Boracay Island, Philippines

The small island of Boracay is a world class beach resort and the most popular tourist destination in the Philippines. I ended up spending three full days (and four nights) there. I had my own cottage, bathroom, and small kitchen for the bargain price of about US $9.50 per day. Boracay has the kind of beaches that you would imagine for a wonderful tropical destination:

This beach (White Beach) stretches for perhaps 3 kilometers and behind the palm trees is a row of restaurants, bars, and stores the entire length. Also, motorized vehicles are forbidden in this section. All in all, Boracay is a wonderfully relaxing place.

Here is a flavor of travel in the Philippines. . . to get to Boracay from north Mindoro island I had to take a jeepney for about two hours to a larger town. The coastal road was astonishingly beautiful. Then I took a hired van that had stopped along the road to another town 3 hours further down the road from which I could take a ferry. Then I took the four hour ferry journey to Caticlan, which is at the tip of Panay Island. Then a short but somewhat treacherous 20 minute ferry ride to tiny Boracay Island, then a tricycle ride from the Boracay pier to my cottage. Yes, transportation can be an adventure here.

For the first time in my trip, I didn't really make any new friends in a place. I mostly spent the days alone on the beach and reading my new book on randomness and algorithms and their application to financial markets (OK, I needed a small break from fiction).

But I did feel "in the zone" here. By that, I mean a place where I am enjoying my time and not spending much money. I did a quick calculation on what I have spent on my trip so far, including all internal flights, immigration fees from before I left the USA, and my flight back to Singapore, and it is about $53 per day -- including my one-way flight to Hong Kong (reasonable since my trip is a little less than half over) it is about $61 per day. This includes all my SCUBA fees, too. I could have traveled much more cheaply (for instance, I have never stayed in dorms yet). That said, traveling in the Philippines is much more expensive than either Vietnam or China (or Malaysia or Thailand).