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.
As the capital of Malaysian Borneo, this is a larger city than Sandakan but still nothing to write home about. Whilst it looks a little scruffy on first appearance, we ended up feeling safer than expected and one of the real highlights here is the fantastic fresh seafood that you can find in most restaurants.
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.
Arriving in the small city of Sandakan early evening we grabbed a taxi to our hostel and got checked in, ready to plan the next couple of days. We stayed at the Sandakan Sea View Backpacker Hostel and while there are a few hostels on this road I’d wholeheartedly recommend this one.
Money and time… wouldn’t we all love it if we had more of both. Sadly though, after ten months travelling we have only a few weeks until we need to think about heading home and our bank account has definitely seen better days. We’re not letting this hold us back too much though and our recent Borneo itinerary been a massive highlight of our trip.
We were thrilled when we walked into our hostel in Manila to find that they’d partnered with a local company to promote an all new food tour. As you can see from the blog on recent Fridays it’s been a while since we’ve done a food tour and we weren’t expecting to be able to join one in the Philippines.
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.
As it turned out, not only did my mum decide to come and visit us while we were spending two weeks travelling Japan, but her visit happened to fall on Mother’s Day. Anyone would think she’d planned it that way! Of course, having not seen her in the best part of a year, we wanted to plan something pretty special, and decided we’d treat her to dinner.
This is based on our itinerary for Japan, but with some improvements and bits that we missed due to bad weather / jetlag etc. This two week Japan itinerary gives plenty of time to see the highlights in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima as well as some extra day trips to see even more of what Japan has to offer. Ideally you’ll be able to spend much longer than this, but this is a great two week outline to help you plan your trip.