The Longest Way Home Travel Blog » Website Updates

Back on the Road: Travel Blog Update & future changes

The Longest Way Home — Sun, 30 May 2010 22:41:50 +0000

As I mentioned in a previous update, I wanted the past few months to write a little differently. It was to focus on other people rather than myself, while at the same time expanding the site into some editorial and commentary posts, which I have equally enjoyed.

Upcoming website changes & features

Brief overview of the past few months:

Seeing the Unseen series about the people from Mindanao
Interviews with several high profile travel figures on inspirational travel
I wrote several travel commentaries such as Google vs Lonely Planet, and a series on Travel Blog ethics (more to come)
My first e-book (Top places to Travel & Photograph) was published and, is available to all email subscribers for FREE
New Travel Photo Gallery is at around 90% completion.

Now, it’s time to go back to me, and the journey to find home:

A $24.99 photo-ebook FREE to all email subscribers

I’ve enjoyed the above, however as I am moving on. I will now be returning to regular travel journal updates on my travel blog page. I will be writing from my own perspective on my travels. And, on how my journey to find home is developing.

New things, and some old:

Here’s how the travel blog page will look for the next while:

Travel blog entries which I refer to as my journal will continue to detail my personal journey to find a place called home
I will endeavor to write these entries once a week on average, they will not always be in line with my travel dates so I can take the time to write them properly. Use my twitter account for live entries
Between each travel journal entry there will be a feature photo article about food from the country I am traveling in. It will be about the real food you will encounter when traveling
Brief “How to …” guides will appear as they come about to help those looking to travel in the same places I’ve been
Once or twice a month I will write a commentary / editorial on a popular travel or photographic topic, as I enjoy this

Other updates on the horizon:

Who will be the next Great Modern Traveler Inductee?

It’s been a long time coming, but my new world travel photography gallery is soon coming online. There will be prints for sale on select photographs. Including collectors editions, and pay per month prints.
The large photo headers on the website will gradually have names and locations appear.
A new African update from the past.
My “Travel Journey’s” page will be getting a complete overhaul and turned into something very different.
There will be a comprehensive review on online storage for travelers and photographers.
There will be a new inductee into Great Modern Travelers announced.

Over to you:

Though this is a personal journey, I am well aware that there are now many people reading this website.

So I will ask this, what would you like

added?
changed?
removed?

From the travel blog or website in general?

Suggestions, tips and comments welcome. Though I can’t promise everything, if there is something glaringly annoying, or something that could be improved. Now would be a good time to let me know.

Coming Soon:

The road to Davao … across the highlands

Sign up to my email updates to get your FREE ebook of 5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph

(Due to the nature of travel, it usually takes a few days to get the ebook emailed out to you) Enjoy reading my Travel Blog and my Travel Photography

© copyright 2010 www.thelongestwayhome.com

Back on the Road: Travel Blog Update & future changes

Top Places to Travel & Photograph a FREE Photo-E-book Gift to all subscribers of The Longest Way Home!

The Longest Way Home — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:30:07 +0000

Find out where my 5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph are -

The answer’s going to surprise you!

If you already subscribe to this website via email then; you already know about this!

5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph - Photo-e-book

5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph is a high quality full color 37 page photo-e-book that, I believe, sets a new standard for photo-e-books, and e-books in general.

And, it’s completely FREE to all subscribers of this website. Sign up here to subscribe to my free journals and get your copy!

But please hurry, as it’s a time limited offer!

Features:

Full color travel-photographs
Beautiful full page pullouts
Designed to be printed out
No page numbers on large photos for better viewing & printing
Every chapter has a tips page on travel & photography related to that country
A fully interactive menu for easy navigation

There is also a high definition print copy available. It’s currently weighing in at around 100mb. Due to storage costs the only way I can offer this via payment. If you like the free copy and would like the high definition print edition, then please contact me.

The story behind 5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph:

I’ve been working on several photo projects over the past 6 months. And, on one in particularly I failed. Yes, I said I failed.

Someone wished to have a coffee table photography book, and I was unable to deliver due to time issues, visa issues and, at that time, my lack of desktop publishing skills.

I could have forgotten about it, or outsourced it, but as you may have seen on this journal, I don’t give up so easily. And, I believe you should aspire to learn what you don’t know.

So over the past few months I forged ahead and worked on the separate offline project. Top Places to Travel & Photograph developed from there.

It is something I wanted to give the subscribers of this website, the people that comment here, and the people that email me as a way of saying – Thank You.

And, this is it.

It’s been utterly fantastic to hear from you, to meet you, and to get your support. This is a long journey and it’s great to have you join along.

So please, if you don’t subscribe already now is a great opportunity to do so. Subscribing is completely free too!

By subscribing you not only get this free photo-e-book, but also my weekly travel journals, exclusive behind the scenes access to my journey, plus you’ll be the first to find out about future giveaways!

How to subscribe:

Enter your email address below
Click the “subscribe” button
A new pop up window will appear, follow the instuctions
Check your inbox for an email, (if you don’t get one within 10 minutes, check your spam box!)
Click the link in the email to confirm, and then sit back and wait for the next journal update to be delivered to you!

In the next journal update, there will be a link in the email / RSS to download the photo-e-book for free!

Email Subscribers who already received their copy please note that this is a slightly updated version (v.1.1)

Changes:

All large landscape photographs are now displayed in landscape (horizontal) format
One landscape page number has been removed

Sign up to my email updates to get your FREE ebook of 5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph

(Due to the nature of travel, it usually takes a few days to get the ebook emailed out to you) Enjoy reading my Travel Blog and my Travel Photography

© copyright 2010 www.thelongestwayhome.com

Top Places to Travel & Photograph a FREE Photo-E-book Gift to all subscribers of The Longest Way Home!

Seeing the Unseen: Exposing Mindanao & some upcoming features

The Longest Way Home — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:12:34 +0000

Indigenous tribesman from Kaamulan (click to enlarge)

Time to meet some people most travelers don’t see.

Flash Flood Victims in Mindanao

I’ve spent a long time in the Philippines searching for home. Some of it was to prove to myself and to others that island life is not for me. From time in tropical Palawan to now in the southern most island of Mindanao. An area stricken by occasional violence, too frequent bad press, and many other negative aspects.

Many people email me to ask about my book, the site, and are very flattering with their words about finding this an inspirational journey. Truly I am humbled.

However; one of the things I have learned over the past 5 years is that it’s the people I meet that are the ones who truly inspire me.

I’d like to share with you these people here on my journal.

There will be a new series of articles appearing here based on my travel stories page from The People I Met, section.

Mindanao is the large island in the south

Seeing the Unseen: Real people and their lives that tourists and other travelers don’t always get to see, or choose not to. Places not mentioned in the guide books, and festivals that are run on no set day (though locals will argue that point )

I’ve amalgamated a lot of information about the Philippines during my time here; but wish to focus on Mindanao with this new series.

I’ll be writing up an excerpt here with a link to the full story on each page.

There, you will find lots of photographs, a podcast, and the written story.

While living on an Island was not my idea, traveling and living in Mindanao is. It’s certainly something I prefer.

Here I have tried a different way of searching for home. My way. I prefer it to living on a tropical island by far.

I hope with this series you’ll get to see an inside scoop on some of the real people from the Philippines, their lives, and some places in the little visited region of Mindanao.

More to come on The Longest Way Home in the coming weeks:

I will be writing some additional articles about some untold truths in the world of travel.

I have what I think are a set of never seen before in-depth interviews with some pretty incredible travel related people that will shed some light on a topic not many touch on, but everyone wants to know!

Plus, my journal updates on my continuing search for home; which has some important changes underway.

One last thing on upcoming things – please take this opportunity to subscribe to my updates via email. It’s FREE, it gets delivered to your chosen email address on a weekly basis. And, there’s some content coming that only subscribers will have access to (hint, hint, trust me on this one okay! ) Here’s the link to add your email address.

With Seeing the Unseen: I hope that, maybe, it will help dispel some rumors, and show people what’s further south in The Philippines … I hope you’ll enjoy this, and some of the new features coming here.

The bizarreness of Mindanao

Coming soon:

The sea salt makers

Sign up to my email updates to get your FREE ebook of 5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph

(Due to the nature of travel, it usually takes a few days to get the ebook emailed out to you) Enjoy reading my Travel Blog and my Travel Photography

© copyright 2010 www.thelongestwayhome.com

Seeing the Unseen: Exposing Mindanao & some upcoming features

Happy Holidays to you the readers and contributers of The Longest Way Home

The Longest Way Home — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:39:29 +0000

Happy Holidays from the Philippines!

I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all the readers and contributers of my journal / website the very best over the holiday season. Thank you for the great emails filled with your own stories, well wishes, and words of encouragement.

In 2009 I opened up the journal / blog to comments, and it’s been great to get your feedback / comments on both my journals, and travel articles. It’s also been great to meet, talk and discuss with you as well. It’s brought a new element to my search that I never expected. So Thank You!

There’s more to come in 2010, and hopefully I’ll be able to start a few new features.

In the meantime I wish you, and your families the very best over this season and into 2010!

All the best in 2010!!

Coming soon — New post tomorrow!!

Sign up to my email updates to get your FREE ebook of 5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph

(Due to the nature of travel, it usually takes a few days to get the ebook emailed out to you) Enjoy reading my Travel Blog and my Travel Photography

© copyright 2010 www.thelongestwayhome.com

Happy Holidays to you the readers and contributers of The Longest Way Home

Travel Blog back up! The inside story …

The Longest Way Home — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:12:47 +0000

Back online!

It’s been an interesting few days, with new visitors reaching over 50,000 in one day; I had to turn the blog off for a while.

On September 3rd 2009 the mainstream Italian newspaper La Republica published an article about me and my journey to find a place called Home.

Luck was with me that night as I had gone online in reply to a comment when my host emailed me and told of an increased spike in traffic. 22,000 people in a few hours had visited. They thought it was an attack and suspended my website.

Thankfully, I was online, and figured out what was happening. My host brought the site back up again within 30 minutes. And throughout the evening (Asia time) was very supportive.

The inside story of running this website:

Like anyone with a website I pay for a certain hosting package. It has bandwidth limits. In other words the more people that visit the website, the more bandwidth gets consumed and the more it ends up costing me. This is especially true considering the amount of photographs I display here.

Keeping in mind that this website started out as just a place for me to write my travel journals, hang my photographs and write up travel resources as I continued on in my journey to find home – I really never expected that many people to take an interest. I had a hosting package that I thought would do up until then.

As the evening went on the numbers had increased to 50,000 above the normal amount of daily visitors. At this time, I took the preventative action to remove my journal from the site to stop going over my bandwidth limit while keeping the rest of the site up and running. Self preservation as it were.

I did most of this on my gprs enabled phone as the local cafe was charging a lot for WIFI and it was closing down for the night. It was still daytime in Italy. Over the next few days I watched the number of visitors eb and flo while my inbox filled with some great emails from Italy and beyond, I will reply to everyone, but it will take a little time.

Faced with a quota of bandwidth I left the blog offline until things settled down a little. One of my main problems was getting a good enough internet access to try and find some solutions to all this. I have now traveled to a small guesthouse with internet and am sitting in a windowless room trying to get things back to normal.

I’ve had many suggestions emailed to me. And wish to thank very much those people who sent them to me.

What one see’s on the outside is not always an indication of reality.

Hosting costs are not extraordinarily high these days. At least not yet! I do however have to balance my journey and the amount of time and money I spend on the website. Advertising has paid for the hosting up until now without question. The keywords there is ‘up until now’. I don’t like having ads all over the place. But unfortunately it’s the only way I can afford to keep things running here.

If there’s any advertiser who’s interested in advertising on The Longest Way Home for a resonable rate, I’m all ears for you to contact me.

The real issue I have is the cost of accomodation / internet to write the entries, sort, crop, and upload photographs and now fix things like this. My accomodation costs are about $12 per day at the moment to do this. So a single day trying to fix all this is a lot more than a monthly hosting fee! And this is what I mean by how things aren’t always as black & white in regards to maintaining the website.

I am now making an attempt at outsourcing my image hosting to reduce the bandwidth consumption on the websites server. This is again an unexpected expensive that I have to factor into the websites future.

I’ve written about why and how this website got started in my about section so I won’t go over it again here. Nor am I making plea, but these are the facts.

The future

For now things are settling down and I hope to have the travel blog stay up while I sort through things like web hosting, image hosting, and also try to factor in the time costs too. I am very aware that there are many people who enjoy reading my journals, the photography I take and; in following my quest along. I am really trying hard to balance this, and my own journey together.

Hopefully over the next few day’s I can bring some stability to the website, and get things fixed in a way that will alow me to get back to the over all goal in my life – To find a place called home.

For now the journals will resume in a day or so as they always have. A little behind time, but they are on the way!

A note for those who can help – by signing up to my RSS or email subscriptions!

My RSS and Email subscriptions are free. By signing up, my journal updates get delivered to your email address, or to your RSS reader as soon as they are published. You can then read my updates on your email or your prefered RSS reader which means you don’t have to remember to visit the website every week, which in turn means a reduction in bandwidth and thus you would be helping me out.

So yes, in a round about way for regular readers I am saying if you like reading my journals then please sign up for my email or RSS subscriptions rather than visit the website all the time to see if there’s an update! (then if you read something you’d like to comment on, you’re more than welcome to visit and write back)

Both the RSS and Email subscriptions are all free with lots of extras such as extra entries that only you will hear about there. Also in the near future I hope to be giving away exclusive access to subscribers on new features I am working on.

You can get my email updates by clicking here or for those who prefer RSS here

How to deal with money changers when you travel

The Longest Way Home — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:06:12 +0000

Iranian Money changer counting his notes

If you plan on traveling to another country, then you’re going to need some different money. The kind that you may have never seen nor dealt with before.

I’ve just published a new page on this website in my travel resources section dealing with the subject. To give you an idea on what’s covered; here are the headings and an extract.

The full in-depth article is here How to change money when traveling

What if you can’t get any before you leave?

Peso's from the Philippines

Changing money at a border

How to deal with a hoard of money changers

When to sell your left over cash?

What type of FOREX to use in a town?

Haggling over a few cents

Things to watch out for

Extract:

What type of FOREX to use in a town?

In nearly every town or city there are money exchange stores. Some are nationalized or private banks, others official agents, others semi official, others still are back alley black market stalls. And of course there’s the hoard of people found on the street around these establishments. Which one to use though?

If one is not comfortable in dealing with street sellers, or those strange dark little buildings with dollar rates painted on the side: then I would just go to a bank. The rates will be worse, but you will feel more secure.

For me I enjoy the banter of the run down back alley money changers. The rates are usually better than the banks and better than the street dealers.

In West Africa the whole process is quite a sit down affair. Pleasantries are exchanged, and a bit of haggling takes place.

In Iran it’s often done in a Bazaar. I changed money in a gold Market with extreme ease and got a host of great stories from the owners.

In Asia its more of rush in and talk to a person behind an iron grill or glass window.

Either way I choose a money changer I am comfortable with.

Read the full article here: How to change money when traveling

Travel Guide books, Travel Books, and Travel Film Reviews – updates

The Longest Way Home — Sun, 03 May 2009 20:51:21 +0000

In my travel review section are a collection of reviews I’ve made on Travel Guide Books I’ve used. Travel Novels I’ve read, and Travel related Films I’ve watched.

I don’t ever list these reviews in my main journal but with the launch of the new look blog, I thought I would do a breif recap for those that are new to this website.

My Lonely Planet China Review

Guide Book’s I’ve used:

Did I find the Lonely guide book on India any good when I was there?

What about a good China guide book?

Travel Related Novels I’ve read

My Review of Shantaram

Have you read Shantaram? A book based on an escaped convicted from Australia living in the slums of Mumbai?

How good is Karl Busby’s Giant Steps Novel about walking around the world?

Travel Related Films:

Which travel related movie is better? Into the Wild or The Last King of Scotland?

My Review of War Photographer

Ever heard of War Photographer? It’s really worth watching is you like photography

On my travel review page. you’ll find full reviews for all these and a whole lot more. While it’s not the most comprehensive review page out there. The reviews are based on the practical aspects of a traveler, and someone who enjoys the world of travel.

You can even vote at the end of my review whether you agree with me or not!

All my reviewed content is available on Amazon.com or UK through my travel review page.

By clicking on the links in the review section you will have the option of buying an item from Amazon at their regular prices from their website. I then receive a small commission (usually about $00.30 for a book). I use this commission to save up and buy another guide book or novel.

Some other things I’ve reviewed that you might find interesting:

Shooting Dogs

Down and Out in Paris and London

Healthy Travel in Asia and India

Check out all my reviews here:

Wherever you see this logo on the website, it's where my travel reviews are! Just click the logo above & you'll go to the review page.

Sign up to my email updates to get your FREE ebook of 5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph

(Due to the nature of travel, it usually takes a few days to get the ebook emailed out to you) Enjoy reading my Travel Blog and my Travel Photography

© copyright 2010 www.thelongestwayhome.com

Travel Guide books, Travel Books, and Travel Film Reviews – updates

Website update – May 2009 – new look journal

The Longest Way Home — Sun, 03 May 2009 12:59:44 +0000

Welcome to the new look journal for The Longest Way Home. I’ve changed the page format for a new series of posts about How to Live on an island in the Philippines that begins soon …

Some of the physical changes on my Travel Blog / Journal:

The Longest Way Home (click to enlarge)

1. All photographs can now be zoomed in, and select photographs can be enlarged (they will say click to enlarge). The quality is no where near what I shoot at. But it does allow for those who like to see that bit more to do so. This will just be available for the forthcoming posts.

2. Past journal entries have nearly all been archived here, and they all include new or enlarged photographs in each post. This is at the request of several emails from people asking for certain photos to be larger.

3. New easy to use Social Book marking. If you like a post, you’ll notice a host of Stumble IT, Digg IT, Twit IT etc,. icons at the bottom of each post. Just click on your preferred social network and promote away! There’s an add this share button in the upper left for even more social networks.

4. Comments can now be made for each post, and can be subscribed to for follow ups.

5. There’s a new random photo every time you visit the this travel journal page in the upper right hand corner (travel photographs)

6. I’ve made it easier to subscribe to my updates via email, just type in your email address into the box and click subscribe.

7. RSS subscribers will be happy to know that all RSS updates now have images nicely aligned within them. No more big white spaces between the text! (though this might not work on some feed readers)

8. The whole website including blog is now mobile/cell/portable device friendly in Opera Mini. I’ve disabled mobile viewing on other browsers as I don’t think there’s a need. If viewers contact me with this request it can be enabled.

9. Latest Pages will show the latest pages added to the website not including blog / journal entries so you can see what’s new on the rest of the website!

10. New articles and more frequent posts! Over the next series of weeks I will be publishing articles on a more frequent basis. I’ve also improved the navigation between posts. There will also be two new articles appearing every now and then between regular journal updates to coincide with the new series. How to live overseas on an island and Great Food from around the World – starting with the Philippines!

Over the next few days there will be a series of updates reviewing new things on The Longest Way Home. Plus updating new readers with certain sections of the site, giving an update on the great modern travelers and their progress. And, then it’s on to the new journal entries!

Make sure to sign up to my RSS or email updates for more features not mentioned in here!

Important site updates

The Longest Way Home — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:16:37 +0000

Comments: I thought with the forthcoming Karl Bushby post above it would be a good time to activate the comments section on the page. I’ve not had them on before as with travel and the search, plus keeping the site updated I really struggle with time. And know I would feel bad if I could not reply to everyone on this blog/journal page.

I do however reply to all the emails people have taken the time to send me. Some of which have been very inspirational, thank you.

You can reply to these comments via email, which should help in posting time etc.

For now comments are on, and it would be great to get some feedback on the site as a whole, what you like what you don’t like etc? So over to you now!?

RSS/Email Subscriptions:You might have noticed that there was not a direct RSS feed for The Longest Way Home Blog page before. The main site had an RSS feed, and so did/does the Journal/blog. Well, I’ve combined the two now, and added in a lot more for the future of the site.

What does that mean? Well, no matter what feed you are currently subscribed to, things continue on as normal, so you don’t have to do anything. But if you want the best of the best, sign up to the permanent one here. Actually everything on the site now points to the new RSS and Email feeds, so you can sign up from anywhere.

New/updated pages: The new Travel book / DVD Review page has already attracted a lot of attention, which is great. I’ll be making new additions whenever I can.

The free music page is doing well too, which is strange as I only really put there for my own mp3 updates – If anyone knows of a music artist from any country I have traveled through that would like to be featured on the page please let me know. The only conditions are that they must have a selection of traditional indigenous tracks from there country. And at least one must be available online for downloading that I can link to.

Thanks again for the great emails. Again, I am not so sure how the comments here will span out but lets see.

Taking a date to the Mall of Asia

The Longest Way Home — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:13:27 +0000

Riding in a Manila Jeepney (click to enlarge)

My newly introduced travel partner, Lu Lu, was beautiful. Names aside, the Philippines certainly do have beautiful girls. Lu worked in advertising, and was just about to start off in a new firm. She was all for traveling to the North. And I was glad I passed the first Filipino test of saying I like the Malls …

Vince was all for another Mall, so this time I was introduced to one of the largest. The Mall of Asia. We’d taken the Philippines answer to the metro to get there. The LRT, a topside metro in other words. Blessed with good air-con, and a giant impractical ticketing system. It actually took longer to get to it, than use it to get to the mall.

The Mall of Asia, to it’s credit, is pretty damn big. It was also just as bad with security. However, having learned my lesson from the day before. I unpacked my camera, hard drive and valuables and stuffed them into all my pockets. Not an eyelid was battered as the little security mans metal detector went off behind me and I kept going. The guy behind me had his bum back prodded with a stick. Priorities.

More shops than you could imagine yet again. I pretended it was all so interesting, while thinking up of my plans to head north to the illusive hanging coffins. During all this I came across a hidden gem in the Philippines; CD-R King. An everyone jump like mad people to get the cheapest MP4 players, DVD players, memory cards, mp3 player and just about everything else that a cheap Chinese manufactuer can produce that fits in a pocket, type place. Like any good tourist I went straight for the cheapest of the cheap section! It was better than anything I had seen in China, and certainly prompted a second visit.

Cheap electronics in the Philippines

Lunch was again at the now traditional Jollibee. The burgers were by now loosing their appeal and I stared out over at the KFC. Then realized how everyone was so junk food oriented. I needed for sure to escape the Mall scene.

Lu was equally happy to get out. “So what are you going to see in the North?”

I fumbled with my wikitravel printouts. “Erm, the hanging coffins!”

“Ah!, that’s so cool I’ve always wanted to see them. When are you going?”

“I was thinking of the day after tomorrow.”

“And you don’t mind if I tag along?”

Was she mad? Or was she a prostitute? Shame on me for thinking this. But after China, Tibet and Nepal I wasn’t used to women being so forward. I could just imagine the trouble a Nepalese girl would get in for saying she was going on a trek with a foreigner. But Vince assured me everything was cool.

A Philippines Jollibee burger

We wandered around the giant mall some more and then I noticed something quite odd. For a tropical country, they had very little fresh fruit juice for sale. There were juice sellers. But the closer you got, the more you would see stacks of glow in the dark powders and liquids. Artificial flavors ruled. I finally found an expensive stand selling pineapple, watermelon and apple. After that every thing came in liquid pre-blended form or a mixture of powders?! At least pineapple was popular.

We headed back out into the heat of the late afternoon. I was so dehydrated from the Mall’s AC that I really didn’t mind the humidity now. We left Lu with the promise of meeting up again to finalize our trip. I then managed to sneak in a comment about no malls. She looked at me with a frown. Maybe the Mall was a national treasure? She then started arguing with a jeepney driver who tried to over charge her by 50 Centavos. She didn’t back down. Vince gave me a double eyebrow raise. I didn’t know if it was a Filipino code for something not so good. Or maybe too good.

Girl adding gue to my fruit shake. Real fresh fruit shakes are hard to get in the Philippines

I spent some time investigating what else there was to do in Manila. Vince was happy just to sit out in the shade and drink beer. Or, maybe the Mall again. Taal Lake was an hour out from Manila, but the photos at the hotel were not so inspiring. What to do? Corregidor was a place that sounded interesting. An Island that was the scene of a fierce WW2 battle. I asked how we could get there.

“By ferry,” chirped the receptionist.

How I wished they had internet.

With no guide book I asked for directions on how to get there. I got a phone number instead and called.

“1999 Peso?!! For a half day!” I scratched my head and called Vince over. He called and got the same reply. Apparently the island was under the monopoly of a single tour operator. They charged what they wanted it seemed.

I sat back in the hotels garden and looked out into the quite street. I liked Manila. It was lively, colorful, and a had all the makings of a big city with several layers. And, relatively cheap, accommodation aside. But there was a lack of anything to do outside the mall. And to visit a lake, island or anything else cost a lot.

I then wondered if the rest of the Philippines would be the same? Expensive hotels. Tours only. And many many malls. I shook it out of my head as the smell of an evening bbq wafted in from the street. I headed out and was greeted by smiles of appreciation from a group of locals as I ordered 5 sticks of BBQ.

Barbecue chicken is known as Manok in the Philippines

A bit sweet, but tasty. Tourist prices were high in the capital, but at least the people seemed nice. And, the food good. I vowed that on my next visit to the capital I would seek out and visit its non mall oriented side.

However my next destination would be to the north. And, I would be in the company of a beautiful girl who had an ability to bargain hard. Seemed to good to be true. Hanging Coffins and Rice terraces await!

Please read this before reading my Travel Journals

The Longest Way Home — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 09:03:35 +0000

About my Travel Journals -

10 points of note:

A lot of the earlier entries are written into my handwritten journals so they are not online.
Older journal entries are rough and ready, take them as they are.
If you start from the beginning you can witness the evolution of this online journal from notes, to blog, to factoid, to journal.
I’ve given older entries a brief overview at the start of each entry.
Dates: they are not super exact. Most days pass without me living in an internet cafe or hostel lounge.
I often try to post ahead of time to keep up the consistency of online posting.
More regular entries start from Iran onwards.
All photographs have been lowered in quality to let pages load quickly, though on most pages there’s at least one you can zoom in on a little.
There is a lack of information about the quest of finding home: Those parts are all in my book! – though if you are tuning in from the Philippines onwards, they are now becoming apart of the blog / journal.
Looking for travel help and information? You won’t really find much in the journals to help you. Instead go to my country profiles on the left of each page, or go to my travel resources page.

Please read the side bars on the blog page for more information