Sorry for the lack of posting but recently I’ve been quite busy with school and unfortunately I recently broke my external hard drive and was hit by a nasty internet virus, but things should be smoother from this point on. This post is going to to be about traveling on a budget. Although I have done backpacking, studying at Hong Kong has allowed me only short periods of time to travel. After running all over Southeast Asia last year from Singapore, I decided tograb some friends and head over to Manila, Boracay Island, and Clark in the Philippines.
I will list the steps I used to plan for this trip. If anyone has advice or anything to add, please feel free to comment! The first thing I tried to nail down was transportation. With a group of 11 people, I wasn’t too comfortable on just “winging” it when I get there. After scouring online websites for domestic carriers, I finally decided on my itinerary. I was to fly Tiger Airways ( a trusted budget airline based in Singapore) from Macau to Clark. An important point to note is that many if not all of the budget airlines stay away from Hong Kong Airport because of the exorbitant taxes charged there. Instead, flying through Shenzhen or Macau would be preferable (accounting for the ferry costs to and back from Macau). From Clark we were to take a bus to Manila. From Manila we would take a small propeller airplane via PAL Express to Caticlan. From Caticlan we would take the Jetty to Boracay Island. Coming back, we would take a direct flight back to Clark through SEAIR. Whew! To top it off, each time someone ordered a ticket prices would jump up, meaning some of us had to take different flights to lower costs.
After transportation comes living. There are many great websites that offer cheap and clean hostels that go as little as 5 dollars per person! Some sites I used include Hostelworld, Hostelbookers and Directrooms for places in Asia. I tend to look for cheap rooms ( under 10 USD per person) and a high approval rating from past experiences. During this trip I stayed at the Best Western La Corona in Ermita for 20 USD ( not exactly budget but you get what you pay for around Manila), Frendz Hostel in Boracay Island for 8 USD and Ponderosa Inn in Clark for 5 USD. I highly recommend all of them as all were clean, staff were courteous and their advertising met my expectations.
Afterwards I plan what activities I would want to do or tourist sites to see at our travel destinations. I first start out with Wikitravel, a branch of Wikipedia that focuses solely on traveling. After familiarizing myself with the surrounding area, I look into the Tripadvisor forums to see where other people like to eat, sleep and have fun in the Philippines. Again, instead of reading an outdated guide book I prefer other people’s insights and experiences and to make my judgements from there. However, one can still get Lonely Planet guidebooks at the nearest bookstore as their highly entertaining to read and are quite helpful as well.
Here are some pictures from my trip-
Sunrise in Ermita, Manila
Me in front of the PAL Express Propeller Airplane in Caticlan
White Beach, Boracay Island. Simply Paradise.
Sitting by the Palm Trees
The girls enjoying the sand and warm waters
When we first arrived to White Beach, I felt like I was directly thrusted into a Corona commercial. We went during the end of low season so we basically had a huge expanse of beach to ourselves. White ripples of sand formed in the pristine waters as small sailboats glided peacefully in the horizon. The water was beautiful with many different shades of blue colored like a pastel painting. For someone that has never been to the beaches of Hawaii or the Caribbean, I easily understood why Boracay Island was known as the “Jewel of the Philippines”.
I’ll add in more photos in my next post.
