Twenty-Freaking-Five and Alive! The Perfect Weekend, Boracay, Philippines

Like a lot of Filipinos my age I've been to Boracay a couple of times, but I've never been compelled to write about the place - what else was there to say? I figured though that everyone's got a Bora story to share, so I might as well post mine as well.

This Bora Story is called The Perfect Weekend, and it happened a week or two after my Macau-Hong Kong trip and my epic bungee jump experience. One thing I had learned from my previous backpacking and whirlwind travel adventures was that "travel" and "vacation" are not the same thing - they might even be the opposite of each other. Traveling is fulfilling and can be immensely meaningful for sure, but with the desire to explore and discover strange new places doesn't come a lot of time to just...chill.

Since graduating from college I've done my fair share of traveling, but I must say that legitimate vacations have been few and far between. And our perfect weekend in Bora was probably the mother of all vacations.

We didn't do much during The Perfect Weekend, really: we strolled along the beach, hung out by the pool, went parasailing, partied a bit, ate a lot, did a little bit of shopping. Which was exactly the point of the trip - to do nothing, and to just relax.

Because sometimes, travelers need to get away on vacation too. :)

Boracay in the off season

It threatened to rain a couple of times...

...but mostly it was sunny and perfect!

Accommodations at Sea Wind Resort


Our Bora home for the long weekend

Nothing says "relax" better than deck chairs by the pool

Taken with my handy Lumix LX3!

Boracay street (or shall I say seaside?) food!







I'll end this with a customary Bora sunset shot


Sea Wind Boracay
www.seawindresort.net

Snapshots: Sea Wind Resort, Boracay, Philippines

A preview to the post about The Perfect Weekend. :)

Twenty-Freaking-Five and Alive! The Epic Vietnam-Cambodia Trip

I've posted about this trip quite a few times already, and for good reason - it remains as, and probably will forever be, one of my life's greatest adventures.

Through this trip my love for travel was cemented. It was the first one that really took me out of the world I knew in such a massive, epic way, and I was pretty much in awe the entire time.

I have so many vivid memories from our trip to Cambodia and Vietnam, and often they come back to me randomly - sitting on plastic chairs in a roadside eatery at 2am on our first night/day in Ho Chi Minh; seeing Angkor Wat for the very first time at dawn on our first day in Siem Reap; walking along the lovely narrow streets of Hoi An; finding a tiny, hole-in-the-wall patisserie in Hue; and making friends with strangers on a junk boat cruise in Ha Long Bay. My two weeks in Vietnam and Cambodia remain to be two of the best and most unforgettable weeks of my life so far.

Cambodia





Hoi An, Vietnam


Hue, Vietnam



Hanoi and Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Snapshots: Angkor Wat, Cambodia

I'm reminiscing about my epic Vietnam-Cambodia trip on my next post!

Twenty-Freaking-Five and Alive! Bungee Jumping from Macau Tower

I don't know how it happened. The year has gone by so quickly, and now it's September, the month I turn twenty-freaking-five! I'm more than a little freaked out about the idea, and the dreaded Quarter Life Crisis isn't exactly helping. I could really use a vacation right about now, but life is crazy,and some much needed R&R will have to wait.

In any case, for this month I thought I'd post about my five favorite, most epic, most memorable travel moments so far, starting with jumping off a height of 233 meters in Macau!

Flanked by two friends (Mabz and Edz! You let me go up alone and sh**-scared to the top of Macau Tower so I could jump right off it, but you guys watched and waited patiently from the ground floor and I guess that was enough and all I could ask for! Thanks for keeping up with all my crazy! Because you guys are crazy too! Haha.) we visited Macau Tower bright and early on the official first day of our trip, having arrived in Macau the night prior. To be honest, I was hoping for bad weather - because I heard that you couldn't do the bungee jump in bad weather. Yes, some part of me really didn't want to do it. But the universe would have different plans as the sky was clear and pretty that day, which meant I was really going to do it. I was really going to freaking jump to my potential death.

After I had paid for the jump on the ground floor and rode the Elevator of Doom (seriously, longest elevator ride IN MY ENTIRE LIFE) to the top floor, I took my time at the viewing deck, delaying the inevitable, taking pictures to try to calm my nerves:

The staff overseeing the viewing deck must have noticed that I was about ready to burst into tears, so he talked to me a bit, showed me the side of the building where I was going to jump, and assured me that I was going to be okay, and that I was going to want to jump again after I did it. I didn't believe him then, but I can tell you now that it's true - it's been a year since the jump and I would really want to do it again (and I hope to do it again, maybe in New Zealand next!).

Thank you, Kuya, for being so nice to me! :D

After a while I kind of just thought, "F*** it, let's just get this over with" and proceeded to the top floor where the AJ Hackett headquarters was. They made me change my shirt and suited me up, and pretty soon it was time to jump.

I vividly recall standing on the edge of the tower, all geared up and ready, hands outstretched with my neck tilted up because NO THANK YOU I REALLY DID NOT WANT TO LOOK DOWN RIGHT NOW. I remember gasping for air because HOLY S**T I WAS SO HIGH UP AND PRETTY SOON I WAS GOING TO JUMP and I remember my fight or flight reflex kicking in for a millisecond, and for a millisecond I thought about stepping back to ask for more time, but I didn't want to be a wuss and I knew that if I backed out then that it would be that much harder to actually jump, so for the nth time that morning, I thought "F*** IT, LET'S REALLY JUST GET THIS OVER WITH!".

I remember leaning my body forward slowly, leaning forward just a little bit, and before I knew it, gravity was doing all the work, and I was falling and falling fast, with the most amazing, exhilarating feeling EVER. It wasn't like riding a roller coaster that made your stomach turn and churn with G forces, it was just... free falling, and this will probably sound cheesy and silly but I recall thinking "FREEDOM!" as I fell fast. Because I had jumped from so high up, there was actually time to revel in the moment, and it didn't go by as fast as I had expected. If you're going to bungee jump, it's best to jump from as high up as possible to make it totally worth your while.

After a while I had to deal with the recoil of the bungee cord, so I had to stretch up to reach my feet and pull on a chain that released the hold of the cord on my legs, so that I was only connected to the cord from the waist and was falling right side up instead of head-first (it's more comfortable since all the blood doesn't rush to your head). I wasn't even scared to release my legs - after you jump from a height of 233 meters you start to not get scared of a lot of things.

After the jump I realized that it was really the wait that killed you - the jump itself was not at all scary. You only had to get over the fear of actually doing it, of actually deciding to jump off that ledge, and the most amazing adrenaline rush awaited.

The fear before the jump though, is really part of the fun.

After you jump from Macau Tower they give you a Baller ID, a badge of honor of sorts, along with a t-shirt and a certificate, and - get this - a discount card for your next jump. With the discount card, you get your fourth jump from any AJ Hackett headquarters free! (A reminder that yes, bungee jumping is life changing, but it's also completely commercial as well, and a pretty lucrative business).

I wouldn't mind making AJ Hackett rich though. Because bungee jumping and free falling? Totally worth it.

Macau Tower, I conquered you!

last picture taken from here.