute plane ride to Caticlan airport, a 3-hour freezing winding bus ride to the pier, a 20-minute boat ride to Boracay, and a 30-minute jeep ride to my hostel. By the time I reached my hostel, it was 8am and I couldn't even check-in. I ended up leaving my bags at the hostel and walking down to my aunt's hotel where all my relatives were staying and we headed out together to have breakfast, before heading back to the hostel to catch some sleep.
A bit of background, I initially booked my trip to Boracay for me to travel solo, but when my relatives heard about it, they thought it was really sad that I'm going by myself and they insisted that they go with me, even though after I insisted that I'll go by myself. When we got to Boracay, they also insisted that I join them at their hotel instead of staying at a separate hostel, but there was no way I would do that. There were seven of them in a tiny excuse of a family suite sharing one bathroom, and I had a bigger than average twin bed all to myself in my hostel with a decent showers. So I only met up with my cousins for certain activities and meals.
The first thing we did when we got to Boracay was go on a Island Hopping trip. We hired a boat that took us out snorkelling. Unfortunately the water was really choppy that day, so we had to swim with lifevests on and always had to be holding on to a rope attached to the boat or else we would drift away. We also headed down to another island to play around and swim. My aunt started getting really sea sick and my cousins didn't like swimming that much, so we ended up not going to the other islands. We ended up staying along the main beach swimming around and playing tag until low tide, after which we started building sandcastles and rolling around in sand.
The day after, I had breakfast and walked to meet my cousins at their hotel and we headed down to the beach for a quick swim before I headed down to book my Ariel's Point trip for the day. Ariel's Point is a famous cliff-diving spot that's a 40-minute boat ride away from the main island. It was 2000PHP (around SGD60) for a day trip, inclusive of the boat ride, unlimited drinks (yes, alcoholic ones too) from the moment you step on the boat until you get back to the main island, an amazing buffet lunch, kayaking and snorkeling around the area, and of course the cliff-jumping itself. Even though I only had a few jumps, I would say that it was completely and totally worth it!
I went by myself and ended up meeting a couple of people when I got there, and we snorkled around before attempting to do the jumps. I'm not afraid of heights, like I could go to high points and look straight down without feeling scared, but I am completely terrified of that feeling you get when you fall. The feeling that your internal organs are somehow being left behind as the rest of your body falls, I HATE IT. I love being on rollercoasters in general, but I always hate the first most impactful drop. So jumping of the cliff was a pretty big deal for me, and I'm really proud of myself! Though I'm not gonna lie, the unlimited amount of alcohol probably helped a fair amount. They have three different cliff jump points, 5 meters, 10 meters, and the dreaded 15 meters. I only managed to jump off of the 5 meters a couple of times, and once on the 10 meters right before we had to leave the island. I kept involuntarily closing my eyes whenever I jumped off, so I never knew when I was about to land, so I always landed in the water wrongly, and man! My ass was hurting throughout the whole day. I could barely sit down properly. It was crazy fun and adrenaline-rushing though, and I do not regret it!
After my Ariel's Point trip, I met up with my relatives to have dinner and then headed back to my hostel to wash up and get ready to go out again. I met a couple of people from my hostel, but ended up heading out to the bars alone. I'd have to say, it was a bit awkward going out to the bars by myself, but I ended up having a really great time at Epic Club! I was walking along the beach when I heard the sweet sound of drunk white girls singing along to some Ke$ha song, and naturally I had to see what was happening and be part of it, and I ended up spending the whole night (and morning) in Epic. I met these really pretty Korean girls and some people off of the Boracay Pub Crawl. I remember meeting this crazy girl from Australia who ended up being my BFF for the night, and this guy who looked like an older version of Jason Spevack and we gossiped about who was gonna go home with who. It was hilarious! It was definitely one of the best clubbing nights I've ever had. We ended up staying until they closed and kicked us out, and I stumbled back into my hostel at 5am and completely passed out.
We had to fly back to Manila the next day, and the travel was just completely terrible. I just felt completely miserable and it was just a whole lot of annoying waiting, and it took up the whole day. I ended up just taking it easy the next day, and went to the mall to shop, get my nails done, and have a lovely dinner with my aunt. I had to fly back to Singapore with my grandmother the day after, and it was another miserable day at the airport. NAIA's airports is just seriously the worst. It was even worse considering I was flying back to Singapore. Oh well.
So that was my incredibly lengthy post of my trip to the Philippines! I wasn't able to take more photos because I didn't really want to be bothered with carrying my DSLR around and I didn't want it to get wet. I think I've cleared up all my back-logged scrapbook posts now, so hopefully, you'll get to see new things on here more often.
I hope you all have had your lovely travel getaways!
Goodnight.
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