2016 has been a remarkable year for me, so much blessings and a lot of “first-times”; an amazing roller coaster ride if I should define it. There were ups and downs, different challenges along the road yet still a marvelous year. I have achieved a lot of personal goals which I’m really very thankful of. 2016 has passed but it’s memory and the lessons learned remains and I’m glad to have recorded my journey through this blog. Here are the top 6 of my 2016 travel experiences:
It was my first outreach program for 2016 which was organized by our company. Charity works is always something that I want and love to do. We went to an Elementary School in Baraz Rizal where we treat the kids with fun games, feeding program and provided some giveaways. It was indeed a fulfilling and one of a kind experience. An awesome way to start 2016.
It was my first tripout of the country. I planned it since 2014 and it has only been made possible last year. I explored different beautiful places in Hong Kong and experienced how it feels like living abroad. Indeed, it was very memorable and amazing.
My first out of 6 Disneylands in the world, 5 to go 🙂 . This was one of the highlights of my 2016’s travels. It was a day full of magical and amazing moments, a day that will forever be in my heart, a memory that will never be forgotten.
My 2nd trip to a foreign land last 2016 was in Macau – the Las Vegas of Asia. It was such an overwhelming experience – visiting different huge casinos and hotels. A combination of past and present culture, Macau has indeed a lot to offer. One of my unforgettable Macau experiences was when we walked from Senado Square to Wyn Hotel until we got lost in the city looking for our way back to the Ferry Terminal.
Home of the Best Island in the world (www.travelandleisure.com ) , Palawan is one of my top pick destinations in the Philippines. It is probably every beach lovers favorite destination. Palawan is also home to the longest navigable underground river in the world and is one of the World’s Wonders of Nature. I would never forget of how amazed I was when we boat through its limestone’s caverns.
Kalanggaman Island is also in one of my top pick Philippine destinations. Located off the shore of Palompon Leyte, Kalanggaman Island boasts it’s long sandbars that stretches from both ends of the island with its powdery white sand and crystal clear water. It was my first camping experience and also my first time sleeping in a tent.
Indeed, 2016 has been an awesome year. It has opened a lot of opportunities and brought me to many beautiful places. It has been the launching point of my travel goals and I’m looking forward to more travels this 2017.
So how’s your 2016? Share your experiences and travel achievements and inspire others!
Our non-stop 2-day Puerto Princesa Tour was fun and tiring, thanks to Marianne Home Inn for making our stay comfortable and convenient. We booked with MOFU Travel and Tours for our 2-day Palawan Escapade and they arranged everything for us. We were actually given three choices for the accommodation and Marianne Home Inn is the cheapest among the three and it also has the most positive reviews so we decided to choose it. Indeed the hotel didn’t disappoint us and it really stayed true to its name “Home” which makes me (us) feel very homey during our stay. I will personally stay here again given a chance to go back to Puerto Princesa.
Location
Marianne Home Inn is located at the heart of Puerto Princesa. It is around 5-10 minutes away from the airport and near public markets, restos and a mall. The hotel is also accessible via public tanspo (tricycle) so commuting wouldn’t be a problem. Though it is right beside a basketball court so if your room is on the 2nd or 3rd floor you would probably hear some cheering noise but I believe it is quite minimal and the sound is muffled so will not really be an issue. You will be touring Palawan the whole day anyway so this isn’t really going to be an issue. In our case, we were booked in two Superior Rooms at the 4th floor so we didn’t have any issues with the noise except ourselves being so noisy, lol. It is also a 5-minute walk from Immaculate Conception Cathedral and 10-minute walk from the Baywalk Park.
Services / Inclusions
Airport Transfers: Yes. Marian Home Inn offers a round-trip airport transfers, even if its is just 5-10 minutes away from the airport. It was raining hard when we arrived in Palawan and a group of people are waiting outside the airport’s arrival area holding different hotel banners. A nice lady (our hotel’s representative) approached us as we struggle to read the writings on the paper that they were holding, the printings were too small hence making it hard for us to read. Since it was raining she looked for umbrellas which we used as we make our way to the van.
Complimentary Breakfast: Yes they have complimentary breakfast and this is one of the things that i like about Marianne Home Inn. They serve the usual pinoy breakfast food (fried fish or daing, fried egg, hotdog, banana/watermelon and coffee “3-in-1” or milo “chocolate drink”), free water is also available in a dispenser. Guests have the option to eat at the roof deck or at the dining area on the ground floor. Our rooms were at the 4th floor so we opted to eat at the roof deck since its only one floor away from our rooms. The food were freshly cooked and was served on time. The kitchen staff was even more accommodating and attended to our requests promptly.
Tour Packages: Marian Home Inn offers different Palawan Tour Packages. They have different Palawan Tour packages, just ask the front desk staff and they will be happy to assist you.
Free Wi-Fi: Though phone data service is available in most area Palawan, it would still be best if there is a Wi-Fi connection. Yes, Marianne Home Inn has a free Wi-Fi service in all rooms and the connection was quite fast. In-fact there were six of us in the room sharing with the Wi-Fi and it was still fast.
Type of Rooms / Room Rates
They have 4 type of rooms:
Standard Room Double (For 2 pax). Rate : P1,400/night
Standard Room Twin (For 2 pax). Rate: P1, 400/night
Family Room (For 3 pax). Rate: P1,950/night
Superior Room (For 7 pax). Rate: P7,400/night
Additional bed is P395
NOTE:These rates are taken from their website. Rates may vary from different hotel booking sites (even lower rates).
Since we were 10 in our group, we were booked in 2 Superior Rooms on the fourth floor. The room was big and spacious. It has 3 double-size beds that could fit-in 3 people and one single-size bed. Each room is also equipped with the individually-controlled aircon, a closet, flat screen TV with basic cable channels, Large mirror, 1 table and chair. Bath towels are also provided but its kinda thin so you may wanna bring your own towel. The bed sheets are also thin as well as the comforter but nevertheless I still had a good sleep.
Bathroom: Each rooms has an en suite bathrooms with free soap and shampoo and hot/cold shower. The bathroom in our room was spacious but the only thing that wasn’t working properly was the shower. The heater was kinda hard to adjust and the showers water pressure was very low so we had to asked for a timba and tabo (pail and dipper). I think it was because we were located at the top floor hence having a low water flow, something that they have to fix.
Customer Service and Overall Experience
Two thumbs up or even more if i have more than 2 thumbs! Their staff were super accommodating, attended to our requests very promptly and even went above and beyond. So we had an inuman sesh (drinking sesh) on our second night in our room and they allowed us. We bought some liquor in the nearest mall so we needed an ice and we forgot to bought it outside. We were already in our room and since we are at the top floor we were so tamad to go down and look for an ice so we called at the front desk and ask if they have an ice, thank goodness they have and it was brought to our room in just a minute :). It was also given to us FREE of charge which I think some hotels would have charged us insanely for a bucket of ice cubes. Also, our Honda bay Island Hopping activity was scheduled on our second and last day in Palawan so supposedly we have to check out at the hotel at 12:00 PM. Our island hopping ended at 3:00 PM and we have to take a bath and prepare for our way back to Manila. They were so kind enough to offer us a room and 2 bathrooms even it’s already beyond our check-in time. We also had a lot of wet clothes from our island hopping activity and they gave us a new plastic bags. Superb and excellent customer service! No wonder why they won the Tripadvisor Certificate of Excellence Award for two consecutive years (2014-2015).
Cons
The only thing that the hotel is lacking is the elevator. They don’t have an elevator so you have to use the stairs. But this really isn’t a big problem, I mean a little exercise won’t hurt you, right. Though not really senior or PWD friendly. But they have one-room at the ground floor which I think you can request to use if you are travelling with seniors or PWD.
Other good to know info’s
Marianne Home Inn accepts “Paluto”. You can buy fresh seafood, pork, chicken or vegetable at the market and they will cook it for you. You can request your own menu from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM so it’s ideal for lunch or dinner.
Massage service is also available by appointment and laundry service. You can even ask them to buy some dried fish at the market for your pasalubongs and have it wrapped (for a fee). They also have transpo arrangement and van rentals, just inquire at the front desk officer for more info.
Overall, Marianne Home Inn is indeed your Home out of Home in Palawan.
Marianne Home Inn Website: www.marianne-palawan.com Address: Quezon St Ext, Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines Email: mariannehomeinn_palawan@yahoo.com Mobile Numbers: * Smart (+63) 939 901 5375 * Globe (+63) 917 534 2138 Landline Numbers: * (048)434-2138 (Puerto Princesa City) * (02)404-8726 (Manila)
For reservations you can go to their website or call the numbers above.
My first Palawan experience was a blast! Even though it was only for two days, we were able to visit few tourist spots and had some island hopping. It was a two days full of non stop tour and we really made the most of our time. Though due to time constraints we had only toured destinations in Puerto Princesa area which gives me more reason to go back and explore other places especially Coron and El Nido. Of course, I won’t be keeping those happy thoughts with me, so let me share with you my 2 -day Palawan Escapade 🙂 .
Originally, Palawan is not included in my travel itinerary for this year until the 2nd quarter of 2017. I already have travels lining up until June 2017 and already had plane tickets booked. It was last May when Cebu Pacific had a seat sale and Ivan’s friend from Singapore will have her yearly vacation here in the Philippines, so right there and then last May 15 we booked a round-trip ticket to Palawan for Php2410/pax. I was excited and at the same time worried-about our budget, coz I also have a trip to Tacloban this October, just a month after our Palawan tour. But then, due to the strong “travel force” within me I still chose to pursue both travels :), blame it to the seat sale! haha
We booked a land tour with MOFU Travel and Tours. We were all busy to arrange the itinerary on our own and since we were traveling by group (we were 10) we thought that it’ll be better to just pay for a group tour and let them arrange everything. We paid Php3999/pax for the land tour which includes a round trip airport transfer, 3 days 3 nights hotel accommodation, Underground River Tour with Buffet Lunch, Honday Bay (Island Hopping) with Lunch, all entrance fees, permits and Licensed Tour Guide. Not bad huh!
Day 0
We all met up at NAIA Terminal 3 and since we already checked-in via web, getting our boarding passes wasn’t a hassle and we didn’t have to wait on the long queue. Travel Tip: Airlines nowadays offers a self-serve check-in online as early as 72 to 2 hours before your domestic flight or 72 to 4 hours for international flights so might as well take advantage of it for a speedy check-in process. The plane was late for just around 5 or 10 minutes which is a big improvement on the status of our airport :). It was quite a bumpy plane-ride. There was a strong rain that time as we drew closer to Puerto Princesa Airport so we had to sit tight and buckled up as the plane shakes because of a turbulence due to a bad weather. Thank God we landed safe and sound. It was by far one of my bumpiest plane ride experience, kinda scary and nakakahilo!
Puerto Princesa Palawan Airport
Heavy rains greeted us on our arrival.
A hotel representative was waiting for us outside the airport and lead us to a van which took us to the hotel. We stayed at Marianne Hotel which I really recommend due to our superb experience as far as customer service is concerned! The hotel was just around 5 minute-ride from the airport and is near the public market which makes it very convenient for buying pasalubongs and other essentials. I’m gonna be writing a different post/review about this so for the mean time, keep reading… 🙂
Marianne Home Inn
Marianne Home Inn’s Facade
We were all hungry when we reached the hotel so we settled our things and asked the accommodating front desk staff for a good place for dinner and she suggested K’na Boyet. We hailed two tricycles which drove us directly to the said resto. K’na Boyet is an open resto near the baywalk and they sell different seafood from small to huge ones. What’s good about this resto is that, they sell fresh and live seafood and you just have to choose what you wanna eat and they will cook it as to your desired menu. Cool, right? Though I must say that price is not really that pocket friendly. So after our sumptuous dinner we head back to the hotel and called it a day.
K’na Boyet
Look at these huge seafood! and some of em were still alive!
Loooooobster!
Woah! Huge crab called Kuracha!
Picture muna kahit super gutom na!
Day 1
Our first and official day in Palawan. We woke up as early as 5 AM and prepared ourselves for a whole day tour. Our call time was 7:00 – 7:30 AM so we really had to wake up early. We had our complimentary breakfast at the roof-deck of the hotel and the food was really generously provided, another thing that I liked most from the hotel.
First on our itinerary was the Subterranean Underground River. It’s dubbed as one of the longest navigable underground rivers in the world and is also one of the seven wonders of the world. As they say, you haven’t really been to Palawan if you didn’t visit the well-known Underground River. It was quite far from the city center, roughly around 2 – 3 hour drive but in our case, we reached it around 5 hours or more.
As per our tour guide, Kuya Manny, Puerto Princesa Underground River tour often has a paired side-trip, so prior to going to the said tour we went to Ugong Rock Adventures. It was roughly a 1 – 2 hours side-trip. Ugong Rock Adventures is a place for adrenaline rush and thrilling activities such as caving, spelunking and Zip lining. A 75 feet high limestone in the middle of a rice field, with different caves and passageways inside leading to a viewing deck on the top of the rock. It is called Ugong Rock because there are some limestone inside that makes an Ugong or humming sound when tapped. Of course it was all our first time so we didn’t let that moment pass without trying the adventures. We tried their caving which isn’t really much challenging (yabang! i have been to Lumiang and Sumaguing Caves in Sagada and so far no cave has topped my experience yet with the said caves). I also tried the zip line, superman position. They have two options for the zip line, sitting and superman postion and sitting is kinda boring so I chose the latter 🙂 .
Groupie at the entrance of the cave
Yes! I survived!
Right after the Ugong Rock Adventures we head to Sabang beach and had our lunch. It was a buffet lunch and the food was really delicious, fresh veggies and seafood cooked in a local pinoy dish. After we had our lunch we head to the wharf and hopped into a pump boat which took us directly to the island where the Underground River is located.
My lunch! 😀 lakas maka PG!!! 🙂
Walang pansinan!
Puerto Princesa Subterranean River is dubbed as the longest navigable river in the world and one of the Seven Wonders of Nature. The cave is more than 24 km long and contains an 8.2 km long underground river. Tourists are only allowed to navigate up to 1.5 km via a canoe (small boat) ride and would take approximately 45 minutes. As per our tour guide if you want to explore the remaining 6.7 km underground river, you will have to secure a special permit.
It rained hard the night before our tour hence the murky water.
The entrance to the underground river cave
the usual groupie 🙂
The underground river cave is stunningly huge and contains different rock formations. Huge stalactites and stalagmites which took thousands of years to form. The cave is also home to thousands and thousands of bats and many other creatures.
walang kamatayang groupie 🙂
Right after the underground river tour, we head back to the wharf. Our guide was rushing us, haha, maybe because the weather was starting to act up like crazy that time and he thought that a heavy rain might pour and we might get stranded in the island. But it didn’t rain so thank goodness. We head back to the city and since we still had time we decided to buy pasalubongs.
Pasalubong Center!!
We were suppose to have our diiner at KaLui but for some reasons the travel agent forgot to reserve us a slot. Unfortunately KaLui do not accept walk-ins so we had to eat somewhere else. The hotel’s front-desk staff suggested K’na Buch. It is a resto-bar and is also one of the well-known restos in Palawan, so since we were all hungry and didn’t really had a choice we decided to eat there. Unlike K’na Boyet, their menu is like the typical restos which serves different local pinoy dishes. After having our dinner we head back to the hotel and had a mini inuman sesh to cap our first day off.
Day 2
Our second and last day in Palawan. Our only activity that day was island hopping. We woke up early, prepared ourselves and packed our things for an easy check out. We had our 2nd day breakfast at the roof deck of the hotel. By around 7:30 AM mr. sunshine was shinning bright and high, we hopped into a van which took us to the wharf where we commenced our Honda Bay island hopping activity. We had a different tour guide on our second day, Ms. Katrina.
We visited three islands, Luli Island, Starfish Island and Cowrie Island. Before starting our tour as per our guide Ms Katrina, we had to rent an aqua shoes and snorkeling gear. Wearing an aqua shoes is mandatory. If there’s one thing that I like about Palawan, that is their city wide ordinances. They have almost all kind of ordinances which I think is really good and effective in taking care of their city and its people.
First on our list was LuLi Island. Derived from the first two letters of the words Lulubog Lilitaw. It was named after the latter because the island itself sinks and rises with the tide. Composed of 3 sandbars, your best chance of seeing it is during low tide. During high tide the island sinks into the sea-water and you can only see the cottages as if they are floating. You can do snorkeling in this part of the tour but just a heads up, there are no fancy or stunning coral reefs, just lots of different kinds of fish. Fish feeding is also allowed in the area.
Next stop was the Starfish Island. From the name itself, it was called Starfish Island due to the abundant starfish in the area. A white-sand beach and clear water that you can just see the star-shaped creature by just looking down. As per our guide, we are only allowed to take the starfish out of the water for 3 minutes max. As many of us might not know that they don’t have a blood and they only rely on the sea water so taking them out of the water for even 3 minutes is not recommended. After some photo ops and swimming we had our lunch which was also included on our package.
Our 3rd and last stop was the Cowrie Island. Named after the sea snail called cowrie. It has cottages, cabanas and pavilion, ideal for picnics and swimming. Different water activities were also available like the jet ski ride, banana boat, flying saucer and kayaking. We stayed there for an hour or less and enjoyed our Palawan moments.
It was around 3:00 PM when we head back to the hotel and prepared for our flight back to Manila. This is another thing that i really liked about Marianne Home Inn. Supposedly our check out time is 12:00 noon but they let us use one-room and even generous enough to let us use 2 shower rooms so we could take a bath and prepare for our way home. Superb customer service and if given a chance to go back to Puerto Princesa I’d stay in Marianne Home Inn again. Really had a very good experience their.
So there it is! I hope you enjoyed reading my 2-day Palawan escapade. Bitin right? But it was indeed an unforgettable first-time Palawan experience. I will have a separate post about all destinations mentioned above so, wait for it.
