Ten days is nowhere near long enough to see what the Philippines has to offer. I have to start this post with that disclaimer and to admit that after just a few days we were wishing we’d decided to stay and explore for at least a month!
We decided that we had time to spend a day in Manila, as we wanted to see at least some of the capital, and two islands. Initially we’d considered just one island but agreed in the end that we wanted to try and experience a few different places.
We approached our trip to Manila with a degree of trepidation, knowing that it can be a city that poses some challenges for visiting tourists. Many travellers either skip over the city all together by flying to Cebu or Kalibo, or choose to head straight from the airport onto another flight to the islands and beaches. We decided though that it would be a shame not to spend at least one day in Manila seeing what the city had to offer.
Despite a relative lack of coverage in the western media, most people are aware that the Philippines is experiencing some serious issues at the moment. In Manila it’s estimated that up to 8000 people have died as a result of the extra judicial killings designed to stamp out the city’s drug problems, whilst martial law has been declared in the Mindanao region due to terrorist activity.
One of the best things about visiting Borneo, apart from the amazing nature and wildlife of course, has to be the fact that it’s super cheap. Even tours are relatively inexpensive compared to many other popular tourist spots we’ve visited on our travels in Asia, making it easy to travel in Borneo on a budget.
Brunei was never one of those countries that popped up on our ‘must see’ list. In fact, before we reached South East Asia I have to be honest and say I don’t think I’d ever even heard of it. When we decided to go to Borneo island, we realised it was just a 20 minute flight from where we were staying in Kota Kinabalu and well, it would have been rude not to visit really.
As readers will know, we are on a bit of a fitness kick at the moment. We started to feel pretty rubbish after 6 months of paying little to no attention to our health, and decided at the beginning of the year it was time for a change. While we’re fairly active and like to eat pretty healthily, we definitely weren’t in the best shape. When it comes to staying fit when travelling, it’s not always easy but there are plenty of ways to stay on top of things.
Turns out that a lot of what we read online and we’re told when researching how to extend our Thailand visas in Phuket wasn’t fully up to date – so we thought we’d run through how it worked for us.
Firstly, the administrative office in Patong only deals with certain enquiries and isn’t open very often. All applications for visa extensions must be processed at the passport office in Phuket Town.
This post has been a long time coming but I’m so glad I made time to sit down and write about the hiking in South Island. It’s no secret that we both loved our time in New Zealand and looking over old pictures for this post has made me so keen to go back some day! Just like North Island, there are plenty of epic South Island hikes, and it’s so worth squeezing in at least a couple of them on your trip.
Japan is well known for its interesting and sometimes unusual culture and our visit didn’t disappoint. From a live action robot show to making sushi, and from exploring the ancient temples of Kyoto to hand feeding tame deer in Nara, there are so many things to do it can be hard to work out what to prioritise fitting into your trip. If you have a couple of weeks to explore these are our all time top 10 things to do in Japan, that will mean you make the most of your time in this amazing country.
I have to be honest, Newcastle wasn’t one of the original stops we had in mind for our 1 month journey of Australia’s east coast. We met some awesome girls from Newcastle when we were in South America and they invited us to come and see them when we reached Australia, promising to give us a tour of the area. Turns out there’s loads to do in Newcastle, it’s a beautiful little spot in New South Wales that’s a perfect base for exploring the local region and we had an awesome time there.
We’d decided it was essential to block out a day for visiting Nara from Osaka as we knew we wouldn’t have enough to occupy us in the city for the 3 days we had booked there. Not to mention we were desperate to see the thousands of adorable deer that roam free around huge areas of the city! Luckily we weren’t disappointed and had an amazing day exploring one of Japan’s ancient capitals – one of our first glimpses into this history after spending the initial few days of our two weeks in Japan in Tokyo and Osaka.
We were pretty worried about how we’d find travelling in Taiwan – it’s not exactly a renowned backpacker destination after all. After doing some research we decided trains were best for inter city travel but didn’t work out how to navigate the cities until arriving in them which was interesting at times! Having heard reports of people getting horribly lost and having real trouble finding any English speakers to help out with buying tickets etc we were expecting it to be a bit of a disaster.