Sunday

Hong Kong City and Macau Tour


Our third day in Hong Kong finally turned out as planned. We had our city tour in the morning, then headed out to Macau in the afternoon.

Our first destination was the Avenue of Stars, which is like Hollywood's Walk of Fame. Since we already had gone through there on our first day, we didn't explore much. Continue reading here.
Avenue of Stars Hong Kong

Feeling like a Child again in Hong Kong Disneyland


We woke up early on our 2nd day at Hong Kong. We had breakfast again at Mcdonald's since it was the free breakfast included in our package. After breakfast, we met up with our travel agent again to transfer to our new hotel. We took the bus again for about 15 minutes or so. From the bus stop, our hotel is just a couple of blocks away. Our new hotel was the Dorsett Sea View Hotel which is way way better than Chungking House It was like a 3-star hotel, I think. We had 3 rooms, each with its own 2 beds, cable TV, air-conditioning and bathroom. 

Dorsett Sea View Hotel Hong Kong

We all thought that everything will go smooth on that day, but even before we can start on with our tour, we had to encounter another bump In the road. Our tour guide to Hong Kong Disneyland didn't arrive on the time we were expecting them , so my sister got pissed off at our travel agent again. Our travel agent called up the local tour guide and turns out the bus that was supposed to fetch us got filled up because there were some unexpected guests. Of course, my sister got mad again since it's quite annoying that they accommodated the unexpected guests first rather than us.

After an hour or so of waiting, our tour guide finally came. He just brought a van with him since it would only be us. It took us more or less 20 minutes to get to Hong Kong Disneyland, and he gave us our tickets and instructions on how we would be going back. Finally, we can enjoy this day.
I was really excited to go to Hong Kong Disneyland, since I've never been to any Disneyland. Even though I'm already 20-something, I am a kid at heart, not to mention I also look like a kid.  It was actually a Halloween special so there were Halloween inspired displays and almost all the kids are in Halloween costumes. They were all so cute! Continue reading here.
Hong Kong Disneyland Entrance

A Disastrous First Day in Hong Kong

I went to Hong Kong with my family October of last year. Our first day turned out to be a disaster as our travel agency was not able to book the hotel for us. Our travel agency was Discover Asia International Travel and Tours which was referred to me by Jamie which was referred to her by her office mate. Hehe. Since it was referred to me by Jamie’s office mate and they said they provided good service, I trusted her referral and gave their name to my sister. She was the one who booked our itinerary to them.
On the day before our departure, our travel agent still hasn’t provided us our travel voucher which we would have to present to our hotel. On the day of our departure, our travel agent came to the airport telling us that he hasn’t booked a hotel for us as he said there was a problem with the payment transfer and he would come with us to find a hotel for us.
My sister was really angry but we had no choice since it was already our traveling date. According to our travel agent, there was a delay in the payment transfer since my sister paid in check. Anyway, we departed from Manila at around 5 in the morning riding the Cebu Pacific Airlines. We arrived there at around half-past seven and turns out it was actually their winter season. It was so freaking cold and I was wearing a skirt. We didn’t know that it was their winter already and I only brought light clothes and 2 pairs of pants. Hahaha.
So we still have no place to stay yet, and so we don’t have a vehicle waiting for us in the airport to transfer us to our hotel, so we took the bus going to the center of the city. This trip ain’t looking too good. Our travel agent asked us to stay at Mcdonald's at the moment and he would find a hotel for us. My sister told him that she and my brother would come with him and he should hand his passport to him. Better be safe and secure that he won’t be able to just leave us there waiting for him. Continue reading here.
Breakfast at Hong Kong Mcdonald's

Last Sembreak at Anawangin Zambales


Ok, so this is really a very late post, because this happened like 3 or 4 years ago, the last sembreak before graduating from College. We had this trip for my organization’s planning session for the coming semester. We went to Anawangin at San Antonio, Zambales via NLEX route then SCTEX to Subic. It was cool since it was my first time passing through SCTEX. The roads were built cutting through the mountains so you could really see the mountains on both side of the road. The roads are really smooth and the scenery is so beautiful. Continue reading here.

SCTEX Road




Saturday

Pahiyas FTW!



Another random trip with my 'posh' barkada.  JE texted me Wednesday night to ask if I was doing  anything on the weekend. I said that I have a plan to go to Baguio with my high school friends, but I wasn’t sure if we would push through.  I asked him what was the plan, and he ask me if I want to go to the Pahiyas Festival that weekend, since his original companion can't come anymore. I said that I would confirm if we would push through with Baguio, and if not, I'm game on Pahiyas. So by Friday night, Jamie confirm with me if I still have plans, and since we didn't push through with going to Baguio, I said I'm game!

So we decided to meet up in Glorietta on Saturday afternoon.  JE wearing another of his epic fail outfit, jersey with "Cheesy" on the front, board shorts and Sandugo slippers. We were teasing him that he looks like our driver and he should walk in front of us. Ivanz on the other hand, was on emo mode again and was venting that we replaced him in the group with George when we went to Vietnam. I said that he was actually the one who left the group because we did invite him to Vietnam, and he was actually the one who went travelling with other people when he went to Sagada. But anyway, we were really just joking around about it and was not really a big deal.

Since Jamie and Ivanz were hungry, we decided to eat first at Mom and Tina's along dela Rosa in Makati. JE and I just had cakes since we were not  yet hungry, while Jamie and Ivanz had full meal. It was Ivanz's treat since he has a lot of money now that he's working in P&G. After eating, we headed with our trip to go to Lucban, Quezon. We asked JE if he knows the way, since we thought he already had gone there last year.  Turns out, he wasn't able to go last year so none of us really knows exactly how to get there. Hahaha. The perks of being random. Good thing JE has an Iphone so he just used the map to get there. We told JE that he's on his own on how to get there, and we would actually believe him if he suddenly stops to a place and tell us that that is Pahiyas already. Hahaha. We told him that we have low expectations and we just want to see houses embellished with decorations made of rice since that was what Ivanz and I saw when we googled Pahiyas.

So we embarked on our five hour road trip to Lucban, Quezon. To get ourselves entertained, we played the different games in Ivanz's Iphone. One of the games we played was the 'Stupid' game which is really a stupid IQ test. One of the questions was Tap Anywhere. Ivanz's got stuck answering that question that he even googled it. Google failed him for the first time and he wasn't able to find the answer. Turns out the answer was just to tap the word 'anywhere' which was discovered by Jamie. Ivanz mentioned that he just recently learned the meaning of FTW which is for the win, and thought it was like WTF which is what the f@#k?! Hahaha.

By around 9 we tried looking for a place to eat again since JE and I haven't had dinner yet. We pointed at different places to eat but JE was not actually stopping so we ended up eating at Jollibee.  After eating, we headed out to the road again.  In one of the towns before Lucban, we saw that their houses were decorated as well. Looks like they are also having their own festival.  So we tried looking for a place to stay, but we decided to find a place in Lucban or closest to Lucban.  We tried the Inn in the entrance of Lucban, but  they said it was fully booked. Kuya told us that all the inns, resorts and hotels in the area are already fully booked and we should try to look in Lucena, which is already the next town.

We tried to look more in the town proper, but we only found houses and people walking in the streets. We notice that only a few houses are decorated, are they cramming as well? Hahaha. Since there was no choice, we decided to just sleep in the car. So JE parked his car along the main road, and we tried to sleep. We asked Ivanz to go out of the streets and ask if there maybe somewhere we could stay in. Surprisingly, he agreed. So he went out and after a few minutes he came back. He doesn't have any good news anyway, as he didn't find any place where we could stay. He said that the building in front of us is actually a dormitory, but a bus already occupied all of the rooms. So we tried sleeping in the car again it was too hot, and we can't fully open the window as it may be dangerous.

We told JE to go back a few blocks down and went back to the resort that we saw on our way. It was Batis Aramin. We asked the guard if there was still a vacant room, but he said there was none. We asked if we could just park inside and we'll just pay the entrance fee. He said that we should ask the management so he let us in. We talked to the receptionist and she said that there was actually a vacant cottage. But the cottage was actually a nipa hut made of wood. We decided not to rent the cottage since it's hard and it might be harder to sleep in there. So we just paid the entrance fee so we could park inside and use their common rest rooms.

Jamie, Ivanz and I didn’t immediately sleep. We talked about Ivanz's  emo mode and the blackholes of the trip: Purita girl, Potato Wedge girl and the favorite blackhole of Ivanz. By around 4:30 am, we decided to go to sleep. We were actually planning to go for a swim before we take our baths, but no one woke up early. We woke up at around 7am and took our baths in their shower area. It was actually stressful to take a bath because it was not really clean and the shower was not really  working and we had to use pail and dipper.

So after we were all prepared, we went back to the town proper. JE parked along the main road again and we just rode a tricycle going to the town proper. We ate breakfast at one of the carinderias and we ate their famous pansit habhab and cassava cake. The food was really cheap and the pansit just costs P10 each. So after filling our stomachs, we headed out to the town proper to see the different decorated houses. The houses were really pretty with decorations made of rice kiping and vegetables.  Continue reading here.

Cassava Cake