It seems that travelling in the Philippines first involves learning to wake up early. By 7am we found ourselves still dazed and pre-coffee on the early jeepney riding the notoriously bad "abortion road" to Sabang. The island of Palawan is often touted as "The last Fronteir" of the Philippines for its rugged undeveloped-ness. The jeepney was absolutely packed, loaded with goods, produce, and people on the roof. It actually turns out that the road is not all that bad. Most of it is on concrete, and they are busy sealing the rest. I guess as with all things, "bad" roads are relative, but after travelling around Southern Africa, most recently with a crazy trip on the wrong road to Hole-in-the-wall and our honeymoon in Mozambique, we were pleasantly surprised. The dirt parts are still pretty bumpy ... read more

We had both read a lot of bad press about Manila. Just about every blog or subjective piece of writing about the city described it as not much more than a dirty, sprawling mass. For this reason we did not plan to stay long, just a day and a half to give us the chance to take a quick look around and buy some snorkelling gear. Well, we didn't find the snorkels, but what we did find was something far more than what we expected. The PAL flight to the Philippines was pretty good, and the first good surpise was arriving to balmy tropical sunshine, rather than the thunderstorms predicted. Taking a tip from the Lonely Planet, we caught a daxi dropping off people at departures and paid 150 Pesos into town rather than the P350 ... read more

A bus, a subway and a short ferry ride, and we were once again hitting one of the islands in our favourite Korean travel playground, the West sea off Incheon. After being enticed by an arial photograph in the waiting room of the Incheon harbour, we decided that this trip would be to the island of Deokjeokdo. Without knowing much about the island, we decided to just buy one-way tickets. Once we were on the island we caught a the waiting bus to Sinripo beach on the South Eastern corner. As usual, we had to insist to some highly persuasive ajummas that we were not in need of accommodation and were planning to stay in our tent by choice, not for lack of options. When we arrived in Sinripo we were glad that we had held ... read more

So, how do you do it? How do you write about the most important day of your life and do it justice? I guess that that's why it's taken me more than 2 months to pull up a fresh page and try. I feel so inadequate. So, please, be patient with me as I try to relive the best moments of my life... The day before had been pretty close to perfect. We'd spent lunch with my grandparents at a restraunt on a farm they once owned. They showed us were everything used to be... my Grannie's old bedroom, where the peach trees grew and then the old oak where my grandpa proposed. It was wonderful. So, feeling well fed, utterly relaxed and overflowing with love, we drove off to meet with some of our friends ... read more

The rickety jetty from where the bus dropped us to the ferry stretched about 100m out into the sea. As we walked along the wooden planks we could see why. The whole way out, the sea below us was no more than a meter deep, and clear enough to see the fishes swimming about. The sun was just rising above the bulk of an offshore island, but we were already sweating as we shoved our backpacks down into the cabin of the ferry. After about 90 mins at sea we arrived at the small island of Ko Tao. With only a few days of leave, we had come to accept that we were not going to be able to see much of the country, and so instead we picked a place where we'd be happy to ... read more