Philippines: Home & Boracay

Hi.

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.

Thailand Part 4: Krabi p.2

Hi.

DAY 6:

The guy we met told us about an island nearby that was supposedly had amazing beaches and views, and was only a 30-minute boat ride away. So we had our brunch at our favourite restaurant at Krabi Town, got our snacks and drinks from 7-11, and headed off to the pier. Because of how hyped up people made it seem, we were pretty underwhelmed when we reached the island. After walking around, we found out that it was Railey Beach! One of the islands we visited on our Four Islands Tour. It was slightly disappointing, because as much as we love that island, it just wasn't as amazing as people made it seem.

We had to leave the island after a few short hours, because the last boats back to Krabi had to leave quite early. So we went back to our hostel to wash up and headed out to Ao Nang to hopefully catch the sunset. We ended up missing the sunset, so we went around Ao Nang to look for souvenirs. While walking, we saw flamboyantly-dressed transexuals asking people to go for their shows, we saw people walking around with monkeys on their shoulder, and even a guy with a hawk/some type of huge bird. It was quite a walk.

We then took a songthaew back to Krabi Town, and I got myself dinner from 7-11 and Lellel got a horribly disappointing meal from the food street. We also walked around and booked a Phi Phi Island Tour, then headed up to the hostel for an early night.

DAY 7:

We had no plans for this particular day, so we decided to sleep in. We went to have brunch at a restaurant right behind our hostel, only because our favourite restaurant was closed. We were so upset, that we went to get ourselves ice cream after brunch before heading back to our hostel.

We decided to head back to Ao Nang again to hopefully successfully catch the sunset. We had to wait for quite awhile before the sunset, so we just chilled by the beach and listened to OPM and took hilarious jump shots. The sunset was came and went, and we had a nice walk along the shore.

We got on a songthaew to head back to Krabi Town and had a mini panic adventure. Initially, we were the only people in the songthaew, but shortly after, these two Caucasian girls got on, and a bit after that, this Caucasian dude got on and started talking to the girls. We didn't mean to eavesdrop, but they were talking quite loud, so we heard their whole conversation, and basically the guy was flirting with the girls and was trying to get them to have dinner with him and explore Krabi Town. The girls were obviously getting more and more uncomfortable with his advances and even tried to get him to stop talking by pretending to sleep, but the guy kept talking and even touched her thigh and brushed her shoulders, which made the girl go, "why does everyone keep touching me", but the guy just laughed it off.

We were quite sensitive to the whole #onlyyesmeansyes #consent #feminist movement because of events that we've read about while we were on or trip, so we were looking at each other and both in a state of panic. The guy started lying to them about the time of the last bus back to Ao Nang and the price of a taxi trip back to Ao Nang, and it was just ridiculous. Somehow, we couldn't just butt in and said that he was giving wrong information, because it felt so weird. Thankfully, we all got off at the same stop and were heading into the same direction. I wanted to go up to one of the girls and tell them what's up, but the guy would just not leave them alone, even though the girls were obviously avoiding him.

Eventually, the girls lost him when they crossed the road, and I managed to catch up with one of them and tell her about the bus and the taxi, and just rushed off. Like a secret spy who just passed off information to an international correspondent. I really hope they turned out okay. We spent the rest of the night slightly scarred, and just drank it off back at Top-Up Bar.

DAY 8:

It was our final full day in Thailand, and we had the Phi Phi Islands Tour booked for the day. We got picked up from our hostel early in the morning and got dropped off at Ao Nang where we had to wait for the rest. We got on a speedboat this time, and even though we shared with at least 30 other people, it still felt kind of baller.

Our first stop was Bamboo Islands, and oh- my- goodness- even just typing those words gives me heart palpitations. This was hands down, our favourite beach out of every one we've been to. The water was extremely clear, the shore was incredibly clean and wide and spacious, the water had the most amazing tint of blue. I cannot say enough good things about Bamboo Islands, it is so beautiful. The only tiny negative thing we could say abot it is that some areas are really rocky, but it was seriously no big deal, it was that amazing.

We went snorkelling twice, and it was freaking hilarious. The life jackets kept going up, making it horribly difficult to actually get any swimming done, but that was what made things super fun. Every stop there was during the whole tour was just amazing. The waters were amazingly clear and had the most beautiful shade of blue . Even our lunch stop was nothing short of amazing! If you wanted to go on this particular tour, I would definitely recommend going with Ao Nang Orchid. Good service, good transport, good people, just sweet.

After our great tour, we were driven back to our hostel and we washed up and did a little packing before heading out to have dinner. When we got back to the hostel, we headed up to the rooftop for our usual Top-Up Bar drinks & chats session, and all hell broke lose. Our bar was closed! We were absolutely devastated, we didn't know what to do. We ended up buying our own drinks from 7-11 and brought them up to the rooftop. Later on, we found out that Playground Bar was open the downstairs, which was total shit.

The rooftop was a feeding ground for mosquitoes, so we moved down to the balcony  and had our little set up of drinks and fun. We planned to stay up at that spot until sunrise, and just not have a wink of sleep until our flight. We ended up meeting a couple of guys and chatted with them for most of the night.

DAY 9:

I didn't get a single second of sleep, and at around 5am, I went to shower and did some last minute  packing before heading up to the rooftop to catch the sunrise. We then headed down to get on our bus to the airport. And then that was it. We got on a plane, and got back to Singapore.

Bangkok - Chiang Mai - Krabi p.1 - Krabi p.2

Thailand Part 3: Krabi p.1

Hi.

DAY 1:

After a two-hour plane ride from Chiang Mai, a half-hour bus ride to downtown Krabi, and a 10-minute luggage drag from the bus terminal, we finally reached Pak-Up Hostel! If you're looking for budget accommodation, definitely check out Pak-Up! It's at a great location, has spacious rooms, clean areas, good showers, it just overall great and I enjoyed my stay there and will definitely come back.

We reached the hostel at a slightly odd timing, too late to travel anywhere, too early to pass out, so we just took a nap and went down to the food market street to grab dinner. We wanted to head up to the bar, but it was closed, so we decided to just take an early night.

DAY 2:

We headed out of our hostel and took a songthaew down to Ao Nang. The drive down was a lot longer than we expected, but it was pretty cool, and there were huge mountains and cliff type things all over. We reached Ao Nang and got brunch at an incredibly plain and touristy restaurant. It was alright, but the star was our iced chocolate milkshakes and coffee, which was pretty good and I would do many things to have it right now.

After lunch, we headed out to look for travel agencies to book our activities for Krabi. We ended up (harassing) joking around with this guy and managed to reduce our package prices to half! We booked a white water rafting and ATV package, and a 4 island tour.

After we booked our activities, we went on our search for a good spot at the beach. A very kind lady offered to lend us her stall's beach mat for free, which was really lovely of her. We walked all the way in to the edge of Ao Nang beach, and settled ourselves under a tree. It was insanely hot, so we just ended up taking a nap and chilling to music by the beach. By the time it wasn't so painfully scorching, it was low-tide and the water has almost completely left the beach.

We headed off to walk around Ao Nang to look for a good place to have dinner, but the restaurants around the place were more expensive since the place was more tourist. We ended up at this empty plain place with alright food. Then we walked around and bought our beach mat, then headed back to our hostel.

The bar was finally open that day, so we headed up and got ourselves some drinks (partayyyyyyyyyy). We ended up meeting this guy who was also staying in our room and ended up chatting with him for a couple of hours, which was really cool. He was the first person we've had a long chat with since we went on our trip, and it was nice to get to know people. We ended up going back to our room really late, like after the bar closed and turned off all the lights.

DAY 3:

We got up fairly early to get ready for our adventures of the day! We got picked up by a pretty fancy air-conditioned van, which was a lovely change from all the rough busses and songthaews we've been taking, especially considering the drive to the location was at least an hour and a half. We ended up somewhere in Phuket and got ready to head out for our first activity.

We started with a 5-kilometer white water rafting session, where Lellel and I happened to join this hilarious group of Singaporeans. We were quite disappointed when we learned that we weren't paddling, but it turned out to be a good thing. There was no way any of us could paddle successfully because the current was too strong! It was the complete opposite of the rafting we experienced in Chiang Mai. We were bouncing up and down on our rafts, from the white water drops and waves, and not from getting stuck over a rock. We also had this super cool guy as el kapitan and who did flips and tricks with his paddle. The whole ride was just super enjoyable and made me wish we went on a longer course.

After water rafting, we had a buffet lunch, where as you could see, I got a bit carried away. You need to make the best out of your money, amirite? The group we were with had a waterfall trek with their package, and even though it wasn't part of ours, the lady in charge told us to go on ahead anyway instead of making us wait. So we took a songthaew down to the base, and went on a short trek to the waterfall. It wasn't as beautiful as the one we went to in Chiang Mai, but it was definitely as cold! We didn't bring proper swimwear, so we just chilled by the waterfall and didn't go in.

After the trek, Lellel and I got driven to the base of the ATV area. The briefing was quite scary, because they kept emphasizing on how much we have to pay in case we ruin any part of the ATV. Besides that, and the scorching direct heat, it was pretty fun! It was an ATV tour around the place, and I think we went around the hills/fields for about an hour. It was pretty fun, if you forget aobut the part where we got at least five shades tanner and possibly got sunburnt. When it was time to leave, we got on the back of the boys driving ATVs to get to our van and I swear on my future dog's life, I thought I was legitimately going to die. He went so fast and I literally had nothing to hold on to, and he had to go down a really steep slope and he did really fast turn,  I still cringe whenever I think about it and it still scares me.

We got on the van and thought we were heading back to our hostel, but we actually headed up to the Monkey Caves. It was another place that the other group had paid for, but wasn't actually part of our package. It was like a temple within a cave, and there was this one monkey who just didn't give a single fuck. We didn't really do much around there and just waited around 'til we had to head back home.

When we got back, we just washed up and headed out to have dinner at the food market street again. Then we headed back up to the Top-Up Bar where we just chilled and talked and listened to drunk white people sing.

DAY 4:

We were pretty exhausted from the previous day's activities, so we decided to take a bit of a rest day and sleep in. I can't remember much about this day except for the fact that we had a really late breakfast/lunch at this place near our hostel, and the only reason we decided to eat there was because they had free wifi. We then went back to the hostel to take a nap, then headed out to explore more of the town. We sneaked into what looked like an abandoned building with incredibly creepy grafitti on the walls. It looked like there had been people sleeping there, which only made things creepier.

We then went to check out the Krabi Town Night Market. We thought it would be like Chiang Mai's night bazaar, but it was actually a night market. There were a couple of eateries, but it was mostly selling ingredients for cooking and a whole lot of fruit. Since we couldn't get anything to eat from there, we went on the explore more of the place and decided to have dinner at this place that turned out to have our favourite fried rice! The food was really good and it was fairly cheap, and even though they didn't have wifi, we went back to the place a couple more times during the trip.

After dinner, we then walked around the place some more and once again ended up drinking at Top-Up Bar.

DAY 5:

We had to get up early on this day, as we had a Four Island Tour booked. We took a songthaew along with other people who were staying in Krabi and drove down to Ao Nang where we got on long-tail boats that would drive us to the four islands. Now I'm telling you, Thailand beaches and waters are gorgeous. I love the different shades of blue, how clear the water is, I just love everything about it! I remember our first stop was at Chicken Island, which is apparently appropriately named as it is in the shape of a chicken. There was definitely a ton of people in the place and there were just a swarm of boats lined across the shore. The beach was so good, that the insane amount of people didn't even deter me from liking this place!

After island-hopping, we stopped at this one island so we can have lunch. I can't remember much about the other islands, except for the final stop, which was Railey beach. The water wasn't as clear as it was in the other islands, but it was still pretty cool. It reminded us of a paddlepop. Yes, the ice cream. This turned out to be our favourite island among all four, despite it being the paddlepop that it was, simply because it was actually deep enough where we could swim in it and the water was really cooling. There was also wooden penis sculptures everywhere, which of course us ignorant folks found very amusing. There was also this cave you could swim out to in the corner where you could hide away from the sun.

After the trip, they drove us back down to Ao Nang to get on the songthaews to drive us back to our hostels. When we got back, we showered and checked our social media, and got ready to head out. It was finally the weekend, so we decided to check out the Weekend Night Market. This was finally like the night bazaar in Chiang Mai, but in a much smaller setting. They had numerous street food stalls, clothes shops, and also an art walk. We had our caricatures done by this amazing artist, and we turned out so adorably cute! They also had a stage setting and people were singing and performing and it was really cool.

We weren't too satisfied by the street food we got, so we decided to buy food and drinks from 7-11 and had an al fresco dinner at the porch of our hostel. I have to say, meals from 7-11 ain't too bad! It was even better, not to mention cheaper, than something we would have gotten from the food street. After eating, we went on a bit of a night walk around Krabi, before heading up to Top-Up Bar.

Bangkok - Chiang Mai - Krabi p.1 - Krabi p.2