I decided to start a travel journal series. It’s more for me than anyone else to remember all the tiny details not captured in pictures from this special gap year, but I figured it would also be a good way to keep our family and friends updated on our travels. I’m going to share all the details – boring and exciting – and will keep this mostly diary style with minimal pictures. This first edition will be Taiwan and the Philippines.

When we decided we wanted to travel to Southeast Asia, we planned to go to the Philippines, Bali, and Thailand. However, nothing was set in stone. I had booked us a refundable flight with points from the US to Taipei to get us to the general region and then we figured we would plan from there. About a week out from our departure from the US, we still didn’t have anything else booked and the weather in the Philippines didn’t look the greatest. I thought about changing our plans completely when I saw a good last-minute deal to Antarctica. Mr. Globetott talked me off that ledge. We decided to stick with the Philippines and just deal with the weather. The more I started to look into the Philippines, the more discouraged I became. We could easily get to Manila, but traveling anywhere from there seemed like a nightmare – expensive flights on tiny hopper planes, long road transfers in vans smooshed in with more people than I care to be with, and long/overnight ferries with people getting sick constantly. You can find very affordable accommodations in the Philippines, but to be honest, most of them grossed me out. Doing this in our 30s, there is only so much comfort we can forgo to stay within our budget when it comes to transportation and accommodations. I just thought it wasn’t going to work between the complicated ways to get around and accommodation options. As we started to get closer to our departure date, the weather forecast was looking really good actually. We decided to stick with it. In order to limit the atrocious ways to get around the different islands, we decided to narrow it down to just 2 islands: Busuanga (Coron town) and El Nido. Then, we honestly just blew the budget on accommodations because it wasn’t going to happen otherwise. We set a budget of $140 per day to make this gap year work. That includes literally everything – flights, accommodations, transportation, food, activities, etc. So it’s pretty tight to begin with and the only way we’re going to make that work is by leveraging points and miles. But with the Philippines, we’re trending like $100/day over budget at this point already. Vietnam is next and we’ve heard it is quite affordable so we’re hoping to make it up there – we shall see.

So here’s how it went down: 6:22am departure out of Buffalo to Detroit. We had only a 35-minute layover in Detroit (25 minutes technically if you count how they close the door 10 minutes before departure). But they always build in so much buffer time on these flight schedules. This one was scheduled for an hour and 20 minutes when in reality BUF-DTW is a 40-minute flight so I wasn’t too worried when I booked. Then we were delayed about 30 minutes out of Buffalo because of a fuel weight imbalance and de-icing. When we landed, we had about 15 minutes to spare, but our gate to deplane was blocked by another departing flight. Luckily, we were in the first row so when the door opened, we were the first ones off and we sprinted down DTW’s infamous mile long terminal A. We got there with about 5 minutes to spare. Mr. Globetott was laughing so hard because when we made it up to the gate, I was so flustered and flung about 8 boarding passes at the gate agent. We had paper boarding passes and the ones that were originally printed for us at the check-in counter were so faint that they re-printed them again for us at our original departure gate. So I had about 12 boarding passes on me between the 2 of us, our 3 flights, and having them printed twice. The gate agent somehow ended up with one of the faintly printed ones, so this kind woman printed all our boarding passes for us again. We’re dealing with about 16 boarding passes now – quite comical. Anyways, we made it! We settled in for our 5 hour 20 minute flight from Detroit to Seattle.

I don’t think I mentioned yet that we booked business class flights. I can deal with economy if it’s 10 hours or less of flying time, but once it’s more than that, I start looking for the business class flight deals on points. This was 130,000 Delta miles plus $5.60 each. The cash price of these tickets would have been $4,700 each! This was kind of a one off since Delta has dynamic pricing and flights like these typically go for over 400,000 Delta miles. For a 26-hour travel day with over 19 hours of flying, I’d say it was well worth it. Back to our DTW-SEA flight. Since we booked business, we were in domestic first for this leg, which meant breakfast. We both pre-ordered omelets and they were quite good (and free –  good for the budget). The flight was smooth and we arrived early in SEA. The Delta Sky Lounge in Seattle was okay. It was big and wide open which meant it was super loud. The chili was good. We had over 4 hours so I decided to shower. I really didn’t need to, but I was bored and about to get on a 13-hour flight so why not. I’ve been in plenty of lounges with showers, but have never used one. It’s basically like a hotel bathroom. You get your own little suite, they clean it in between guests, and you get fresh linens. It was actually quite relaxing and a good way to break up the travel day. I would definitely do it again on a long travel day. I’ve come a long way from wet wipes in the public restroom on long travel days in my early 20s.

Next up was our Delta One flight from Seattle to Taipei. This flight was scheduled for 13 hours 17 minutes, but actually came in around more like 12 and a half hours. I will admit, I was very excited for this flight! I’ve wanted to try Delta One for awhile, but it’s tough to book on points and I would never pay the cash prices. This was on the newer Airbus A330-900neo so we had the individual suites with sliding privacy doors. Even Mr. Globetott fit comfortably at 6’7”. The flight attendants were fantastic – very friendly and attentive. My favorite part of the trip – the ice cream sundae after dinner. Wine and an ice cream sundae on a plane just hits different. Then Mr. Globetott drank them out of the Jordan Vineyard cabernet. We love a good California red. They give you a mattress pad for longer Delta One flights and this made the seat surprising comfortable, even as a side sleeper. I was able to curl up on my side and slept for over 4 hours. Which, if you know me, is absolutely unheard of. I am such a light sleeper that I can’t even sleep in my own bed in a pitch-black room with a noise maker. I will wake up to the faintest sound or the tiniest movement. So we’ll call this a win. We arrived in Taipei decently well rested, but it was already 9pm so we took the free shuttle to our airport hotel to get some more sleep. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Taoyuan Airport hotel. I booked this with 8,000 Hyatt points so it cost us nothing.

The next morning, we spent time planning more of the trip because we didn’t have anything planned after the Philippines. We decided we would go to Vietnam next so we applied for our visas. Then, we headed into Taipei. We took the MTR, which was conveniently located like 5 steps from our hotel. It takes almost an hour to get into the city, but their metro is very clean and comfortable. Mr. Globetott had a place he wanted to try for lunch so we made our way there (found via Reddit, of course). We both had pork rice bowls with a fried egg on top. The line for seats was so long so we just got it to go and sat on the side of the road to eat it. Mr. Globetott took the easy way out by using a spoon. I was being *~cultural~* and used chopsticks. I’m getting better honestly. Then we went to ABCD (A Better Coffee & Donut) which was recommended by one of Mr. Globetott’s co-workers. We got banana and chocolate donuts – very good. We then headed out to our walking tour. To be honest, none of the sites we saw were that architecturally intriguing, but I really enjoyed hearing about the history of Taiwan from someone native. The influence from other countries and their relationship with China was very interesting to learn about. Taipei was affordable. We spent $13 on food, $19.50 on transportation, and $15 on the walking tour.

After our day in the city, we flew from Taipei to Manila on EVA Air around 8pm. When we got to the Taipei airport, they wouldn’t let us check-in because we needed departing flights from the Philippines to be let into the country. So there I was at the check-in counter booking a flight from Manila to Ho Chi Minh for later the following week. We already kind of had our Vietnam flight figured out and plenty of time to spare before our flight so it wasn’t a big deal.

Back to our flight this night from Taipei to Manila. We booked this using 8,000 Avianca Lifemiles + $65 each ($40 taxes/fees + $25 redemption fee). The redemption fee really brought down the value of this redemption. In hindsight, we should have just paid the $147 cash rate, but ya live and ya learn. This was only a 2-hour flight, but it was on a huge international type plane. Economy was set up in a 3-3-3 arrangement and was so empty that we both had our own rows and slept for the flight. We got into Manila pretty late and let me tell you, it was a HUSTLE from the minute we landed. Our hotel was near Terminal 3. We landed in another terminal, but they wouldn’t let us take the airport shuttle there without another connecting flight. They told us to go outside and get a 15 minute taxi to the hotel. When we approached the taxis, they tried to charge us 1,600 pesos (~$28), which is absurd by even US standards and downright crazy for the Philippines. We went back inside and showed them our departing ticket for early the next morning and were able to get on the airport shuttle then walk ~10 minutes to our hotel. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Manila Newport City for $112. We got like 3 hours of sleep then grabbed our to-go breakfast to head back to the airport. By now, we had learned about the Grab app (basically Uber for the Philippines). We requested a Grab to get to the airport and paid $5 (which includes the tip too), further confirming that we were being hustled the night before.

Our flight from Manila to Busuanga was supposed to depart at 6:10am. It was one of those terrible situations where you have to take a bus to the plane from the gate. We got on the bus around 5:40am and were still sitting in the bus an hour later. We didn’t depart until around 7:10am, an hour late. We arrived in Busuanga around 8:30am. Now it was time to figure out how to get to our hotel. I had read ahead of time that they have these shared vans for 250 pesos per person and they just wait until one is filled up then they bring you into town (the airport is on the other side of the island from town; about ~35 minutes). We had to wait a little but ultimately got put in a van that was mostly full already so we got going pretty quickly. We got dropped off right at our first hotel, Skylodge Resort. I booked this through the Chase portal, taking advantage of the Chase Saphire Preferred’s annual $50 hotel benefit. This got the cost down to $79 per night. The room was tiny, but sufficient. We had bunkbeds – Mr. Globetott took the top bunk because he doesn’t pee as much at night. They had a free shuttle to take us into town and everyone working there was really nice. Breakfast was included, but it wasn’t anything to write home about (although I’m kinda doing that through this – oh the irony). The only thing we really ate were the made to order pancakes and omelets.

The first day we were here, we were exhaustedddd. After traveling all the way from the US and several nights of little sleep, it was catching up to us. So we started with my favorite – a nap. After napping, we took the shuttle into town for dinner and the real hustle started. We had an excursion booked for the next day, but we didn’t have any sunscreen. Ten weeks in a carry-on doesn’t leave room for that sort of stuff. We thought we should grab sunscreen before going to dinner in case things were closed later. We stopped at a little shop in town that was selling a bunch of different sunscreens. I will say, I was skeptical. I was looking at ingredients, expiration dates, batch codes, etc. The one we ended up buying was Nivea SPF 50 with a 2026 expiration date and it was shrink wrapped. We went to dinner at a Mexican spot. Dinner was $19 – nachos, a quesadilla, and one beer. We grabbed the shuttle back to the hotel.

The next morning, we were given a pickup window of 7:30-8:30am for our excursion – how convenient, right? We ended up being the second group picked up at 7:40am. We picked up a few more groups and headed towards the boat. Then we ended up standing around for another hour. They couldn’t fit our whole group in one van so they had to go out for another round of pick-ups. It was absolute chaos getting on the boat. There were about a million people getting on similar boats. The “dock” was one of those floating ones – I thought we were going to lose the old lady on our boat before we even left. Once we left, we had to make another stop to pick up snorkeling equipment and kayaks. Now here is when we first started to be skeptical. We cracked open that new Nivea 50 SPF. It was the consistency of a light facial moisturizer. It was falling off my hands before I could get it on my skin. SPF 50 is usually THICK. This was not – clue #1. Clue #2 – after our first stop at Twin Lagoon where we kayaked, we were already starting to get burned. Being not so smart, we still tried to convince ourselves it was real. We lathered up again for stop #2. By the end of stop #2, it was pretty apparent we were duped. Luckily, another couple on our boat from the UK was super nice and shared their sunscreen with us, but the damage had already been done. Four months in the Northeast winter then transporting to peak Philippines sun does its damage quick. We finally confirmed it was fake when another group pulled out their Nivea 50 SPF. It was a completely different consistency than ours and took a long time to rub in. So here’s a word to the wise – bring your own sunscreen or buy it only at a reputable pharmacy in the Philippines.

Back to the excursion. All of the stops were great and worth seeing, but there were a ton of people everywhere. In Twin Lagoon, it was almost hard to kayak there were sooo many people. There was a little cave we were supposed to go through to connect from one lagoon to the other, but we didn’t fit and had to jump out to swim our kayak through. The other stops were: Beach 91, Barracuda Lake, Kayangan Lake, and 2 reefs to snorkel at. At Beach 91, we kayaked and swam before lunch. While swimming, I got my first jellyfish sting of the day – a really small one on my upper thigh. The stinging went away within a few minutes. Lunch was fine for being on a remote island – rice, fruit, cucumbers, vegetable salad, chicken, shrimp, and fish. Neither of us got sick, so we’ll take another win here. Barracuda Lake and Kayangan Lake were both really pretty. Kayangan Lake was our favorite. You have to hike up and over to get to this lake. At the highest point, before you hike down to the lake, is a stunning viewpoint which is one of the most famous pictures of the Philippines. The reefs we stopped to snorkel at were amazing. Tons of coral and fish. The first reef is where jellyfish sting #2 happened. This one was a little worse, you could literally see the tentacle marks on my forearm, but the stinging went away in 10-15 minutes. At the second reef, I jumped in the water and saw a jellyfish immediately. But they’re see through and you lose them quickly. I tried to snorkel around for a bit, but kept seeing more and more of them. Mr. Globetott hadn’t jumped in yet. I told him not to and went right back to the boat. No more stings for me. The tour, including adding on snorkel gear and a kayak, was $84. That night we made our way to an actual pharmacy to get aloe and sunscreen.

The next day we switched to Zuri Resort. It might have been the nicest hotel on the island. We paid $135 per night. The grounds and amenities were much nicer, but the people weren’t as hospitable. We’re trying to get back into shape, so we committed to staying consistent with our workouts this year. We got to Zuri around 12:30, but check-in isn’t until 2pm so we worked out while we waited for the room to be ready. They had a pretty nice gym and it kept us out of the sun during peak UV hours. This night we did the Mount Tapyas Stairs Hike. It starts right in town and is 721 steps to a great viewpoint/sunset spot. From the bottom of the steps, it took us about 20 minutes to get up. We got to the top about 25 minutes before sunset. The views are stunning. I would highly recommend doing this if you ever find yourself in Coron. We had a moment of reflection at the top while watching the sunset. I mentioned how when we’re planning these trips and look at the map, these places sometimes feel sooo far from home and you have this expectation that it’s going to be so different when you get there. But then you get there and it’s just… not. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean it in a ‘we’re all more alike than we are different’ way. The scenery changes and we may look different, but people are generally kind and learning a few small phrases in the native language and a smile goes a long way.

After this, we had dinner at the Brewhouse in town and then found ourselves at the Big Kahuna. A bucket of 6 beers cost $8. They had giant Jenga. Mr. Globetott won. Throughout our relationship, we’ve had some pretty intense Jenga games. Mr. Globetott always says the day he fell in love with me was the day we played Jenga together for the first time. I will admit, it was a good game that first time we played together. If I remember correctly, I won that time. Anyways, then we wandered back to Zuri.

For our last day in Coron, we decided to take it easy and enjoy Zuri. However, there was some business to attend to in the morning. I had booked a ferry for the following day from Coron to El Nido. Everything was paid for, but I never received the tickets. No one was answering the phones. So, Mr. Globetott ran down to the port while I lifted in the gym. Turns out, they overbooked the ferry – great. However, there are 3 different companies that run ferries each morning – one at 6am, one at 7am (the one we booked), and one at 7:30am. I wanted to book the 7:30am one (it looked nicer), but we’re ballin’ on a budget so I saved us the $30ish and booked the 7am one. Anyways, these 3 different companies just transfer passengers from one to the other so we ended up on the 7:30am one, but paid the 7am price – another W in our column. When Mr. Globetott got back, we went to the pool and hid in the shade for a few hours (still nursing that sunburn). We also got nachos. We were really starting to hype ourselves up about the ferry the next day. We read a lot of reviews online that it was terrible – almost every passenger throws up and it takes a lot longer than advertised (5 hours vs. 3.5 hours). We had a bad ferry experience in the Seychelles last summer (and that one was only 1.5 hours) so we got real nervous real quick. We had a 5:30am wake-up so we packed up and went to bed early.

Fast forward to the next morning and we decided to skip breakfast. We figured we would rather just not have breakfast than have breakfast & throw it up in a few hours. We grabbed a tuktuk outside our hotel to go to the ferry terminal. This thing is basically a motorcycle with a little cart strapped to it. With all our bags and 6’7” Mr. Globetott in tow, we were not very light. Mr. Globetott and our bags were in the back. Probably not the smartest weight distribution in hindsight. Going up a hill at one point, I thought this thing was just going to flip backwards (if it even made it up the hill – it was a struggle). I was leaning forward trying to redistribute the weight – I’m sure that did a lot. We made it to the ferry in one piece. We boarded the ferry and it was actually pretty nice. Comfortable seats and air conditioning. Unfortunately, we had middle seats, but fortunately the couple on the end got up and went outside so we moved to the outside. They had wifi on board that actually worked really well. Then, the trip went on without any issues. There was some movement at some points, but I think we lucked out with relatively smooth seas. No one got sick. Another W in our column.

When we arrived in El Nido, we grabbed another tuktuk. This guy was smarter and put Will in the middle to even out the weight. There were definitely a few points when I didn’t think we were going to make it up the hill. The bike also died at one point when we were like a minute from our hotel. But again, we made it. It was about a 15 minute ride and cost 300 pesos (~$5). For all 4 nights in El Nido, we stayed at Anitsa Resort. I will admit, I didn’t research this a ton when booking since I did it so last minute. It just looked clean and comfortable. I have the Citi Strata Premier credit card so I booked through the Citi portal and used my annual $100 off a $500 hotel booking benefit. Therefore, it came out to $600 for 4 nights, or $150/night. Now you can see how we blew the budget. Four nights already exceeding our daily limit doesn’t exactly help. But when we got to the hotel, our room was ready early. It was super clean and quiet. We had our own little bungalow and the pool area was really nice. We decided to relax by the pool this afternoon. During this time, the approval for our Vietnam visa finally came through. Mr. Globetott had been STRESSING about this. The visa process for Vietnam can be a bit challenging – they’re very particular on how you fill out the application so seeing this come through with just one business day left before our departure was a relief.

Friday was our first full day in El Nido. Breakfast was included at Anitsa and SO GOOD. The first morning was scrambled eggs, avocado toast, fresh fruit & juice, and various pastries/donuts. We wanted to spend this day exploring the island a little bit, but Anitsa is a bit out of the way so you need to take a tuktuk most places. They’re inexpensive, but most people get around on scooters. Our hotel rents scooters for 500 pesos per day (~$9). We thought this would be a good way to see the island and get to our tour the next morning. Problem is – neither of us have ever driven a scooter and the driving here can be quite intense. The geography of the island is also quite hilly. I was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, but Mr. Globetott wanted to try it so here we go. Welp – we didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. No one was injured, but a car in the parking lot had a few new scratches. I believe this was the universe’s way of telling us not to get on that scooter. We proceeded to take tuktuks everywhere for our remaining time on the island (not that you feel very safe in those either, but at least a tiny bit safer). After that whole incident was sorted out, we decided to just walk to Lio Beach for the day.

Lio Beach was about a mile and a half walk from our hotel. We were really surprised once we got there at how nice it is. Apparently one of the richest people in the Philippines owns the area and developed it. It has a bunch of nice shops and restaurants set back a little from the water. It also has a pharmacy, ATMs, public restrooms, and showers to rinse off after the beach. There is a really nice pier. There are a bunch of free chairs, umbrellas, and swings. If you’re an avgeek, the airport is super close so you can see the planes landing, but they’re so infrequent that it also wasn’t bothersome. There was a mix of tourists and locals at the beach, but no one was coming up to you trying to sell things. It was a good busy, not overcrowded. The beach is in a cove so the water is calm and gradual. However, there can be some small waves at times so there is a place to rent surfboards (very beginner type set-up). We ended up staying here for almost the whole day. We arrived in Lio Beach around lunch so we had lunch before going to the beach. Then we spent the day relaxing at the beach, watching people surf and the planes landing. We then had a gorgeous sunset. After the sunset, we also had dinner in the area. We took a tuktuk back to Anitsa after the sunset.

The next day we had an island-hopping tour. There are four main tours they offer here – tours A, B, C, and D. We heard A and C are the best. We decided to do tour A this day and potentially add on C the next day if we felt up for it. We embarked this day with REAL sunscreen! We had to take a tuktuk into town and then we waited for our boat. We had to wade out to the boat in chest deep water – we were not expecting to start the day that way. And I had also forgotten our waterproof phone cases back at the hotel unfortunately. We stopped at Big Lagoon, Secret Lagoon, Entalula Island, a snorkel spot, and Seven Commando Beach. Apparently we were supposed to go to Shimizu Island instead of Entalula Island, but it was too crowded. Entalula is normally part of tour B. We really liked Big Lagoon. There is narrow corridor that is about knee deep with crystal blue water that then opens up into the Big Lagoon. There was also a little cave we were able to kayak through. Secret Lagoon was also cool. The water was a little rough and you had to swim to this very small opening to get into the little secret cove – there were actually two of them. But once you were inside, the water was calm. The water shoes I insisted on bringing came in handy here. The snorkel spot was nothing special – we saw some fish and coral, but it wasn’t as good as when we were in Coron. Seven Commando Beach was an interesting experience. It was our last and longest stop of the day. The wind was really strong and whipping the sand like crazy. We were ducking trying to dodge the sand – it literally felt like we were being whipped.

On our last full day, we went back to Lio beach. We planned to try the surfing this day, but there were literally no waves. The ocean was like glass. So we just relaxed at the beach and got tacos from a food truck for lunch. We went back to Anitsa to get ready before getting to go watch the sunset. We went to Las Cabanas for sunset. This is on the more upscale side of the island that has the more expensive resorts. We got 2 beers for 200 pesos while we watched the sunset. Then we went into the town of El Nido for dinner. El Nido is a lot bigger than Coron so we walked around for a while before settling on more Mexican for dinner.

On our last day in Coron, we didn’t have a flight out until 5pm. We took advantage of the 12pm checkout to stay in the air conditioning as long as possible. That is one nice thing – all the hotels have noon checkout here in SE Asia it seems. We took a tuktuk into town to mail our postcards and we ended up getting ‘spinners’ too. A spinner is basically like a blizzard from Dairy Queen. I got Oreo and Mr. Globetott got KitKat. I would say blizzards are better. We had about an hour at the pool before we had to go to the airport. Our flight out of El Nido ended up being delayed about 30 minutes, but we had a long layover so we had plenty of time. We went to a lounge in the airport for a bit before our late flight out of Manila to Ho Chi Minh. The flight was only two and a half hours, but for some reason it felt like six. It was late and we were tired. Mr. Globetott and I sometimes get aisle seats across from eachother. Neither of us likes being smushed in the middle and I like being able to get up easily. The guy in the middle seat next to me was doing some serious manspreading into my seat for being only 5’ 5”. I nicely asked him if he could keep his legs in his space. He didn’t so me and Mr. Globetott switched. He probably wished he just moved his legs back into his seat a bit because he now got a taste of 6’ 7” manspread into his seat!! By the time we got to Ho Chi Minh and cleared customs, it was really late. We took a Grab and got to our hotel past 2am. Next up – Vietnam!