May 2011 Wrap Up

May has been a roller coaster ride. After spending a month in El Nido last April where most days were spent hanging out on the beach, I flew to Beijing, China by April 26 and travelled around the city for a few days. The cool air of the Northern Hemisphere welcomed me in Beijing. It was such a relief after being in a hot and humid place for some time.

After Beijing, we travelled overland to Hanoi where we spent almost two weeks and then went up to Sapa where another week was spent lazing around chatting with locals and other travellers.

From Sapa we then travelled to Luang Prabang which took a couple of days. Travelling in three countries for a month (China, Vietnam, Laos) was really tiring and I felt the fatigue. We’ve decided to stay put in one place for the maximum allowable stay that we could get for our passports to enjoy more.

Aside from travelling and sightseeing, I also “relaunched” two projects this May. The first one is Cheap Travel Promo where you could see travel related online promotions. I personally spend more time looking at airline’s websites than my own Facebook page. And I figured that I could just compile it to help fellow travellers looking for more information.

My second project is the Philippine Travel Forum which I’m deeply passionate about. I actually started it a few months ago but lack the technical skills to fix the page. For now I think it’s operational and could block f*cking spams (thanks to new plugins) that plagued that site for almost a month. I’m passionate about letting my fellow Filipinos know that travelling can be cheap and affordable.

By the way, I’m posting in advance because there’s too much information that I want to share and to make sure that on times that I dont have any internet connection, you will still get information about the places that I went to.

So basically, that’s what happened with me in the past month.

Regarding my blog, I hope you noticed a few new tweaks with the layout.

I changed the header a couple of times and I think I’ll settle for this one for some time. I also added a few plugins to make navigation easier. I removed some more ads and added a few ones that I think would provide more value to my readers.

This month of May, I also had a chance to interview great travellers from different countries and I hope you learned a thing or two from the experiences that they’ve shared. For those new to my site, I interviewed Lisa Egle of Chickbus, Matthew Long of Landlopers, Brendan Van Son of Brendan’s Adventures, Michael Tieso of Art of Backpacking and Leif Harum of Runaway Guide.

I also hosted a few articles last May about budget tips, Sharm El Sheikh, Kenya, London, Egypt, Spain , Vancouver, Gold Coast, Australia and one article about Family Holidays.

Most of my own articles this month of May were all about El Nido and Beijing. The Vietnam and Laos series will come out by June. Click on the category link (above) to see all articles about those places.

If you like reading about rants, raves and some whinings(click on the link) I wrote a couple of them too . I promised myself not to write any of these stuff anymore but sometimes I just find myself pouring everything I feel in my wordpress blog.

Could you please check this out. Maybe you can help in supporting the Shirt for Naomi drive, Naomi is a Filipino girl with a Congenital Heart disease. Her family is raising funds for her operation. Thanks!!!