vacation – Page 2 – Eliza Victoria

some misadventures, and a beautiful january wedding

We were headed to Tagaytay. The morning was uneventful: we met up on time, didn’t encounter heavy traffic, stopped at Paseo (which I didn’t know had a gazillion store outlets!) for Kanin Club, had coffee, went back on the road.

Then we used Waze.

Then we got lost.

To be fair, it wasn’t Waze’s fault. I think the Internet connection got cut just when we were about to take a critical right turn. Our 30-minute trip ballooned to nearly two hours trying to look for the hotel.

So our plan to nap, take a shower, and spend time fixing our hair got squished into fifteen precious minutes. But we still found time to strike a pose.

heh

We had reservations (it’s funny when you take into consideration that word’s other meaning) at Le Jardin Rosella. It was a beautiful place, but the staff seemed…clueless. Like they weren’t expecting us. So we got dressed in the building’s downstairs washroom while waiting for housekeeping to bring our keys. While waiting for anyone, really. Anyone?

Anywho, we had to dump our stuff in the rooms and run because the church was an hour away.

But our timing was impeccable. We got to the church seconds — seconds! — before our friend and colleague walked down the aisle. We cheered for the bride, nearly including ourselves in the SDE video (which would have been a production disaster, or a viral video in the making), hardly believing our luck. What are the odds.

It was a beautiful ceremony. The priests knew the couple so their homilies and messages to the newlyweds were personal and heartfelt.

The group photos were from Maida (who organized this trip, sponsored by Waze). (I’m kidding.)

The bride letting her hair down.

Now, back to the hotel. We got back at midnight and there were no extra beds (even though we paid for extra beds) and no running water. We had to hunt down people to get these necessities, and when we finally got water running, there was no hot water. Remember that we were in Tagaytay. In January. At midnight. Hashtag pulmonya.

The next day, we were told, after we waited for more than an hour, that they could only serve four meals. I don’t know how they came up with this number. There were nine of us, and we were all paid. The OIC, Lala, gave excuses (they were busy with an event, maraming absent, papunta palang po ako ng office) instead of apologizing. Only one staff member, Roland (or Ronald, I forget) understood customer service and went out of his way to serve us coffee.

So thumbs-down for Le Jardin Rosella and their incompetent OIC, Lala. Don’t stay with them, or at least think twice. I think you’re better off staying somewhere else.

But two thumbs-up for your lovely wedding, AJ and Vanna! The very best of luck to your life together. :)

And sige thumbs-up na rin sa hardin ng Le Jardin. Idinaan na lang namin sa photo-op ang galit. Haha!

travel factor: batanes – day 3 and departure

Day 1 | Day 2

Our Day 3 in Batanes was on a Saturday. The weekend! (When we arrived on Thursday I thought it was already Saturday; I got disoriented when I saw schoolchildren on the street.)

This was a continuation of our Batan tour. Look at this view.

Dumayo pa ng Batanes para mag-taho!

This is a boat shelter port. It’s gorgeous.

This is the view near the Church of Mahatao.

The Spanish influence is clear here.

Beauty everywhere you turn. It’s amazing.

Looks like New Zealand, no?

For once, I was able to take a picture of the food! We had white snapper, lapu-lapu, sweet camote, chicken, vegetables.

White Beach.

We saw some men with their catch of the day.

I bought some cookies at the Honesty Coffee Shop. This is a store owned by two schoolteachers. No one mans the store. The goods on sale have prices, and you can just leave your payment in a tin after writing down your purchases in a logbook.

This used to be a military base that they’re turning into a museum.

Just enjoying the view.

Dinner set-up.

Some shells I picked up at White Beach. Before dinner we dropped by a souvenir store, and I bought bukayo and garlic chips to add to the cookie pasalubong stash from the Honesty Coffee Shop.

Heading home now. Our flight the next day, Sunday, left at 8AM. (Let’s give credit where credit is due: PAL’s flights on this trip left on time. I was pleased. And surprised.)

Basco’s airport looks like a house. It’s tiny and cute.

Ba-bye Batanes. Stay pretty.

Thank you once again to Travel Factor for the hassle-free trip. If you’re interested in signing up for a group tour, you can check out their website. (Just a quick note to say this is not a sponsored post.) Their Batanes trip is around 10k per person, with the following inclusions:

INCLUSIONS

• 3 Nights accommodation (group sharing)
• Airport Transfers in Batanes
• Batan – Sabtang – Batan Faluwa Transfers
• Tours all around Batan Island (Chartered Jeepney)
• Tours all around Sabtang Island (Chartered Jeepney)
• Full board meals
• Travel Insurance
• Travel Factor ID and Lanyard
• PHOTOHOLIC Batanes Tshirt

Not Included:
• Roundtrip Plane ticket

travel factor: batanes – day 2

Day 1

Batanes is a group of ten islands, three of which are inhabited: Batan, Sabtang, and Itbayat. Do you know that there’s a plane that travels from Batan to Itbayat? The flight will take all of twelve minutes. Or else you can travel by boat over and through gigantic waves.

No plane travels from Batan to Sabtang, so we had to do the latter.

We arrived bright and early at the Port of Ivana to catch a faluwa ride. A faluwa is an outrigger-free Ivatan boat that can seat more than 70 people. And motorbikes. The faluwa is designed to just go with the flow, so to speak. It can travel over waves taller than itself, and is perfect for violent seas. So, you know, be like the faluwa.

I unfortunately do not have a photo of it, but here’s one from Choose Philippines to give you an idea:

We didn’t fill up the faluwa to the rafters (some people mention feeling seasick in a jampacked faluwa) so the ride to Sabtang wasn’t that bad. But the waves were pretty strong. The ocean looked like wrinkled fabric.

Our first stop. Look at the grass.

You can see the direction of the wind based on these trees.

Nakabuang Beach. Here we are in front of the famous arc. Thank you to Aica for the photo!

We stopped to register at the Tourism office and try their local tea (the sign says “tea” but they call it coffee, so I’m not sure) called tubho. Tubho is made from a fern.

Batanes streets give you sudden, bright accents of color that I love.

Hello!

Obviously a tourist-y stop. Heh.

We also went to see the stone houses in Chavayan village.

Ate Remy said most Ivatans resort to hollow blocks now, because they’re easier to carry. To paraphrase what she told us, it’s easy to find rocks, it’s hard to find labor.

Like I said, bright accents. Pink curtain, pink door.

The lone police officer for the barangay. Mabuhay ka, kuya.

Here’s a church with a cogon roof.

Great view out of the jeepney.

San Vicente Ferrer Church.

The 10 Commandments, in Ivatan.

Ivatan reminds me of my mother’s own language (my mother’s from Cagayan Valley), Ibanag.

Small schools for a small population.

We headed right back to Basco after lunch. On the way back, the waves were bigger and harsher. One of the men seated at the back suddenly stood up and knocked on the roof to signal to the driver. I thought it was an emergency and oh good I will die here of thirst, surrounded by water. Turned out one of the men caught a deep-sea fish called dorado. The fish was a gorgeous golden color. I don’t have a photo, but here’s one from Reggie Matteo.

Free time! Some members of the group went biking; I re-read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and went to sleep.

travel factor: batanes – day 1

This marks my third Travel Factor trip (Pinatubo | Pico de Loro), and my first time to travel with a group of strangers.

Since I booked this trip pretty early, I was a ball of anxiety during the weeks leading up to the flight. So many things could go wrong: canceled flights, bad weather, accidents, terrible roommates. I kept the anxiety at bay by not thinking of the trip at all. I did not buy anything new (I usually buy a new shirt or a new scarf before a major trip, just something small), and the night before the flight I found myself still digging around for a sachet of shampoo I could bring.

It’s funny, Batanes was never on my bucket list. Actually, that’s a strange way to put it, since I don’t even have a bucket list. I mean, it was never on my agenda. It felt like one of those (financially and geographically) unreachable places I would never see in this lifetime (like Paris, France). Plane fares are prohibitively expensive (they can go as high as PhP14,000), so taking a trip to Batanes never even crossed my mind.

And yet, here I am, after having spent three and half days in the country’s most northernmost province. I still can’t quite believe it.

I booked the trip and the flights early in the year (around April) and considered it a birthday gift to myself. The flight out of Manila was at 6 AM on a Thursday. I packed just one bag. (Another first! That bag would have been just my overnight bag, if I had allowed myself to get carried away.)

I checked in online to avoid the hassle. I met up with Aica, our Travel Coordinator for this trip, got my ID and my shirt, and waited for the call to board.

There was a moment when I heard the announcement about the aircraft being late, and I thought, Well here it is. Me and my imagination of disaster. But the flight left the terminal without a hitch. I got a window seat next to my roommate Lee (but I didn’t know this at the time), and enjoyed the view. It had been a while since I got on a plane and flew in the early morning.

This is Ate Remy, our Ivatan tour guide.

This is where we stayed for the duration of the trip. Our group is composed of 15 people: couples, solo travelers, moms, fresh graduates, and urban professionals, from the age of 20+ to 50+.

We had breakfast and had hours to spare. I took a nap before we started our North Batan tour.

Lovely view during lunch. I ate two snails!

This is Mt. Carmel Church. They hold Mass here only every first Sunday of the month.

Windy day.

Church interior.

This view is in front of the Basco weather station. Batanes is unbelievably postcard-perfect. You can point your camera anywhere and still manage to capture something beautiful.

That’s the famous Fundacion Pacita in the distance. You can get a room for PhP8,000 a night.

If it looks tiny, that’s because the hotel rooms are underground.

Approaching Valugan Boulder Beach.

Then we went to Rolling Hills. My fave spot. These stupid phone camera photos do not do the place justice.

Watch your step.

Oh man. I could sit here for hours.

Lighthouse. It’s pretty small when you see it in person.

I climbed up to take a photo of the sunset.

I love this blue door. Can’t resist.

Tomorrow we got up early for our faluwa ride to the island of Sabtang.

siem reap, cambodia – day 2 and departure

Good morning Cambodia! Free hotel breakfast, at long last.

Cambodia was a former French colony, hence the baguette.

We got two tuktuk through Bou Savy and a tour guide named Sen for our trip to Angkor Wat.

Wheeeeeee.

This is Sen.

You can actually rent a bicycle to go around Angkor Wat, but are you kidding me. (I’m not an athletic person, as you can glean from my posts.)

The stone structures and engravings are incredible.

Apsara!

These huge tree just grew around the ruins.

Lunch! I had this yummy lychee-flavored soda.

Here we are, entering the main temple. Angkor Wat is the largest religious (first Hindu, then Buddhist) monument in the world.

This post has hardly any words, but words and even these photos are inadequate. You have to be there, to fully appreciate the scale of this complex.

Heaven and hell.

We planned to wait for the sunset at Angkor Wat, but we finished the tour at 3 PM, and I personally couldn’t wait three hours under the hot sun in my sweaty clothes. So off we go to Bou Savy to freshen up and fix our things.

Look at the chandeliers in Cambodia’s airport.

We boarded the 10:30 flight and arrived in Manila at half-past two. Home. :)

Total expenses for Cambodia is USD 206.

Total expenses overall: USD 898.58 or around PhP 42,000.

You may download our complete itinerary here:

Hanoi-BKK-SiemReap_Final

Thanks to Grace for making the Excel file. :D

I almost didn’t go on this trip, but I’m glad I did.

My thanks to my friends, especially to June, who painstakingly read every blog post ever written about trips to these countries, and so I pass on this information to you. :)

siem reap, cambodia – day 1

I fell asleep on the bus! This was an achievement.

If you’re traveling by land from Bangkok to Cambodia, it is important that you have luggage small and light enough to lift over bumps, because you will be walking from the bus stop to the border.

The phrase “the border” has such dark connotations, thanks to Hollywood portrayal of the Mexican border, but our crossing over to Cambodia was rather uneventful. We walked through a dusty road and entered the Immigration Office, with wooden floors and creaky wall fans. Immigration officials were jolly. This office, strangely, was not located directly on the border, so that means you would be walking in the Kingdom of Cambodia visa-less for around five to ten minutes, passing by casinos and souvenir stores.

After having our passports stamped, we were given a free ride to the tourist lounge in Poipet.

The lounge looked deserted.

We hired a van to take us to our hotel, Bou Savy Guesthouse.

My friends with cold towels, writing their names in the tourist registry.

I like Bou Savy. It’s homey, the people are nice, and the food is affordable. Order their curry! It’s so good, and not very spicy, perfect for spicephobes. (I made that word up.)

Iced coffee! Finally!!!

Thank God for this quiet first day. We just stayed indoors until it was time to go to the night market.

We also tried their sidewalk massages.

See the fishies in the aquarium there? That’s a Happy Feet station, except that tilapia ‘ata yung kakain sa dead skin cells mo. (Seriously, the fish were big.)

Sarap.

I would have wanted a longer back massage, but I didn’t have any more dollars.

bangkok, thailand – day 3 and departure

On our last day in Bangkok, we visited its two well-known tourist attractions: the gigantic Reclining Buddha, and the Grand Palace.

We went to Saphan Thaksin station via BTS, and took a ferry to N9.

The Grand Palace, a golden complex located on the banks of the Chao Praya River, was the residence of the Kings of Siam from the 18th century until 1925. Though the King no longer lives there, it is still the site of some of the royal offices. Gatekeepers are pretty strict, so no sleeveless tops or muscle shirts, no shorts, no skirts. I wore a dress with black leggings underneath but still got questioned. (A “safe” attire would be a shirt with sleeves and pants.) No worries, the Information office lends proper clothing to visitors. You just need to give a deposit of 200 THB, which you’ll get after you return the garments.

Entrance to the Grand Palace is 500 THB.

I was overwhelmed by the volume of tourists who visited the complex that day. Divisoria-levels ito. While queuing up for the entrance, a group of tourists practically plowed into us. We almost landed in the plant box. It was chaos, and the weather was hot.

Anyway. Grand Palace was a beauty and a great display of Thai artistry and the kingdom’s grandeur, but I would have enjoyed the sights more if the weather was better and there were less rude tourists around.

If you’re going to visit the palace soon, please be kind to other visitors.

Look at the detail:

I look tired here, haha.

Panoramic view:

Look how the gold in the painting glows as it catches the light:

Gorgeous!

The Reclining Buddha in Wat Pho is adjacent to the Grand Palace. It was such a long walk under the hot sun that I had to buy a pair of slippers (40 THB) to replace my shoes and free up my poor toes.

This statue is massive. I was blown away.

A closer look at the symbols on his feet:

We walked around to look at the Buddha’s pillows:

The temple itself is breathtaking.

Details.

I was so tired and sweaty I completely forgot we had to stop by Siam Ocean World before heading to Sunflower Place. (I needed a bath!)

I’ve never been to Manila Ocean World, and I don’t dive nor snorkel (and it was air-conditioned), so this was a treat:

Great color!

I love this.

A fleeting view of a hammerhead shark. I love hammerhead sharks. I wished one stopped long enough for a photo-op. LOL.

Nemo!

A pass also gives you a chance to enjoy some activities, like the glass-bottom boat ride, and the infamous Happy Feet. You submerge your feet in water, and these little fish will nibble on your dead skin cells.

Eeeeeeeee—

—eeeeeeeeeeee

It’s not for the ticklish.

We had dinner in a small eatery and visited the night market, where I realized that I only have 30 THB left for shopping. So I went home ahead of the others, rested my legs, and took a long, cold shower, and lamented the fact that I was not able to buy Thai Iced Tea or Pad Thai or a key chain.

We left Sunflower Place before 6 AM the next day and took a cab to Lumphini Park. From there, we got on a bus (after a confusing “conversation” with a conductor who kept speaking to us in Thai, insisting via gestures that all six of us would still fit in a bus that had only four available seats) that would take us to Cambodia.

Goodbye Bangkok. You are a charming city. I will see you again soon.

Total expenses for Thailand is USD 446.63 (including downpayment and shopping).

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