Taoist founder Lao Tzu was immortalized by saying “every journey starts with a single step”. Well, that ancient Chinese proverb didn’t exactly apply to me during my recent trip to Palawan. I was out of the house with my overstuffed backpack and enthusiastic vigor on my way to ride the ferry to Puerto Princesa City, Palawan from Iloilo City. When I got to the ferry terminal, the guard told me that the boat was already fully booked and I had to wait a few more days to catch the next one. Total Bummer! So I had no choice but to go back home and postpone my trip.
After four days of recuperating, I was out of the house again with a renewed fervor and the same unopened backpack, except this time, I have already secured the reservation for the ferry. I was really looking forward to visiting Palawan for a few months already. No other place comes to mind to do my first solo backpacking trip than in Palawan, which is definitely on my top places to travel in the Philippines.
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Siem Reap City in Cambodia was the primary destination for my trip. Since there are no direct flights to Cambodia from the Philippines, I had to choose another nearby country/city to fly into with direct transportation links to Siem Reap. There are quite a number of ways to go at it but I ended up buying a plane ticket from Manila to Bangkok, Thailand and then traveling overland (by bus) to Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Cebu Pacific International Check-in Counters in NAIA Terminal 3
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Every April, a couple of festivals representing provinces and cities from all over the Philippines gather at the nation’s capital to perform their local dances during the Aliwan Fiesta. In my opinion, there aren’t any other time where one can witness a more diverse sense of Philippine culture than the Aliwan Fiesta so I’ve always made it one of my biggest agendas in my travel calendar. It’s now my second time experiencing the Aliwan Fiesta and, sans the almost unbearable summer heat, it was so worth the airfare!
Halamang Dilaw Festival of Bulacan
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It’s a new year and it’s time to look back at experiences and events during the past year. Here are the places that I’ve travelled to and major events in Iloilo that I’ve got the chance to witness in 2009.
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This is what you get when you give a one week unlimited MRT/LRT flash pass in Manila to a camera wielding travel junkie:
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I’m still hung over my travelling spree in October and now, I’m going out of the house again for my next trip to Roxas City, Capiz on December 4-6 for the Western Visayas Tourism Assembly and Sinadya sa Halaran. I still have a lot of backlog travel posts to do and I’m currently finding ways to manage posting them before my planned trips this December.
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Now that my October travelling spree is over, I’m finally back home … back to blogging. You’ll probably notice my online activity rising because I’ve cleared up my schedule for the next month so that I can do some major work on my blogs (actually, it’s more like I wont be going anywhere because I’ve got no more money left to spend). During the first week of October, I spent a week in Manila to take some pictures for a new blog I’m developing named “Pueblo Philippines (more about this later).” While I was there, I bought a one week MRT/LRT unlimited flash pass (for P250) and visited many spots in Metro Manila. Though, the highlight (and main agenda) of my trip was actually attending the 2009 Philippine Blog Awards, in which Explore Iloilo was nominated under the Best Travel Blog category.
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Back when I was in high school, I was a Sim City 4 addict. I used to spend my nights slaving over making the biggest city my measly computer can handle. There was of course the attempt of making a city that had a road layout of Iloilo City, at the time high quality road maps of Iloilo City was not available (Google Earth, I think wasn’t released yet or it didn’t have hi-res images of Iloilo City) so I started to look for road maps of other cities in the Philippines. One google search led to another and I ended up in Skyscrapercity.com. I visited the Philippine sub forum and searched through the threads.
Photo from Wikipedia (I have yet to take a nightshot of Makati)
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When I was still planning for the trip to Manila, I made it a point to try the Pasig River Cruise after learning about it from Bernie’s blog. The Pasig River was the lifeblood of the city during its prehistory until the Spanish occupation. Unfortunately, during the last decades of the 20th century, it has become Manila’s dumping site for trash and raw sewage. If you ask a Filipino their impression of Pasig, they would tell you that it is “mabaho” (foul smelling) and “puno ng basura” (full of trash). I was surprised to find out how the Pasig River has changed these past few years. Although still relatively dirty, it did not give off foul odors as I have expected.
Catamaran Ferry of the Pasig River Cruise
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Ambot-ah is a blog about my life as a travel blogger, nurse, and freelance photographer. After my college graduation, I decided to make a living out of blogging and live out my many passions. Join me on my travels around the Philippines and South East Asia. Read my helpful backpacking journals, budget travel trips, do-it-yourself itineraries, blogging pursuits (making money online), and photography tips. 
