During ancient times, photos are difficult to preserve from films and Polaroid, but to date, all photos are usually stored as digital files as the original quality is preserved for years.

Currently, I have 49,003 Photos which is partitioned by 17,657 Folders in my portable hard drives. I have 2 hard drives so far, 1 PQI 300GB and 1 TB My Book Essential Western Digital External Drive and 85% of the space are my travel photos and memories. I travel a lot and for each travel, I shoot over hundreds of photos! Now, what to do with them?

Five years ago, a terrible experience has occurred when a delicate virus attacked my desktop applications, I didn’t bother cleaning my desktop until it came to a point where it seized my files and some of my photos were already corrupted. It was a nightmare. From there, I needed to figure out how to keep my digital files safe and preserved. Read more…

First impression of NAIA Terminal 1

NAIA Terminal 1 gave me the impression of being the worst airport ever. I should have made use of Cathay Pacific’s online or web check-in to avoid long waiting line. After I checked my luggage in, I proceeded to the travel tax counter and another long waiting line put me off; it was 5x longer than the check-in counter and it gave me fuck.

Nonsense chit-chatting staffs and poor technology were causing the long line. I asked the airport officer if that was the only line for the travel tax, unfortunately, that was it.

With NAIA’s poor services and facilities, I wondered, where in hell our travel tax goes. Real shit.

I wondered if there were instance when passengers didn’t catch their flight because of the sickening line. So, you really should be at the NAIA 4 to 5 hours before your flight or else book another ticket.
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Cathay Pacific was more than an aircraft. In each and every backseat, attached is an LCD screen with wide selection of movies, TV series, shows, and music to choose from. Cozy.

After the safety rules, the plane operator finally switched the screen to a dynamic menu where you can choose to watch movies or listen to the music. I took a sneak peak to my itinerary and found out that travel time from HKIA to Japan Narita Airport was 5 hours. I decided to watch movie then.

Being thrilled, I detached  the remote control, grabbed the headpiece and plugged it to the audio jack and chose to watch The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie. In the middle of the movie, I felt ashamed when I noticed the old lady who was sitting beside me turned her head to my LCD and gave a disgust reaction to the movie and most especially, to me. Read more…

After leaving my heavy backpack in a friendly hostel along the stretch of Serangoon Road, I decided to take a walk to Singapore’s “Little India.” I passed by several Indian restaurants which, to my disbelief, spoiled foods were just thrown out at the street sides and made the road smelled of a curry – so that was the flip side of Singapore.

The Mustafa Centre was no longer busy that night. Several Indian nationals working by the center seemed curious of my whereabouts.

As I walk, I finally found a row of restaurants along the Arcade. Having no idea where to eat, I decided to choose this restaurant where Singaporeans mostly eat. I picked a table, left my umbrella and went to the food attendant. Having no idea about foods written in Chinese, I asked the food attendant which food is “Ok lah,” and he recommended the Teochew Fried Kway Teow.
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A reader made a comment in one of my blog post asking,

Ada, you manage to go travel alone, how do you spend money and budget them all? Tell us your secrets. I love to travel also for some time.

I made the answer a blog post instead.

Took this somewhere in Singapore.

In response to her phrase, “you manage to travel alone,” honestly, I have never traveled alone “completely” yet. I like to do so, but I prefer not doing it a lot. Traveling alone may not be for everyone, especially for girls which are common target of bad people. I admit, traveling alone scares me especially when going to a not-so-familiar place. An example of this was my trip to Iloilo for the Dinagyang 2011.

It was my first time going to a provincial airport without a travel buddy — my buddy had an earlier flight which caused me to go to the airport alone. Since I couldn’t figure out the instructions our couch host gave me, I kept asking strangers from time to time while getting to SM Iloilo where vans to airport are located. Nevertheless, I would like to dare myself to solo traveling soon maybe this year or next.

How I spend money on a budget when I travel? Here are my tips and suggestions:

Book a flight only every promo. Start bookmarking Cebu Pacific, ZestAir, Airphil, Seair, AirAsia, Tiger Airways, and PAL websites on your browser. I wish you could see my Chrome browser fronting bookmarks of airlines in the Philippines. You can subscribe to their website to get their latest promos too. You can get promos by booking online only.

Create an itinerary with cheapest places to be. Research for the must see landmarks of that place such as restaurants, churches, museums, etc. and how to get there the cheapest way. Try to research it if that landmark requires entrance fee.

Challenge yourself to spend Php 200 to Php 300 per day ($5 to $7) when traveling locally or Php 500 to Php 1,000 ($11 to $23) per day internationally. A great example of this was my trip in Iloilo, where I only spent Php 737.00 for 3D/2N in Iloilo City and a Php 6,000 budget for 4D/3N in Macau and Hong Kong inclusive of tax and terminal fees.

Leal Senado Square, Macau

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Try couch surfing. Instead of checking in for accommodation, stay in one of the locals who offers couch for travelers. Or if you have a friend in that place, ask them if you can sleep on their couch for a night or two.

Avoid taxis. Here in the Philippines, cheap mode of transport are jeepney, tricycle, and habal-habal. I consider pedicab an expensive one because they manually kick the bike off making them sweat — they will charge you according to their sweat rather than distance. If traveling abroad, ride on their trains or buses.

Travel with someone who shares the same idea of budget traveling. He/she may not be your friend but sharing the same passion in traveling will definitely make one’s travel worth it.

Do you have more tips and suggestions to share? I would be happy to read it from you and add it here, just make a comment on this post!