INSTABITS : October 2017

Hallu everyone! This entry is late, as usual, but work responsibilities are piling up. Whenever I do manage to get some free time, I rarely have enough energy left to do anything that requires me to think. Most of the time I just binge-watch Youtube videos until I fall asleep.  Anyway, the semester is about to end, and my other work responsibilities are going to reduce significantly in a couple of days. I’ll definitely be celebrating next week.

Most of October’s INSTABITS were taken during our trip to Korea last month. We were there for a conference but of course we did our best to squeeze in as many touristy things that we could do. My skin broke out so badly because sleep became my least priority while we were there. We were only there for a few days so naturally we wanted to make the most of it. I  only got about 4-5 hrs of sleep each night, which is way less than usual. And trust me, having bad skin in Korea (where everyone is pretty much flawless) was not something I wanted.

 

My first post for October was a groupie with Sir Taps, Sir Marvs and Jorge at Kimbop.

Sir Taps pointed out that we were wearing similar shirts so he wanted to take photos for fun. He was trying to get me to laugh for the photo so here he is showing me a bunch of weird stuff on his phone

Raf and I went to Nuvali one weekend and we decided to have brunch at The Morning After.

I ordered chicken and waffles,  but they didn’t have waffles so they replaced it with pancakes.  The chicken was good, but the pancakes were a little dry.

We also had lunch at Silantro. It was my first time there so of course I had to try their popular beef nachos.

Eugene visited the Philippines this month so Aprille and I met up with him at Seoul Kitchen for dinner. It’s been 3 years since we last saw each other!

The 99th UPLB Loyalty Day was held on October 10. This was the CAS float for the parade.

Sir Taps, Jorge and I bought matching shirts this month. We planned on buying one for Dustin too but we weren’t sure if he’d wear it. But at least he agreed to wear stripes with us.

My baby Mochi celebrated his 2nd birthday this month. He’s such a fat and naughty bunny, but I love him ❤

 

My mom’s birthday is on the 17th and my parents and I flew to Korea to celebrate. (Sir Marvs, Amie and Ava followed shortly with a later flight).

Our first stop in Korea was non other than Myeongdong. As a K-beauty lover, this was definitely something I couldn’t miss.

Amie and I had a great time looking for our favorite Korean celebrities (well, their standees and posters) while we were there

One-day tour of Taiwan (Goodbye Golden Princess)

This entry is about the last day of our Japan-Taiwan cruise last September 2016. It’s over a year late, but I can only edit and sort photos during my free time, which I don’t get often.

We spent most of our last morning on the Golden Princess packing to go home. We had to be off the ship by 8am, so we were up bright and early. We were in a rush trying to make it on time so naturally I wasn’t able to take photos, but here’s two from when we were waiting at the Wheelhouse Bar for our turn to disembark.

Since our flight wasn’t until the evening, we booked an independent tour around Taiwan. Our guide picked us up at the port and took us to Yehliu Geopark, where we saw lots of interesting rock formations near the sea:

The place was beautiful, but it was also extremely hot! We were sweating buckets by the end of our visit here. In the photo above I was barely able to keep my hand on the rail for the shot because it felt like molten lava.

Ishigaki 2016 : talking dolls and balloons

On the third day of our Japan-Taiwan cruise, the Golden Princess brought us to Ishigaki. We were having breakfast that morning, trying to plan out our day when I heard someone exclaim “Hindi ako makapaniwala sa nakikita ko ngayon!” (Translation : “I can’t believe what I’m seeing right now!”). When we looked up, we saw Nathan standing next to our table with a huge smile on his face 😀

For those who might be confused, Nathan was the Head Waiter in our dining room when we did our 7-day Japan-Korea cruise in 2015 (blog entry HERE). He was extremely kind to us and our dinners usually ended up being over two hours long because we had such a great time chatting with him every night. That was back on the Diamond Princess so we definitely didn’t expect to see him on this ship! It was such a pleasant surprise 😀

Here’s a photo from our Diamond Princess cruise in 2015 with Nathan:

This was taken during the formal evening, so the staff were in formal attire too. That’s Nathan on the right, and Yuni (our waiter) on the left. We were hoping to run into Yuni too, but Nathan told us he was on a different ship.

We stayed to chat with Nathan for a while and promised we’d look for him later that evening before heading back to our rooms to get ready for a day of sight-seeing.

Our ship didn’t dock in Ishigaki so we had to take the tenders to go ashore:

Inside the tender

We made it to shore, yay!

It was *extremely* humid that day. But at least it didn’t rain like the previous day.

Our first stop was Family Mart because we needed to exchange currency. Of course we did a bit of shopping there as well. I found these coffee-flavored ice cream balls there which was really good:

Brinks liked them so much that she bought another pack for herself.

We also found another convenience store nearby where we ended up buying some beauty products. I found the Sea Breeze Deo Waters that I love:

They were a bit pricier here compared to the ones I bought at Don Quixote in Okinawa.

We found this shopping street so we decided to look around to buy some pasalubong

Exploring Okinawa (Shuri Castle and Kokusai Street)

Day 2 of my birthday cruise from last year (Day 1 blog here). Since Brinks justified her expenses for this trip by telling herself that it was a birthday present to herself, my parents told the staff that she was also celebrating her birthday. Which explains why we woke up to two sets of balloons and greeting cards on our door that morning.

“Birthday” Kupos~

Hello Okinawa!

We didn’t plan on leaving the ship until later that afternoon so we spent our morning walking around and watching a culinary show at the Princess Theater:

The culinary show is usually very funny, unfortunately we couldn’t understand it this time because it was all in Mandarin

After the show Brinks and I went to the pool deck to take some photos

Birthday Cruise : Keelung, Taiwan

For my birthday last year my parents decided to go on a short cruise around Japan/Taiwan, and as a special treat they told me I could invite a friend to come with us! As soon as they told me, I contacted Brinky who immediately jumped on board. Princess Cruises had a “Buy 2 Get 2 Free” promo during this period, so it was perfect. My parents booked their trips at a regular rate and Brinks and I were the “Get 2 Free“. (Of course there were still taxes and plane tickets to be paid, but the cruise fares were waived :D)

The cruise begins in Keelung, Taiwan so we took an early flight to get there.

Kupos in pink

Hello Taiwan!

We booked a shuttle to pick us up from the airport and take us to the port

During our last cruise my parents were finally upgraded to Platinum status, so we were able to skip the long check in lines this time around, yay!

The ship we would be sailing on is the Golden Princess, which is actually the same ship we were on during our Alaskan cruise (you can find my blog entries about that by clicking HERE). That was my very first cruise, so this ship holds a special place in my heart. Being back on board made us feel really happy, and we even met a few crew members who were there with us during our Alaskan cruise – and some of them actually remembered us! Pretty amazing considering that was two years ago and they usually have about 2000 passengers on board for each voyage.

Ceiling shot while waiting for the elevators

The crew was setting up for the champagne waterfall to be held that evening

Pretty~

Kuala Lumpur 2017

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I recently went to Malaysia to attend a conference. It was held in Penang but my colleagues and I decided to spend a day in Kuala Lumpur before heading back home to Manila. There’s no direct flight from Penang to Manila anyway, so we were going to stop by KL no matter what, we might as well make the most of it.

Our flight was at 7am so we left our airbnb at around 4:30am. Our host was kind enough to arrange a vehicle for us because we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to get an Uber that early in the morning.

We caught the sun rising while we were on the plane

Once we arrived at KL, we booked a van from the airport to take us to our hotel. We didn’t really have concrete plans on how we were going to spend our afternoon but fortunately the hotel had a tour desk and we decided to avail of their 6-hr city tour. We arranged to meet our tour guide at around 1pm so that we could have lunch first. We found a street near our hotel that was lined with small restaurants and we just chose one at random.

The food wasn’t good and it was overpriced, but at least Dustin enjoyed their cendol

It was his first time trying it. It’s not the best I’ve had, but compared to the other things we ordered this was pretty good. Still, my sweet tooth wasn’t that satisfied. Fortunately we passed by a convenience store and I was able to pick up a pink magnum.

Yay~.

Back at the hotel, we freshened up a bit before getting started with our tour. The first place our guide brought us to was the Sultan Abdul Samad Building

I’m not sure what it was for (since our guide mainly just drove us around and didn’t give us that much background information about the places we went to), but it’s beautiful.

Next up on the itinerary was the national monument

The place was built in honor of the people who fought for Malaysia’s freedom during World War II

Penang, Malaysia (ICKEM 2017)

Earlier this month some colleagues and I went to Malaysia to attend the 7th International Conference on Key Engineering Materials (ICKEM 2017). It’s the same one we attended last year in Hong Kong. This year the conference was held at the Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang.

Since there was no direct flight to Penang, we had to travel through KL. We didn’t want to arrive too late so we ended up having to leave Manila at 6:30am, which meant that we left our houses at around 2am. Hooray for 45 minutes of sleep.

But we were pretty excited and we were able to nap on the flight so we had plenty of energy once we arrived

With the crew 😀

We booked a condo unit through Airbnb, which was on the 27th floor. This was our view:

Beautiful~

Admiring the sights :p

So high up!

The unit had 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. This was Dustin’s and my room:

The common area

After resting for a bit and unpacking our bags we decided to head out and explore

We ended up taking an Uber to Queensbay Mall since there was nothing much to see around us. We were happy to discover that there was a food court so we decided to have our dinner there:

Birthday shoot at Forestry

I just realized that I never shared the rest of the photos from my birthday shoot here on my blog. I used one of them for my 29th self portrait last year, but I never made a separate entry to show you guys the rest of the photos.

These were taken by Dustin and Jason. My birthday was coming up and they decided to have a little shoot for me to celebrate (and also so I would have a nice photo of me to post on my special day XD).

INSTABITS : September 2016

October’s almost over so once again this entry is extremely late. This past month has been quite busy, but now I have a bit of free time to finally finish editing this.

This was taken late August when the girls and I checked in at the Crimson Hotel to celebrate Camille’s and my birthdays. You can watch our vlog HERE.

Camille invited Dustin and me to join LBDH’s fun run called #HugotTakbo. It was my first 5k run and I’m happy to report that I survived.

As a birthday gift, my parents signed us up for a short cruise around Japan and Taiwan (watch the vlog here). One of the places we went to was the Shuri Castle in Okinawa.

One of the things that made our trip much more fun was that Brinks was able to join us 😀

We signed up for tours but they were cancelled because there were only a few of us on the cruise who spoke English. The staff suggested that we join their Mandarin tour but we decided it would be better if we just explore the town ourselves. This turned out to be a blessing because we were able to spend as much time as we want shopping on Kokusai Street 🙂

Since this cruise was meant to celebrate my birthday, the Canaletto dining staff presented me with a cake for dinner. Brinks also got one too since she justified her expenses for this trip by convincing herself that it was a late birthday present for herself XD

Our cruise also took us to Ishigaki where we once again shopped for local delicacies

On the last day of our cruise we joined the balloon drop party at the Piazza

Our cruise ended in Taiwan. Since our flight wasn’t until that evening we made arrangements with a tour company to show us around some famous locations. Here’s Brinky and me at Yehliu Geopark. It was beautiful but extremely hot!

We also dropped by the Chiang Kai Shek memorial hall

Brinks and I ended up wearing the same colors that day. (No, we didn’t plan this)

This, on the other hand, was planned. Sir Taps texted us one evening and asked us to wear blue with white sneakers.

Vlog : Back on the Golden Princess (Japan/Taiwan Cruise 2016)

In my 32nd self portrait this year I mentioned that I recently went on a short cruise around Japan and Taiwan for my birthday. It was an extremely short vacation but I had a wonderful time, especially since Brinks was able to join us 😀

Unlike my previous cruises, I won’t be making a summary blog entry of my experience since it was just a few days. Also, our cruise was on the Golden Princess and I already wrote an entry about my experience on this ship two years ago. All I’m going to say is the staff is still awesome and everyone made sure we had a incredible time. It was also great to see some familiar faces, especially Nathan – the Filipino head waiter we became friends with on our Diamond Princess cruise last year.

I will be making individual entries about each day of our cruise, but that probably won’t be up until next year since I still have about 15 entries waiting to published on this site. In the meantime, here’s a quick vlog I made of our entire trip.

Once again, thank you Princess Cruises for an amazing experience 🙂

Related entries:

• Birthday Cruise : Keelung, Taiwan
• Exploring Okinawa (Shuri Castle and Kokusai Street)
• Ishigaki 2016 : talking dolls and balloons
• One-day tour of Taiwan (Goodbye Golden Princess)