As we approach the end of our travels, before we head back to Bangkok for two more short nights and our plane right home, before getting back to rainy London, we wanted to salvage these last few days of this incredible country and headed to what is known as the tourist Mecca of the Philippines, Boracay. Now we did have some reservations: *We had heard from fellow travelers that Boracay is always busy even now during off season - not a good sign. *The Lonely Planet rates Boracay as the top Filipino hotspot - definitely not a good sign, *We had [View Full Entry]

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Moalboal was our next beach-dive destination after Bantayan and Panglao. And boy, what a terrific place to dive and relax! The city (22k citizens) is located southwest of Cebu, and we arrived there with a 3h bus. Moalboal is known for its great diving location, which we agree with (although in our specific case the Balicasag/Black Forest dive in Bohol was better). A few words about Moalboal. While it's a great place to dive, the accommodation options aren't amazing - there's decent diver's resorts which usually means rather-"ok" places, nothing much to expect. If all you want is a $5-10 place [View Full Entry]

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Our first taste of the Philippines (from Manila) left us in great spirits and eager to discover more of this amazing country, so off we went on our way and starting with for a short stop over in Cebu city. Our stop only gave us just a small taste of the city. During the day we visited the Carbon Market which is a huge, mainly fresh produce market i.e. quite nice to see but nothing of interest to buy. Walked through the city to the famous Cross of Magellan which is one of the city's top attractions but is literally a [View Full Entry]

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We really tried not to come to Manila. Everyone we met told us not to come, whether because of her traffic, dirtiness or crime. Heck, even the lonely planet insinuates that you might as well head straight to Cebu, if you have diving and beaches in mind. Combined with the fact that every single weather website we've checked said that Aug-Sep is the worst time to come to Manila/Philippines, due to the monsoons, we really downplayed our expectations. So how come we got here despite the warnings? Well, that's easy, and in two words: cheap flights! Since the only low-cost flight [View Full Entry]

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After the not-so-amazing weather in Krabi (75% rain), we really weren't expecting anything from the beaches in the East. If you try googling for "Thailand weather in August", search a zillion weather websites or even look at other people blogs, you simply cannot find any clear answer besides "It's the wet season between June-August". So when we got to Ko Samui, and had nothing but beautiful, clear skies with absolutely no hint of rain, boy o boy were we surprised. So in case you were wondering for a future visit, then, you can quote us: June-August is mostly rainy/wet in south-EAST [View Full Entry]

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Many travelers often decide that when a fairly long trip is coming to an end they will take the grand total of whenever is left from their budget and blow it on whatever luxuries they can afford. Whether it is a great meal, a long massage, a shopping splurge, a few nights in a overly luxurious resort or even all of the above. For us, we foresaw that we would desire a bit of pampering before heading back home to reality and rather than seeing how much money we would have left, we actually budgeted for this little time in heaven [View Full Entry]

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A few words are due about our China experience, which was just wonderful. We met lots of fellow travellers who didn't rave about China, but they most shared the same complaint: it was just hard travelling in a country where almost no-one speaks English, and some of those that do speak some words - especially the tourist-facing ones - may try to overcharge, rip, or sell you something you don't need or want. But once you overcome those difficulties, especially if you can speak the essential 20-30 words for basic communications, China could be just an amazing experience. We loved the [View Full Entry]

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By the time we got to Chengdu, we knew it would be our last station in China. Yes, we did plan to go to Tibet, you remember right. But having heard that taking the permit would take 10 days (turned up to be BS), being a bit templed-out , and critically craving for beach-time, we decided that Thailand and Philippines would be our 21st and 22nd countries to visit, rather than Tibet and Nepal. - we’ll have to save those for next time :-) So after a 10 hour ride from Jiuzhaiguo (tip: sitting on the front seat row in a [View Full Entry]

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It's fair to say that the apparent hassles associated with visiting Jiuzhaiguo’s park may be sufficient to sway most travelers into leaving it out altogether - this was the case for many travelers we met along the way. At best the entry costs' match, if not exceed the costs' of going to top national parks in the US, (approx. $22/30 student/adult). This does not including the extra bucks you need to dish out for the parks buses each day you are there ($12/day). It’s also fair to say that the mission of getting there is slightly off-putting. First you need to [View Full Entry]

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From Ulaan Baatar we flew to Beijing, rested 2 days in a (more) luxurious hotel, reading the final Harry Potter book :-), before continuing on with our travel from Beijing to Xi An Our time restraints of getting to Tibet left us with only a day to spare in Xi-An which turned our to be just enough for us. After checking into our hotel we took the bus straight to see the famous Terracotta warriors. We could tell you lots about the Terracotta warriors but then again you too know how to open Wikipedia :-) Whilst the warriors are extremly impressive [View Full Entry]

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