Asia

  • Nirwana Beach Club Review

    Nirwana Beach Club Review

    You come from a long flight from Europe or North America and and in Singapore. You want to fight off your jetlag in a quiet, peaceful environment. What do you do? Well, you go on an overnight stay in Bintan Island, Indonesia, in an effort to get some peace, quiet, and calm before the city sightseeing. After all, you spent nearly 24 hours on the flight just to reach the exotic islands of Asia from the US, right? Nirwana Beach Club Bintan Indonesia (Review) Bintan Island is convenient enough to go to from Singapore. The ferry is within a 10 minute taxi or a 20 minute bus ride from Changi…

  • Money Lessons Learned from Crazy Rich Asians

    Money Lessons from Crazy Rich Asians

    Here are some money lessons I learned while reading the book, and watching the film, Crazy Rich Asians. After all, who says that fiction is just there to entertain? It's also there to learn lessons from!

  • Applying for Irish Visa

    Ireland Visa Application for Philippine Passports

    Another day, another drama, another chapter in my love/hate relationship with my Philippine passport. What started out as a great deal from the US to Ireland is giving me more of a headache than I could have ever imagined, and made me wish in part that I wasn’t going to Ireland (or other visa countries) and used this time to travel somewhere else that’s visa free for my passport, like Ecuador or Peru. So let me recount to you my experience with the Ireland Visa Application. Ireland Visa Application for Philippine Passports To start off, I hold a green card to the United States, but I’m still a Philippine passport…

  • Things to do in Manila

    Things to do in Manila – Experiences from A Westerner

    We never know where we end up in life.  Sometimes you wander into a bar looking for a drink. Sometimes you stumble into a country on the other side of the world. The two events are different, but not unrelated. I grew up in Europe (Slovakia, to be more precise), lived most of my adult life in the United States, and, last year, married a Filipina.  That's not a trajectory that I could have predicted when I threw rocks into ditches as a 9-year old in Slovakia. I've visited the Philippines a few times now as a westernized adult, and it is quite an interesting place.  It is marketed as…