Bangkok, Thailand, Asia I was woken up at 7am by the staff at Happy Coconuts Hostel this morning, and told that my check out time was in 15 minutes. It turns out that I found the only hostel in the world that does not have a normal “Check In” and “Check Out” time protocol. Instead, they operate on a 24 hour room rental, so because they were “nice enough” to let me check in at 7:15am, they were making me…
Manila, Philippines, Asia I had a horrible night’s sleep last night on the bus. The seats are just not big enough to accomodate someone who is over six feet tall. And it didn’t help that the person in front of me had to put their seat back to fully lie down, which just made it that much tighter. I was pretty sore from the caving and the hiking from yesterday, so I couldn’t get comfortable at all. It just wasn’t…
Banaue, Philippines, Asia Today was one of the most exhausting days I can remember, ever. I woke up at 6:30am to meet the group up in the lobby for 7am. We were hoping to have more people wanting to go to Batad that we could share a jeepney with, but there was only one he/she that wanted to go, but only one way. We had some breakfast at the hotel restaurant, where I had a huge chocolate and banana pancake….
Banaue, Philippines, Asia Today started out with an early wake up at the George Guest House so I could catch the 8:30am jeepney to Bontoc, and then get a bus at 10am to Banaue. It didn’t quite work out that way. I got up to the bus stop at 8:10am but they jeepney was already full so I had to wait till 9am. No problem really, because I should still have been able to get there at 9:45am in time…
Sagada, Philippines, Asia Today was an awesome day! I woke up after a great night sleep at George Guest House and wasn’t sure that I really wanted to do anything today. I knew that I was going to be staying here for tonight, so I had the full day, but just kind of felt like relaxing. I bummed around until about 10am and then went for breakfast at Yoghurt House. I had an awesome breakfast with a scrambled egg, a…
Sagada, Philippines, Asia The one thing I want to see in the Philippines is the Banaue Rice Terraces. This is proving to be a very difficult place to get to. I have already flown into Clark (north of Manila) and taken a five hour bus journey further north to the city of Baguio. This morning I left Baguio (as soon as humanly possible) to get another bus up to Sagada. This was another six hour journey by bus, but because…
Baguio, Philippines, Asia Today was a long day of travelling. It started out with waking up with a very sore back from a horrible night’s sleep. My mattress still had a plastic wrapper on it, so my fitted sheet kept coming off and my legs were sticking to the plastic. There was no A/C in the room so it was roasting in there, and every time I moved, the plastic made tons of noise that I was certain was waking…
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Asia Today was a bit of a wasted day due to travelling. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a flight back to KK from Sandakan, so I decided to take a bus. I got up and checked out of my hostel earlier than I was planning, but I was just happy to get out of there. Neither Sandakan nor my hostel impressed me, so I wasn’t going to stick around longer than I…
Sandakan, Malaysia, Asia I’m getting a little tired of these ridiculously early wake up calls, but today it was well worth it. I woke up at 4:30am and got in a cab at 5am to head over to Terminal 1 at KKIA. I had checked the website and unfortunately my AirAsia flight wasn’t flying out of T2 which was only a five minute walk away. It was leaving from T1 which was a 30RM ($10) taxi ride away. Luckily I…
Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Asia I met a few really nice English people at Borneo BeacHouse Backpackers this morning, and ended up spending the day with them. A couple (Rob and Jen) and a solo traveler (Julie) were nice enough to invite me to go for a walk around KK with them, so I wasn’t about to pass up that invitation. We caught the bus into town, which was an experience in itself. It’s not so much a bus, as a…