10 days Philippines

I took a night flight with Swiss Air, we flew from Brussels to Zurich and from there to Singapore and from Singapore to Manila.

It was a looooong flight with 2 layovers, but everything went well.

There are plenty of these OYÓ hotels in Manila and I wanted to check it out and see why it’s so cheap. Definitely don’t recommend it tho, the rooms were awful and the hotel very hard to find… luckily I was so tired from the flight that I fell asleep right away!

We went for a walk in the center and visited the ancient fort from the Spanish colonial times. It wasn’t a nice experience tho with the tropical midday heat 😵‍💫

Then I had to go to the airport to pick up the person who is now my ex partner 😂 On my way there I had to deal with the most annoying Uber (the application they use there is called Grab actually, but works the same way as Uber) driver ever who could not stop flirting with me even though he could have been my dad 🥲

At night we went to have Korean bbq 🍖

The Philippines are actually SO big in surface, to travel from one island to the other one, the fastest way is by plane ✈️ So we took a national flight to our next (and actual) destination!

We landed safely in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan island!

We had booked an Airbnb, but it wasn’t nice and I also didn’t like the city in general. I don’t really recommend staying there unless it’s in one of the luxury resorts (see later).

This is the only nice place we found close to our Airbnb, it was such a nice restaurant above the ocean and to get there you have to cross a bridge through a mangrove.

Our Airbnb host booked us a tour to the underground river, the reason why I wanted to come to Puerto Princesa. The agency came to pick us up by bus at 6am 😵‍💫 and we drove about 3 hours to the national park. When we finally arrived at Sabang beach I was blown away by the beauty of the place!

Then we did a tour by boat in the nearby mangrove and saw plenty of monkeys 🙈

After having lunch with local food, they finally took us by boat until the entrance of the underground river! You are not allowed to film inside but I can assure you it was absolutely wonderful 😍

Then we went back to puerto princesa to pursue our trip to the north of the island.

We took a bus from Puerto princesa to El Nido 🪺

We stayed at an amazing hotel where the rooms had straight access to the beach and had breakfast watching the ocean 🌊

And then the trip took a turn, the only way to get to this beach is by taxi (quite expensive) or renting a scooter (that’s what we did). My ex presumed he knew how to drive them (actually he only knew how to drive electric scooters 🙃🙃) and I trusted him, but when we left the highway and got to a dirt way, the scooter crashed because of a hole in the ground and we both fell. Luckily we were driving very slowly, but it could’ve been avoided 🤦🏼‍♀️ Verdict: lots of bruises and scratches and quite a deep cut on my foot but it’d be fine without stitches. Although I was not able to swim in any pool during my stay and could not wear any closed shoes as it caused me unbearable pain 🙃

At night we changed hotels as we really wanted to try out this one as well. It has an amazing rooftop pool and bar with ocean view 🌊

Our hotel didn’t have breakfast included, so we had delicious breakfast at the hostel next door 🤤

We booked a boat tour that took us to Helicopter island, Matinloc Shrine where we had an amazing lunch on the beach, Secret Beach and let us snorkel from the boat a while 🤿

In the afternoon we took a ferry to Coron Island. The trip wasn’t nice as many people were sea sick and I cannot stand watch people vomit 😂 But it was worth it as we arrived to this wonderful resort 😍

We did another tour that took us to Skeleton Wreck, Barracuda lake, Kayangan Lake and Twin Lagoon, definitely recommend!!

Snorkelling at the shipwreck 🐠

Private dinner at the hotel by the pool 😌

We took the ferry back to El Nido, another disgusting moment on the ferry with all the sick people 😵‍💫

THE best hotel I ever stayed at, I stayed at so many great hotels in the Philippines but this one was hands down the best one ever! Matinloc is a private island, the resort is the only construction on the island. They came to pick us up by zodiac at the harbour of El Nido and got VIP service from beginning to end! They even have their own nurse for medical emergencies and he took care of my foot which still made me suffer 🤦🏼‍♀️

The only place you can eat at, is the restaurant of the hotel, no hard choices 🤷🏼‍♀️ and the food was delicious so I sure didn’t mind!

Breakfast in the restaurant with ocean view 🌊

We enjoyed every single minute we had on the island until the end. After checking out they took us back to El Nido by Zodiac.

We had to rush to get the bus to get back to Puerto princesa. We stayed at this amazing resort far from the city and this time I really enjoyed staying there.

Time to get back to Manila, we flew back to the international airport.

From there we took an Uber to our last but definitely not least hotel.

We booked a suite with VIP access and went to enjoy the food at the VIP lounge 😍

The breakfast buffet was amazing 🤤

The hotel has a direct passage to this enormous mall, so we decided to stroll there while waiting for our late afternoon flights.

Bye bye Philippines 🇵🇭 I had such a wonderful time there 😍