It doesn't work without a mall either ;-) (Day 131 of the world trip)

01/13/2020

Chilling won :O Rather boring for potential readers but I think it was good for both Jonas and me :p

Jonas developed a cold overnight, we were both quite tired and so we decided to plan our next travel destination <33

So, with a bit of vitamins from our popular fruit vendor, we got to work: after the five days of Borneo, the Philippines follow!

Originally we wanted to do Australia, New Zealand, Fiji but decided against it for cost reasons. The Fijis in particular were a dream for Jonas. Once South Sea feeling ^ ^

As a compromise, he chose the Philippines. They're tropical too, they're islands and you can do a variety of activities there, especially on and in the water!

Since the Philippines also consists of thousands of islands, it is not so easy to choose which islands you want to visit :p

Last month's terrible natural disasters and the current volcanic eruption "helped" a little, so we'll probably limit ourselves to the central islands. But I don't want to spoil too much - it should remain exciting :D :D

Since you also (allegedly) need a return or onward flight ticket when entering the country, we had to estimate how long we would like to stay in the Philippines and have now decided for almost three weeks for various reasons :)

When that was certain, we wanted to book the first accommodation and the onward flight. It was now 11:30 a.m. or so and then suddenly the internet was gone again! :O When planning a trip like this, it's quite unfavorable ;-)

We gave the internet a bit of time, but when there was still no signal after half an hour, we spontaneously decided that we would go to a cafe for business :D :D

Our best first choice was Starbucks. After all, from there you know the clichéd images of laptops and coffee on the table^^ We also knew where it was because it's in the mall that we used to pass on our way to the bus station.

When I got there, I was shocked to see that every drink there costs as much as our dinner dishes. Oops :D :D

First we set up the laptop and tried to connect to the WLAN there. When it didn't work, we kindly asked the barista but he couldn't help us either :(

A little disappointed we reduced our camp and left the cafe quite cheeky without ever having ordered ^^

But since we were then in the mall, we first walked around hoping for another place that could provide us with WiFi :D

A few minutes later it was clear that there probably wouldn't be a spot in this mall. I took at least a few photos of the mall to make the walk worthwhile and Jonas suggested we only go to the pharmacy because he wants to buy blister plasters.

For some reason I was quite depressed that the internet hadn't worked out. I was so looking forward to the planning <3 :O

To cheer myself up a bit, I bought a packet of Oreo cookies from the promising "Happy Mart" with a smiley face logo. They're not the same as "regular" chocolate chip cookies, but they served their purpose.

While I munched on the unnecessary snack, my mood improved and we headed for the fourth of the malls here instead of a pharmacy. We hadn't been in this one the first time and to our delight it looked far more inviting than the others!

There was even a pharmacy, but although the saleswoman knows blister plasters very well, she unfortunately couldn't show off with them :(

Instead, we passed a mobile phone shop that advertised “Phones, Coffee, Internet”. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a table with bar stools and wanted to give it a try.

We ordered Jonas a hot chocolate so that we wouldn't come by as a non-paying customer just to surf the web ;-) and when we addressed the WLAN, it worked straight away!!

The password wasn't hard to guess with "password123" but I hadn't received it until after I bought the cocoa, so we felt better :)

For the next three hours (!!!) we researched, compared flights and thought about what's going on :D

It really felt like "work" :p

The result was a flight from the Philippines to Taiwan, accommodation there, and a flight from Taipei to Los Angeles.

The fact that the whole thing took so long is due to comparing flights. You first look at the well-known portals momondo.de or skyscanner.de. Then we look at the airlines themselves and you had to see whether you should book all the flights in one go or rather everything separately. You constantly calculate against and yes :D :D

I really enjoy throwing myself into the planning, but at some point Jonas in particular got tired and had a headache, so we slowly made our way back ;-)

Back at the hostel the internet was back and we booked another flight and another accommodation, applied for a visa and yeah. So the day was very “successful” :D

A bit tired we went to the nearest restaurant/cafe, had a small meal and then bought food for tomorrow.

Now Jonas is packing his things (I'm already done - #panniers ;-) ), because tomorrow we're going to get up at 4:30 am.

Our flight to Borneo leaves at 7:00 am, the drive to the airport takes about half an hour. Since we didn't want to rely on the Grab app so early in the morning (you also need internet for that, which isn't always available here), we asked our hostess if she had any ideas.

Luckily she has her own Grab driver who will pick us up here tomorrow morning at 5am at a great price. I actually thought that was pretty tight in itself but the airport in Penang is supposed to be very small so hopefully everything goes well :D :D

The driver even initially suggested picking us up at 5:30 a.m. :O But then even Jonas said that that was a bit too close for him ;-)

For the equivalent of one euro more we will (hopefully) be picked up here tomorrow at 5:00 am. Let's see if it works ^^