Back to Work (January 29, 2019)

I’m back from my mini-vacation! All in all, I got to visit the following places this time around: Iloilo City, Guimaras Island, Bacolod, and Camiguin Island.

It was awesome to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life (as usual), but as I mentioned in the last post, I left behind a lot of unfinished work, this time around…

I really wish I had been able to wrap up the finishing touches of my latest eBook endeavour, but it’s just taking a whole lot longer than expected…

Anyway, it is what it is…

While I was away, I still did my best to (especially) enjoy the sights and sound of island life.

Can’t say I “deserved” this trip, per se, but this was something that I had planned and booked awhile ago…

As you probably are well aware, early FI (and life in general) is all about trying to find the right balance with everything…

Easier said than done, but I will say breathing in fresh air and feeling the cool breeze is quite therapeutic…

And lots of good eats!

Mango pizza and mango shake from The Pitstop…

Iloilo City has some legit restaurants, like Netong’s (for the batchoy).

The original shop…

Here it is…

And the “more expensive + smaller portion” but more modern-looking branch…

Here’s what I mean by “smaller portion”…

Madge Cafe is also a must try in Iloilo City… My favorite coffee experience in all the Philippines (so far)…

The original shop…

Iced coffee + menu.

Iced coffee was “meh” at the original branch, but the hot coffee (strong) was super legit…

At the new shop…

Have to say, I prefer hot coffee from the original branch…

But the iced coffee at the modern branch was better IMHO…

In Bacolod, it’s all about chicken inasal, like from Aida’s.

Chicken paa.

With that said…

While I was away from Manila, it really started to hit me:

Despite all of its natural beauty, friendly faces, cheap prices, and all-in-all good life vibes that the Philippines has to offer, I’m understanding why the islands here don’t attract all that many tourists and digital nomads; the internet is usually pathetically slow…

Like, sloooooooow to the point of feeling hopeless just trying to send a photo message, sometimes even basic text… I mean, during the trip, it’s like each city I visited offered one poor internet connection after another… Things were pretty bad in Iloilo City, to downright non-existent in Guimaras Island and Camiguin Island (I guess not altogether that surprising to the locals)…

Nope, you can just about forget connecting with the the rest of the world way out here…

From my own experience, I guess Bacolod had the fastest and most reliable internet, but it wasn’t all that much to write home about, in any event…

I guess in some ways I was surprised, and in others not as much… With Guimaras Island and Camiguin Island I wasn’t expecting anything blazingly fast while visiting these sparsely populated islands, but didn’t think internet here would be completely unworkable/unreliable, either… For the cities I visited, Iloilo City and Bacolod, I really thought the internet connection here would be similar to what you’d find in Manila. Maybe I got unlucky, but the places I stayed at and visited usually had stuff slower than just launching a personal hotspot from my phone and using my mobile dataplan, instead.

Anyway…

Well, now I’m back in the city and ready to get back at it! Probably still got a few thousand more words to hash out, but one step at a time…

Fight On!