Crystal Pond Travels

PUERTO PRINCESA And so we arrived in Puerto Princesa airport at night time, from Cebu.  A lot of people don’t actually realize that the famous El Nido, where everyone wants to go, is quite far from the airport in Puerto. It is aaaall the way up north in the island. So basically, you arrive in Puerto and have to catch a van, yes, one of those crazy vans, for 6 hours! Haha Seriously, it is such a hassle and probably scary for a lot of people too (the van). But it works, and remember, this is NOT a cheap island compared to others. Specially up in El Nido.     And also the van to take you up is not that cheap. There’s probably a bus option but it might only be worth it if you have time. For us, it all worked all well since we knew it beforehand, miracle I know haha, but yeah, and we were not in a rush and we were keen to check out Puerto Princesa and Port Barton before going to El Nido anyway.   So we spent 1 night in Puerto, which was enough...

We took a direct ferry from Larena port in Siquijor Island to Tagbilaran port in Bohol, and already found motorbikes rental more expensive as soon as we arrived there, it was double the price, shocking! ($500pp)  But anyway, we needed it as we were going to spend most of the time in Panglao Island just south of Bohol and would also ride up to the Chocolate Hills at some stage.  By the way, watch the short video here if you haven't yet :) So as soon as we got off the ferry we walked a few hundred meters up the road ignoring all the 700 tuk tuk offers, and trying to negotiate with the motorbike rental guys at the same time. It took us a little while but we managed to get their price down by a bit. And also renting it next to the ferry, meant we had transport to come back to catch the ferry to next island.    Royal Paradise is where we stayed for the first night, which was a very pretty place very Filipino style, but tiny rooms. And since I was gettin...

From Dumaguete Island to Siquijor Island, we took the Ocean Jet ferry which is good and faster than other ferries apparently.  A tip: DO NOT talk to anyone on the streets near Dumaguete port! There was this old man (quite scary too) that kept following us and asking if we had tickets, so we were a bit stupid and said we were going to buy at Ocean Jet. Everyone we had met in the Philippines so far was so lovely that we didn’t even think I guess... But basically he walked in front of us as if we were following him to the ticket office, so then at the end he basically begged SO MUCH, for money for taking us there (WTF). Nearly demanded money actually and we ended up giving him some change because you never know what people are capable of. So to avoid it just don’t talk to strangers. The Ferry trip was fine, really chilled and we had finally arrived at Siquijor Island, at Larena Port which wasn’t bad at all actually.  Right after you exit the port you can find ...

After getting off the bus, you need to take a tuk tuk which should cost half of the price they will tell you basically. I don’t remember exactly but I believe we paid pp$70for both of us to take us to Panagsama Beach. They usually charge pp$100+. As always, ask around and try to negotiate. The beach in Panagsama is not an actual sandy beach, it’s more rocks and corals, but I enjoyed much more than the White beach as I was there to snorkel and potentially dive. And what a cool little town! Full of snorkeling, diving, turtles and sardines! This is one of those places where you can see the famous ‘Sardine Run’ I think it is called. Thousands and thousands of sardines, every single day and all you have to do is to ask a local where to see them, and you walk to the beach and they are super close to the shore. It’s unbelievable. You don’t need to pay anything if you have your own snorkel/mask or just rent one if you don’t. So just walk to the water and snorkel around!  ...

It was quite good splitting the trip into 2 parts, we were way more relaxed and the second flight was really short which helped a lot too. We had a stop over in Kalibo that is the airport for who is going to Boracay. This time we were not going there, but I heard that it is quite popular, crowded and expensive, full of those luxurious resorts and stuff like that.  Well, not my first option really… Not that I wouldn’t go, but if I had to choose, as I actually had to, I picked some different islands. Watch our short video here :) One thing you need to know is that there are over 7 thousand islands in the Philippines, so forget about visiting all of them. Specially if you have limited time, like we had a month haha you can barely see a couple of islands with that time. So the trick is to pick a couple of island and not try to see as many islands as you can, but try to explore more the island you chose. Because traveling from island to island around the Philippines can get ...

We had 2 options when booking our flights, via Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia or via Singapore. The flight to KL would be about $30 cheaper than the one Singapore, however, one of my best friends was living in Singapore at the time, so we decided to go via SIN and visit her, why not!? This was actually my 3rd time in Singaporean soils, however the other 2 times I only spend the day exploring the city since it was just a connection flight with long waiting times. This time we decided to spend 3 days with her and catch up and explore. We stayed at her place which wasn’t far from the subway line and so very convenient for us, and luckily she wasn’t working then so she could take us around and enjoy as well! Obviously we were traveling on a budget, so we had to save as much as we could. And if you don’t know Singapore is a very expensive city, specially if you enjoy going out and drinking ! So we went for a tour around the city, visited some shopping malls, Marina Bay, temp...

The initial plan was to quit our jobs in April 2017, move to Canberra in May 2017 to house sit for his mom while she was in Europe for the summer escaping Australian winter haha.. and then go travelling around Europe in a camper-van from September 2017 once she was back from her travels. We could not go before August anyway as I was had to apply for my citizenship before leaving the country. Everything started when in April 2017 when we quit our jobs yaayy happy days! This was at the start of April, just before my birthday and also just before our Random Trip to Qingdao, in China.  And 2 weeks after we quit (we were in China during the announcement), the Australian government proposed changing the bloody requirements to apply for citizenship.  Basically, the current requirement was to be for at least 4 years in Australia and 1 year as a Permanent Resident, then you could apply. And they wanted to change it to 4 years in Australia plus 4 years as a Perman...