Where I Get Helpful Travel Tips

Planning your next dream travel can be a daunting task. Whether it just be within the Philippines, across Asia, South Africa, or Europe, getting down to the details on where to go, your budget, itinerary, accommodations, air and land fares can be too overwhelming. So how do you finally get the ball rolling? Here's where I've been researching:

1. CouchSurfing - In my last blog, I talked about this community / forum where travelers converge and share hospitality with one another. You can join "groups" from different countries, share and post tips, experiences and ideas about previous or upcoming trips in specific countries. You can also email couchsurfers directly if you want to meet up or look for travel buddies.

2. Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree forum - This is where the Lonely Planet travel community get together to exchange travel information, advice, hints and tips. Lonely Planet IS your best resource. They also have a lot of books on different countries and continents (quite pricey though) but it would be a good investment for a travel bug (like me!).

3. Travelfish - Well, this one is specifically your travel intelligence for South East Asia. Rich info here from the message boards.

So I was doing some research for my next travel project and I came across Robert Alejandro’s site on his backpack adventures and sketches across South East Asia. He was the one I could relate to the most as it was a PINOY experience first-hand.

What he did was he took 3 months off from work, traveled to South East Asia and parts of China, with only around PhP50K, which was enough to cover airfare, food, accommodations, land travel and museum fees. From Manila, his group followed an itinerary through Singapore > Malaysia > Thailand > Laos > Cambodia > Vietnam > China (Beijing and Shanghai)> Macau > Hong Kong > Philippines. That's nine countries at P50K.

He has a book titled Backpack and I already got one. I bought it online through Papemelroti or you can also get it in R.O.X., Bonifacio High Street. He's got sketches and travel tips to guide you in planning your Asia travel in a cost-efficient way.

The internet's got loads of travel info, all you have to do is to take that first step and say "I'm finally going to do it!" to make your big trip plans come true... :)

And now, endorsing my favorite wedding photographers...

Oh, and speaking of pre-nuptials and weddings, I'd like to shamelessly plug my favorite wedding photographers--EVER. Check out this tandem, Jorem and Sheila Catilo of Catilo.net. Their photographs are an inspiration. And they're not your usual cliché. Definitely they're not overrated. ;)

A screenshot of their official website.

It's not only because they're my orgmates that's why I'm plugging them (I met them in our camera club where Jorem used to be our club president). I see their passion in all of their photo shoots since I always see something new, something creative, something quirky each time.

Like them also on Facebook. Oh, I'm sure you will. :)