Lessons in Travelling 1

I will now start to share some lessons I have learned in traveling, mostly, in other countries but it can also be applied locally.

1. Make sure to check and recheck the time your bus leaves.
I have learned this lesson the hard way. This story happened when my whole family went to a country where only a handful of people can speak English. I was working in an NGO there. Language was really a problem. I was still learning the language but I was daring and I made a big mistake.

One time, my family and I were about to travel from the place we were staying to another city through bus. I bought our tickets a day earlier. My wife was already asking me a lot of times on when we will be leaving. I confidently answered her on the time I thought we were leaving. She told me to check for I might be mistaken due to language barrier. I might be misunderstood as what she kept on telling me. I checked the ticket and totally misunderstood what was written there.

2. Get the right information
Since the official bus stop is another area and we will only wait in a nearby road, the time written on the ticket mentioned only the time the bus will leave the official bus station. In other words, we were an hour behind. When we arrive at our waiting place, I asked the vendor there if the bus has passed and he said yes. I panicked and I checked the tickets and showed it to the vendor. He showed me my mistake.

That mistake costs me a lot of money. My wife got angry on me and my kids were very very tired on traveling back and forth to our house. I bought another set of tickets for the late noon trip and I made sure we were ahead of time as not to miss the bus.

For those who are reading, don't be so confident or shy when you learn a little of a new language but just try to make sure to keep on asking until you are assured even if it is annoying to the ticket vendor. Somehow, don't forget to smile afterwards and say thanks to smooth the wrinkles from their foreheads. They will be kind to understand that you are still learning the language. (Hope so...)

I am Back!

Hello to everyone! I am back. I was very busy on a lot of things that I didn't even try to update my blog. I am just touched by others who asked for updates. So, here I am again. I will try to give you as much update as I can about travels and my other adventures in other countries.

Tips When You are Already Travelling

1. Try to remember the land marks while you are travelling. In this way whenever you are lost or you want to go back to that place, you can easily remember it.

2.    Always bring a guide map with you.

3.   Put all your important items like passport, money, camera inside your waist bag.

4.   Make sure that your waist bag should be tight enough so that it cannot be easily grab by anyone.

5.   Place your waist bag always in front of you.

6.  Always put a lock on your bag, back pack or shoulder bag while travelling at night.

7.   Don’t forget to have a contact number and address of the place you are staying just in case you encounter any problem you can call right away.

8.   Bring a copy of your passport and IDs always so you can present anytime when you are asked by the police or anyone in authority.

9.   Always bring your own water and vitamin C with you so that you won’t be dehydrated and easily get sick due to travel stress.  Children chewable vitamin C is best even if you are an adult.

10 .  Easily gets travel or motion sickness, always bring and drink travel sickness medicine an hour before travelling.

11 .  Don’t be ashamed to ask for directions from locals but make sure to ask someone whom you can trust to give you the proper direction.

12.  Be sensitive on the way of dressing, culture and traditions of the locals.

13. Learn some simple phrases of the local language to help you get by while travelling, like buying things, proper greetings, taking taxis and local transportation.

14 .  Know the exact rate of things and fares from one place to another to avoid overpaying.

15. For bargaining of prices when you buy something, always let the locals do it for you.

I’m Lost, HELP!!!

When I was in Hong Kong, one day, friend of my father invited me to visit their house and it’s an hour to be in their place. They had given me the instruction to get a train and they are going to pick me up in the train station.

As I went to the train station and waited for my train to arrive, all the instructions that was written in the station was in Chinese characters. So I was confused and I didn’t have any idea to which direction did I have to take. As soon as the train arrived, I quickly jumped in and watching the direction and destination I found out that it was an opposite place to where I am going.

By then, I decided to step down into the next stop and change another train. At first, I was ashamed to ask to anybody regarding the direction of the place where I was supposed to go. So you can just imagine from Hong Kong to New Territory, I changed train four times. I was embarrassed and ashamed to myself when I shared these to my host who waited for a longer period of time because of that long journey.

So when you travel alone, don’t be ashamed to ask for direction or make sure you have a map with you. That was my big lesson that I learned.

    

A Daring Travel to the Mountains

One day, I brought a youth group to the mountains on a paved road. Aside from that, it's also a bumpy one. The vehicle that I drove was an 18-passenger type. Aside from the passengers, we also brought our sound system equipments and musical instruments. 

When we were near to our destination, which was on the top of the mountain, the road was going uphill and zigzagging. I did shift to first gear while we were climbing. At first I felt nervous while I drove the car but my instinct to do a daring and courageous act, which made me to move on to my destination.  

At about 100 meters away from the top of the mountain was the hardest part of the road, with 60 degrees uphill and with two 180 degrees curve before reaching to the top of the mountain. Upon reaching the top, everyone made a deep sigh of relief. Unknown to me, all of us were very nervous.

All of the village people were surprised that a full packed vehicle were able to climb to the top of the mountain. For them, it’s their first time to see a driver like me who have the strong courage and determination.

Beach in the Philippines FOR SALE!!!!

Do you know that one of the tourist attractions in the Philippines is beautiful and white beaches? A place wherein you can relax and enjoy the quietness of nature.

Are you interested to buy a beach in Santiago, San Francisco, Camotes, Cebu? Just to give you an idea, the total land area is 5,640 square meters. It has an access road to the area, part of it have a high elevation that you can build a rest house. The owner of this land is my mother-in-law who is leaving in the US.

If you are interested, just leave a comment with your email add so we can contact you.

Dare to Cross the Flood

Bangladesh is another country that I traveled. This country is known of having floods every year. When you talk of floods in that country, the waters will subside for months. One day while I was visiting my project area with my CD80 Honda motorbike, I saw ahead of me that the road was covered with water because of the heavy rain. The water was 2.6 feet high and about 100 feet of the road was covered.

Some people will cross the flood on a canoe. Some even let their motorbikes and animals on a canoe. While I was observing the people and the hassle to load their things, I decided to cross the waters on my own with my motorbike and so I did.  People looked at me as they were thrilled and some also laughed at me but who cares, this is my journey.

I cross that area a couple of times but only few times that I got stocked in the middle on flooded roads. My secret was to grab the motorbike to a shallow area, started the engine quickly and drove as fast as I can so that the engine will not stop again.