After two years of pining after the land of F4, the Taipei 101 and the birthplace of the milk tea — I finally had the courage to go for it and book a trip to Taipei. Actually, the cheapo tickets from Cebu Pacific and the upcoming birthday of my constant travel partner, my sister The Queen. Apparently, her mantra nowadays is to celebrate her birthday anywhere as long as it’s not in the Philippines.

I am again her plus one, her constant navigator and her travel research fiend. This time, we made a challenge to ourselves to limit our spending to PHP15,000 for the whole trip (roughly less than USD400). This means that I have less than 2 months to research and plan for the trip, including the visa requirements.

Maybe what gave me courage to go ahead and just throw caution (again) to the wind is the trip to Korea. Whenever I get doubts about my ability to see a particular place, I always refer to the time when I had almost zero money in the bank and was still able to go to a place I could only dream of.