Mermaid lessons in Boracay!

We touched down in Boracay back in September and us food girls that like to save our calories for food, were delighted to discover San Miguel light at the airport....only 100 calories, we loved the Philippines already! Boracay itself is absolutely beautiful! It reminded us of Gili T only prettier, bigger, less busy and much cheaper. A large bottle of rum costs less than a bottle of mixer at just 85p!

 Nightlife

All the nights out we had in Boracay were really fun. We stayed in station 2 on White beach which is in the middle of 1 and 3 but all the bars on either side are in walking distance. If you plan on going out a lot, ideally you want to stay on this side of the island. There's a little reggae bar that we went to every night which plays really good music and beers are the cheapest we found at just 50p. There's also a bar called Epic which has a ladies night where cocktails are 50 pesos each. There's loads of other bars dotted around but one of the only ones that stays open until late is Summer place which you have to pay to get into after a certain time, probably around midnight.

Accommodation

Accommodation wise we stayed at Facebook resort which is nice, inexpensive, in the center of everything and the owner is lovely. He even posted us an item we left behind to another country free of charge! You also get a TV in your room which is perfect because the Philippines has HBO which shows really good films.

Mermaid lessons

Probably one of the best days we've had travelling was spent becoming mermaids in Boracay! For £20 you get fitted with a mermaid tail and are taken for a 2 hour mermaid lesson in the sea which includes learning how to swim in different strokes, learning some tricks and a photoshoot. I'd love to say we looked elegant and graceful but waves and sea water kind of took any potential elegance away, we absolutely loved it though. It definitely gave people walking past something to look/ laugh at and we even had a man come and ask our teacher to give him a lesson!

Food

Food wise Boracay has pretty much everything you could want. Station 2 has a seafood market where you can buy your seafood and choose one of the restaurants to cook it for you in your style of choice. Shakeys does really nice salads and pizzas, Army Navy is good for greasy hangover food and Spider house sells fresh sushi and wraps. I'd definitely recommend a visit to Spider house even if you don't fancy eating. It's a little bar/ restaurant which looks like a tree house in a cliff. It's just past station 1 and the walk involves walking through little caves and over pretty beaches. One of it's main features is that you can jump straight from the restaurant into the sea where there are turtles swimming beneath.

Next stops

Our next destination after Boracay was Iloilo for a quick stop over. Another amazing thing about the Phillipines is the fact that their coaches show films which makes a journey go so much quicker! After Iloilo we had to take an overnight boat to Cebu sleeping in a huge room with 240 beds (made for really tiny people) and a bunch of noisy chickens, can't say that's the best journey we've ever done! On the plus side the lady at the port was lovely enough to order us a KFC delivery before we got on board so at least we weren't travelling hungry!

Singapore, the home of Universal Studios, ice cream sandwiches and ladies night!

 

Singapore is such an amazing city! As soon as I arrived I knew that, despite the fact i would get fined $500 for eating on the MRT,  I could most definitely see myself living there. It's a really westernised country, insanely clean, has signs everywhere encouraging you to love and care for each other and their dessert of choice.... ice cream in bread!

Before coming away everyone told us how expensive Singapore is but compared to England it's still really cheap (it's just more expensive than other parts of Asia such as Thailand etc). We spent a total of 5 nights in Singapore and we planned it really well and ended up only spending around £150/ £170 including accommodation, day trips, a night out, a bit of shopping and even getting shellac manicures (only around £5).

Accommodation

Our accommodation, Footprints hostel is a really good place to stay. We booked it quite far in advance which meant that we were only paying around £6 for weeknights which included breakfast. They have a TV area and lots of films, WIFI and good showers. The only thing we didn't like is that they won't turn the aircon on until 7pm which meant us having to do our makeup hanging out of a window to stop it sweating straight off. It also makes the room smell like teenage boy in the day times too, yuk!

Things to do

Singapore is a really beautiful city at night so a chilled out evening can be spent just walking around looking at all the brightly lit buildings and the Gardens by the Bay. Desperate to have our photo taken in the famous infinity pool, we tried sneaking onto the roof of the Marina Bay Sands hotel and as a last resort, even contemplated booking a $48 chocolate buffet with the idea that we could jump into the pool after. However the potential embarrassment of being caught and chucked out made us change our minds. One day when we are rich we will come back and have beautiful infinity pool photos!

If you have some spare time during the day I'd recommend a visit to the Changi museum, it's free entry and will teach you about the WW2 and the Japanese occupation.You can get the MRT pretty much everywhere in Singapore which really helps save some money compared to having to take taxis. Their version of an oyster card, an EZ link card is really handy as it makes all of your journeys cheaper. You get your deposit back at the end of your trip too.

Singapore was our first experience of ladies night and sorry guys but it's such an amazing invention and a great reason to be female! Once a week (Wednesdays in Singapore) ladies can drink for free in a number of bars and gain access to clubs for free after. The Exchange gives out free apple martinis until a certain time at night at which point you can head over to Clarke Quay where a number of the bars there participate in ladies night. Shanghai dolly gives all ladies any 3 drinks for free and has live performers on a big stage at the front. Attica was one of our favorites where you get given a bunch of coupons that can be exchanged for any drink you like. Once you've finished drinking at all the bars, definitely head to Zouk for the rest of the night which is a really amazing club. I'm guessing a normal night out in Singapore could be quite pricey but thanks to being female all we paid for was taxis..... well knowing us we probably ended the night with some sort of delicious food too!

We brought a joint ticket to Universal studios and the night safari for around $100 at the airport. The safari is really good, you take a tram around half of the park and walk the rest to see snakes, crocodiles, bears, lions, tigers, sloth bears etc. They also put shows on where the animals do tricks such as finding grapes and sorting and recycling bottles. 

Our absolute favorite day in Singapore was spent at Universal studios pretending we were 10 years old again! Although the big roller coaster was closed, the rides we did go on were so much more fun than usual theme park rides. The Transformers 3D simulator was one of our favorites as well as the Shrek 4D show and the mummy ride where I spent the whole 5 minutes laughing at Jen screaming! We tried our best to hunt down the characters to have photos with but seeing as Shrek ran away from Aimee we only managed to find Pinocchio.

Food 

We spent our last day in Singapore shopping at the indoor markets and eating in Little India. We went to Komala Vilas, a vegetarian restaurant in little India and it was one of the best meals we have had out here and probably the best Indian meal I've ever had! After we saw a stall with a long queue selling Indian desserts so brought a ball made up of coconut, nuts and dried fruit, it was delicious!

 

The Hawker stalls all sell really good inexpensive food as well. A meal usually cost us around $4 so we ate from these most of the days. If you feel like splashing out the buffet at the Marina Bay Sands looked amazing but was unfortunately out of our price range!