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Hey guys, I'm Lan, living in Ho Chi Minh City.
Me and my friend, Anh had a memorable vacation in Philippines.
We spent 10 days in Palawan, Sagada and Manila.
I hope our story will be useful if you're planning to visit this beautiful country
or at least it sounds interesting to you. But firstly I'd like to share you guys a
few things I should prepare before the trip.
The currency used there is Philippines pesos. 1 USD is approximately 52 pesos.
I think should make a budget for your daily needs and exchange enough cash do that I
list down here some basic expenses that you may want to prefer
A basis meal costs around 100 to 150 pesos. I found this price in most of cafes and small restaurants.
Drinking bottled water price's between 20 to 40 pesos for a bottle,
as you can see here.
Motorbike rental is between 450 - 700P a day while gas is about 55P/liter.
If you wanna book tours, you should include the tour fee in your budget plus an environmental fee.
The price can be easily found in the Internet
For example this is tour and environmental fee in El Nido.
If you wanna go for 2 or more tours, you just have to pay the environmental fee once.
Just keep the invoice in case they ask you for this fee you can submit the invoice.
Those are some basic expenses. In additional, you will need more money for
public transportation, shopping, extra meals, etc.
So please build your budget carefully and
remember to bring a Visa or MasterCard. Even though sometimes it's not easy to find an ATM.
El Nido is more expensive than other places.
Managing time and expense is very important.
Especially when you travel with a tight budget or your vacation isn't too long.
In this case a good itinerary would help.
You can input time to go, where to go and also write notes.
For online booking, it'd be better if we print out our flight or bus tickets
because if there is something accidentally happens to our phones or emails,
we still have a copy of the tickets.
You should do the same things with maps .
Traffic in Manila is like wars. Using LRT or MRT is a good choice.
I printed out the LRT & MRT route maps, as well as the airport terminal maps.
If it's possible, you should also print the tourist maps of the destination you wanna go
Standing in front of amazing islands, I believe everyone wants to take photos.
A DSLR or mirrorless camera would give stunning pictures.
But to a non-professional like me
I can't use it all power. Plus, I don't wanna spend most of the time to protect
and carry a heavy camera.
So, I chose an action camera. Tiny size, wide angle, long battery life and
with the water resistant case, it's just perfect for snorkeling
My combination is an action camera for landscape photos and videos.
And a smartphone camera for selfie with friends or point-and-shoot photos.
I managed my bags under 7 kilograms for two reasons.
First, no need to check-in baggage.
I flight with Asia and according to their policy, I can
carry on my baggage if the total weight is not over 7 kilograms.
Skipping this check-in baggage saved a lot of time.
I didn't need to wait for my bags to be checked in
or wait to claim them back when I've arrived.
Save a lot of money as well.
The other reason is that I needed to walk a lot. Heavy bags would have been a big problem.
Bring less clothes, stuff that's designed for traveling and pack them all wisely.
That's it. Thanks for your watching, I hope it's helpful.
Next video will be my first day in Philippines.
Thanks again. See ya!