10 days in Philippines
Replies: 55 - Last Post: Jan 28, 2012 1:35 PM Last Post By: scottyheather
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I have to say the LP guide for the Philippines is completely useless...I seem to remember the author coming on here a couple of years ago asking where in the Philippines he should visit. I also remember he had the piss mercilessly ripped out of him for it. He was meant to be the 'expert' and didn't have a clue about the Philippines. These authors don't visit the countries they write about now, they use the old guides and rely on travellers to write in and correct them!A pretty good guide book for the Philippines, although still not as good as it could be is Jens Peters guide it's online too so you don't need to buy it - http://www.jenspeters.de/. He was the original author of the LP guide back in the day and he left LP after disagreements about how the guides should be written.
Scotty, December can sometimes be dodgy for weather. BUT you also have to factor in travelling around at Christmas in the Philippines which is a bit of a nightmare with flights booked and buses full just before and after. So far, January has been rather nice but then again weather is unpredictable here so who knows?!
So how long exactly do you have for each part of your trip?
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really great sage shabu?if i'd read only the wikitravel guide to bohol i would never have bothered going there. "loaded"? you have got to be going kidding
you know the internet is full of trolls. one of the best things about the LP TT forum is that there are very few trolls here, present company excepted
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there are so many places in the Philippines we want to go to and the time we want to spend there is increasing dailyyep scott, that is a problem, but it's not one peculiar to the philippines. i think it is the same with most countries
the more "research" i do the more places i want to visit. i guess it's probably going to take a few years worth of 2 - 3 week vacations to visit all of the places that i want to see in the philippines. add in a few more years worth for returning to the places that i really like.
oh, & then there's all those other countries i want to visit. i hope i win the lottery soon :)
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I know what you mean gregs - I want to do it ALL NOW.The only thing is that's put a spanner in the works is that I read that there's a real problem with kidnappings by certain groups in the south of the Philippines (around Zamboanga) so we've decided to avoid the ferry crossing to Borneo. Just wondering how far north this problem is going to get.
Loubylou - Well we had thought of changing all our time (between 7 and 8 weeks) between Borneo and the Philippines but the above information has kind of scared us off the south of the Philippines. Mind you, we also went to Pakistan last year despite the same sort of warnings and were perfectly safe.
Is it really only the Mindanao area that's the problem? Because we had originally thought of doing Borneo for around three weeks and then taking the ferry across to Zamboanga and travelling up to Manila taking in some great places on the way before flying back to NZ. Any info would be appreciated - I don't rely on government websites because they never say anywhere is safe. Last time I looked there was a 'do not travel' warning to India and how many people does that stop?
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Hmmmm gregs - thanks for the links. I'm now confused. We'd still love to do the ferry but perhaps we'll still stick with our itinerary (eg Borneo for a few weeks and then the Philippines) but keep an eye out on the news and this site for any more kidnappings. The weird thing is just before we went to Pakistan, a muslim cleric had banned all beheadings and said abductees should be hanged instead if ransoms etc weren't paid. This cheered me up no end - it's the beheading bit that puts me off a bit! LOL37
Ahhh - that gives the Australian man some context huh?Nah, I realise gregs that things happen all over the world and that if we really thought about them, we'd never get out of our beds, but there are times when one needs to use commonsense and if there is indeed a spate of kidnappings in Mindanao then it might be wise to avoid that part but like I say, I'll keep checking the situation.
BTW I travelled across the US by greyhound bus in 1985 and I'd never do it again - they give all the psychopaths tickets to get out of state to another one to shift the problem and we encountered more than a few on their buses and bus stations which are placed in the worst parts of the city.
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shabu - the only problem with that is that we are coming from Borneo (Sandakan) and there are no flights to the Philippines from there - we'd have to backtrack to KL and then fly to Manila do our trip and then backtrack to Manila to fly to NZ. I'm still tempted to do the ferry - is that in the really rough area which should be avoided? Sorry to bombard you with questions but I want to be prepared to book the Jetstar/Air Asia flights when their specials erupt shortly.39
Found a solution - fly from Kota Kinabalu to Manila - not perfect but might be better (and safer) than the ferry.40
there are times when one needs to use commonsensei agree. i'm just passing on the locations of the discussions, i'm not familiar with that area so i'm not suggesting that you do, or that you don't go there. apart from the island of camiguin, and maybe siargao if i ever learn to surf, most parts of mindanao are a long way down my list of must see places in the philippines. i just read some of the threads if they sound interesting
thanks for the tip about greyhound buses in the usa. sounds like they are definitely to be avoided
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we'd have to backtrack to KL and then fly to Manila do our tripNo you wouldn't. There is a flight from Kota Kinabalu to Clark with Air Asia (Clark is 90km or a 3 hour bus ride north of Manila). So you wouldn't need to backtrack back to KL.
I think Cebu Pacific also do KK to Manila as a route
Edited by: loubbylou
