Kawasan Falls Cebu Day Trip Guide

October 10, 2016November 30, 20164 Comments

BACKGROUND:

Every year, I always tell myself that I will blog more. But I kept putting it off because of other more seemingly important things (like traveling some more… [I was out of the house every month visiting exotic places in the country!], accepting more online work assignments [so I can support my travels] and watching hours and hours of reruns of my favorite TV series and movies [yep, that’s about the only energy I have left after a long day of traveling and working]) and before I knew it, years have passed, unpublished travel photos and videos got buried in my “baul” (musty old trunk..lol!) and the rest, as they say, is history. Teehee.

Well, on my MOMTRANEUR blog, I will be a better blogger, a better time manager, a better me. I am following the lessons I learned from my previous blog post How to Attain Higher Productivity at Home and Work and I will do more things that make me happier like what I mentioned in Random Thoughts This Rainy Night. So on this post I will start my long overdue travel diaries.

And because Cebu is probably my most visited place in the Philippines aside from Boracay (where I vacayed for long periods of time from 2002 to 2015), I’ll particularly start here my lone trip to the breathtaking Kawasan Falls in Badian. This was 2 weeks before I officially met my now bestest friend, soulmate and love of my life, Mahal. He knew me since high school but I didn’t really know him (well, I was popular, what can I say? Hahaha!) However, that time I was on the way to Cebu, we were already texting because he invited me before to like his resort’s FB page and I was already hearing good things about Oslob (another place in Southern Cebu) that I wanted to go and visit that place. I ended up staying at his mini resort, Oslob New Village Lodge and swim with their famous whale sharks. This was already after my Kawasan day trip. When we became us years down the line, he admitted that I was his crush since high school. He also knew I’m into travel blogging. He said he will tour me too to the various tourist spots Oslob has to offer ( which he did, countless times, even to this day). Of course another blog post will be allotted for that. In the meantime, you can read about our love story. Hihihi!

Anyway, first things first — my trip to Kawasan Falls…

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Bag of Beans Athena Tagaytay Restaurant Review

October 1, 2016November 30, 2016Leave a comment

I used to travel all the time before the baby came. I am out of the house and exploring the country more often than I was at home. It didn’t even stop me when I got pregnant. As soon as my obstetrician gave me the go signal to travel, Mahal and I did so for almost two months straight during my last trimester hopping from one province to the next all over Mindanao and the Visayas and some parts of Southern Luzon before we finally got back home here in Manila. I’ll blog more about that soon.

But since I gave birth and had Tuz, travels were limited to once or twice a month. We’d just visit nearby places and mostly our goal is to eat. If before, we scrimped on food so we can travel some more and have more money for plane tickets and hotels, this time, since we can’t really travel much until baby Tuz completes his rounds of various vaccines, we splurge on food instead! And one of the food places nearby that we love to visit is Tagaytay, particularly Bag of Beans. Continue reading →

The Day I Met Richard Branson

September 7, 2016November 4, 20163 Comments

Just a little TBT post…

This photo above was taken on May 12, 2013 when I got invited to go to Malaysia by Air Asia and there I saw in person Richard Branson, one of my ultimate idols. I’ve been reading his blog since and this one really struck a chord in me: LIFE IS NOT A JOURNEY TO RETIREMENT.

Growing up, I was programmed to believe that life is a journey — that I should live a good life, I should finish my studies, I should find a good job and climb its corporate ladder, I should marry and build a family, while saving up for retirement, then I can die. When I think about it, it’s quite morbid, isn ‘t it? But the truth is, subconsciously, I’ve been doing that in one way or another all my life. Like what Stephen Covey taught me in college, “Begin with the end in mind.” While that principle is indeed very helpful in terms of goal-setting and reaching for your dreams, once you’ve achieved your end, it doesn’t really end there. That’s just one lesson in life out of the multitude we’re gonna learn as we traverse this little spot in the universe. And that, for me, is more exciting!
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Ayala Malls Serin in Tagaytay – Not What We Expected It to Be

August 29, 2016November 30, 20163 Comments

So I have been hearing about Ayala Malls Serin that opened in Tagaytay 2 years ago (April 2, 2014) and the few times Mahal and I went to Tagaytay and passed by it, I kept getting intrigued by it. It looked so elegant and serene from the outside.

So that one particular day we were celebrating our second anniversary, after our little excursion to Marcia Adams and Puzzle Mansion Museum, we dropped by Ayala Malls Serin. We were waiting to get hungry (Marcia Adams’ dishes were so yummy and filling that even after several hours, we were still quite full!) so we thought of going around this prestigious lifestyle mall in Tagaytay. Continue reading →

Puzzle Mansion Bed and Breakfast in Tagaytay

August 23, 2016November 11, 20162 Comments

This blog post will be part of a series of posts that I’ll be doing about Tagaytay Must-See Food Places and Tourist Spots. And since we’ve just celebrated our second anniversary this month (Aug. 15), there’s no better way to spend it on a rainy afternoon with our baby Tuz than by heading there not just for some fancy meal but to also explore some places we’ve never been to before as long as the time and weather will permit it.

~~~oOo~~~

Tagaytay is the nearest tourist place to my home and so most of the tourist spots here I’ve already visited since I was in college (circa 1995-1999), the first one being Tagaytay Highlands with my wealthy classmates from AdMU. It was a spontaneous little out-of-town trip with a few boys and girls to celebrate the fact that classes have just been suspended that day if I recall correctly or maybe we just finished our exams and we had lots of free time to kill… Hmmm… Whatever the reason was, I remember feeling so lucky to be invited by my block mates to such a high-end place which is via membership only and I fell in love with Tagaytay since.

Anyway, I digress…

So it’s really nice when new places to visit in Tagaytay would crop up every now and then and one of those places we’ve never been to before is the Puzzle Mansion Bed and Breakfast. Continue reading →

Marcia Adams Tagaytay Restaurant Review

August 22, 2016November 30, 20164 Comments

This blog post will be part of a series of posts that I’ll be doing about Tagaytay Must-See Food Places and Tourist Spots. And since we’ve just celebrated our second anniversary this month, there’s no better way to spend it on a rainy afternoon with our baby Tuz than by heading there for some fancy late lunch.

~~~oOo~~~

I’ve been wanting to go back to Tagaytay for a long while now and I was really planning to do that on our anniversary month (We turned two last August 15). It just kept getting pushed back because of the monsoon season until one Sunday afternoon, when the weather wasn’t as bad as the last several days that we finally decided to go. Should the weather get worse once we’re there, then we can stay somewhere in Tagaytay City. But if not, at least we’re just almost an hour away from home (with light traffic).

Mahal listed a bunch of places that we can go visit in Tagaytay. Some of those places I’ve already been to so when he mentioned Marcia Adams, I immediately got intrigued and told him “I haven’t been there. Let’s try it!” Continue reading →

Momtraneur’s Love Story

July 27, 2016December 14, 202532 Comments

Overview

Like I mentioned in my welcome post, I am an introvert which is why the work that I do as a virtual assistant makes me so happy because I don’t have to face people and deal with them every day. I prefer to be on my own and not talk to people. I work on my own time, in my bedroom or in my study, on the beach, in the mountains, at a cafe, or wherever I feel like working at the moment. It’s just me, my computer, and of course with my Mahal and bebe Tuz in tow and voila — I am very happy!

Needless to say, the lack of social interaction with people, I do make up for by writing down my thoughts and feelings and this is why I’ve always loved blogging. It’s not the kind that pays though because I am a diarist after all. I don’t blog to sell stuff or to earn from ads or to get invited to events which naturally happened before. I got tired of it coz again, it involved being with other bloggers and as an introvert, my energy gets expended much more quickly when that happens. In short, attending events with lots of people drains me. As for the ads though, that might be an option I could explore in the future like maybe do affiliate marketing and the likes. Anyhoo, I blog because I want to express myself and share my thoughts and experiences and not to earn. I already have more than enough money anyway from my investments and other sources so blogging is just really FOR ME — to make myself happy. And now that I am back to blogging, I am so much, much happier! Thank you to my best friend and life partner who generously supports me in everything I want to do. And not just the kind of support that lets me be or the “do-what-you-want-and -I’ll-do-what-I-want” type of support, but he teaches me things and suggests things I can further do so in that area I really am lucky.

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