Adventure Accounting

I established this blog as a "shrine" for my adventures.  I've have travelled, since my last update - I took time to at least update my Adventure Accounts page. It's just...more difficult to really give trip details. Each blog post takes me approximately 4 hours to write, select and watermark photos, and recheck my excel file & trip notes. So two long and detailed blog posts equal to one working day. In the last couple of years, the rise of microblogging just made it easier to just skip a blogpost; because hey, there's your audience in FB or IG. I don't like to admit this, but there's a sense of "instant validation" when others do like your travel update post vs. waiting for someone to give a nice comment in your blog post (that took hours to write).  In between my March 2017 post and today, I've been busy being a postgraduate student in the UK (thru the Chevening scholarship), then I've travelled for 90 days to cover 11 count...

The United Kingdom (UK) may be in Europe but it is not included in the Schengen zone. You need to apply for a separate visa in the UK. I’ve always wanted to see London (because of Mary Poppins) but I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of applying and paying for another visa aside from Schengen. Since this was a family trip, I finally had the opportunity of visiting London. We had to apply for a UK visa first before applying for a Schengen visa in the French Embassy. The process is a bit similar to the US Visa application wherein you fill-out a long form, pay the visa fee, then schedule your application to submit your documents. Here’s the basic process: 1.    Create an account and fill-out application forms  here: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/uk-visas-and- immigration 2.    Pay for the visa fee - via credit card – USD 110 3.    Schedule the visa appointment in VFS Global UK 4.    Print and gather documents...

I am not a Schengen visa expert. I cannot assess your chance of getting a visa. I am only sharing what happened in my experience. Less than a year after my Europe III trip (which I haven’t blogged about), I found myself applying for my 4th Schengen visa. This was for our two-week family vacation in Europe in Italy, France and UK. Since we were staying at France the longest, we lodged our Schengen visa application with the French embassy. This time, we applied via the French Embassy . VFS Global handles the visa applications for the French embassy. I hope that before you found this blog, you already read the very informative website of VFS France in the Philippine s. Now if you haven’t, I suggest stop reading this blog entry for a while and go and click that link and spend some time reading the information there.

August was ending. It was almost two months after my trip to Central Europe and I was feeling restless. I had no planned trip for the rest of the year. Well I had plans of exploring Turkey with a friend but with the airport incident that happened in June, we got scared. So no plans. But I wanted an adventure. It came down to Taiwan. I flushed round-trip tickets that I got for Php 3K back in 2014 because I wasn't up for temples and siomai after my two-week trip in China . So bye bye Taiwan and tickets. But this was two years after C hina, so I think I get have another do se of China, or its territory (Ooops not! *prickly point of contention*) . Moving on. I booked tickets with EVA air. Airfare costs $102 which includes meals and 20kg baggage allowance. T hat is a deal ! That rate is not even a promo rate. I decided to be a "kinda-maintenance" passenger and ordered vegetarian meals for my flights. The flight attendants take not e of your seat number....

In history and Game of Thrones, the armies conquer the lands by invading and raiding. The conquered village bow down to their new lord. I have no army. I have no desire to conquer land.  Nowadays, the game is in the domain name.  That is easier to conquer. After 6 years of travel blogging, I finally bought  www.adventureaccounting.com. I availed of the promo rate of GoDaddy for the first year (Php 53) and got some discounted offer for the next two years. Overall, I paid Php 970 for three years (note that the first year is a discounted rate).  The link redirects you to my blogspot page. As of now, I have no plans of putting the effort in getting my own hosting. It took me 6 years to decide to buy my own domain, so it will probably take a while before I get my own host.

Cubao memories... When I was a kid, my mom took me to Fiesta Carnival frequently. I don't remember every ride we took but I remember we were there frequently. (RIP Fiesta Carnival). When I was a teenager, my highschool classmates and I used to hang-out in the new Gateway when we were all sick and tired of SM North Edsa (Trinoma wasn't around back then). Over the years, Cubao just became a crowded MRT spot and a hotbed for pickpockets. An adventure in Cubao is not enticing. I did not want to explore. I did go to Cubao Expo once to check on the boots on sale in Janilyn but that's it. In my adult life, I just go to Cubao whenever there's an event or concert in Araneta Coliseum - oooh, it is now Smart-Araneta. :P   This time, a new attraction put Cubao back in the map. Art in Island is an Interactive Art Museum located right beside the Cubao Expo complex (or is it really part of it?). The museum allows visitors to interact with the art pieces. I've had my fai...

I should probably start blogging about this now. Grad school starts in two weeks. My blogging mojo has an erratic life. I have backlogs from my China 2014 trip. It is difficult to blog about the past and plan for the next trip at the same time. It is difficult to keep up with myself (Char!). So here we go. Europe again. Can you blame me? Crafting this itinerary took considerably less time that the previous two EU trips I did. I didn’t feel that I “have to” hit a specific place just because I am in Europe. This time, I focused on Central Europe and did not travel via plane intra-Europe. I stuck with trains. This is also the first time that I am travelling Europe during summer. The table below is the itinerary I presented in my visa application. I just added additional columns for the contact details of the hostels.