A Good Traveler has no Fixed Plans

We haven't done too much planning when it comes to this trip. Booking the tickets to The Philippines was done at dinner one night because we had talked and talked and talked about going and Grant just booked it.

From there we kind of just booked tickets to Bali and Thailand throughout the spring and summer months. It gave us something to look forward to when the jobs got frustrating over the summer. We didn't hammer out too many details. We booked the one place to stay in Alona beach for three days and that was that.

Not booking things has given us a lot of freedom. You know what they say, "A Good Traveler has no Fixed Plans" We think okay Bohol is cool, but The Philippines are made up of 7,000 islands! So where to next and how do we get there? It's also stressed me out a bit. When we get back to our hotel at the end of the day or over morning coffee the conversation of "where should we go next?"will inevitably come up. We have a few ideas of various places locals and expats suggest. Coron, Boracay, El Nido, Puerto Princessa, Cebu city, Manila. Each of these places offering many different things to see or do and none of those options are available in the U.S. so the urge to fit it all in is strong.

Next step is we pick a couple places that look interesting and search "how to get there from here"

1bus- 4 ferry's - another 2 buses- $20-65hours

2 planes 1 ferry $80-2 hours

So we compare the travel options to different places and the costs. Then we look for hotels. Once we find all the most affordable options we book things.

10days in Panglao was enough in some aspects and not in others. We didn't get to check out everything on our list. We did get really tired of the people trying to sell us things all the time (I wanted to get t-shirts made that say "Hindi, Salamat.-means no thanks in Tagalog )and all the sea urchins in the water made it difficult to really enjoy all the aspect of the beach. We did get to do a lot of exploring and it's fairly inexpensive. We didn't spend more that $20 on a meal and there was some amazing food!

So we took off and went to the island of Boracay! We spent the past week there and yesterday we left and we are currently in El Nido, Palawan.

These conversations and thoughts of where do we go next always come up mid week. It's fun and exciting, but can you imagine thinking 'we don't know where we will be living in 4 days?'

I'm very lucky to have an amazing partner to experience this journey with.