Nate and Kara Buchanan's travel day falls apart: no surfing due to weather, a power outage at their resort, and a long conversation with a German couple. They're heading to Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, and Yangon over the next month, routing through lounges when they can.
January 27, 2016
Around February 25
Philippines → Singapore (4 days) → Hong Kong (4 days) → Taipei → Kuala Lumpur → Yangon (Myanmar)
We've been sitting here all morning. Kara is currently setting the record for the longest vlog ever. We're now putting together small TV shows. I think this one tops 15 minutes.
I just got it under 15 minutes.
Good job.
I don't want to bore you.
While she's been working on the vlog, I've been trying to figure out what we're gonna do with the next three weeks. The original plan was to go to Kuala Lumpur, but because of Chinese New Year, everything is way more expensive than I thought it was gonna be. So we might be rearranging some of our travel. I've been looking at going to Hong Kong this morning because there's some fun lounges and business class flights on the way there. Plus, I've been and Kara hasn't, so she needs to go see it. We'll see. This has been our morning.
Well, we wasted the first half of it. Another day.
All I've done is work on yesterday's vlog, which was really long. So sorry. It was just so action packed.
It was.
So that's why today is going to be really boring, because we don't want to overload you with content. So we're gonna go back to the beach, attempt to surf again. All right, plan B. The wind has picked up, as you can tell, and so Nate went back to get our tacos, and we are going to explore the low tide again. Laying on the beach didn't last very long. A creep came and talked to me, so we got up to go on a walk instead. Yeah, so we're gonna go check out this really cool church that we saw overlooking the ocean.
Let's go.
What a backdrop for a church service.
We should renew our vows here.
One day.
The ocean is right there off that cliff. Let's go look at it.
I'm sure you can't appreciate them because they're in the background, but these waves back here are massive. Probably the biggest I've ever, ever seen in my entire life. I'll try to show you.
Well, if it's raining, today really hasn't gone as planned. So we're gonna go back to the res.
Some days when you're traveling, just don't go as planned. Today we had several things planned, and then it rained, and just stuff didn't work out.
We just decided we were gonna call it a day, go back to the resort, and I was gonna work on the vlog. Nate was gonna figure out our next few weeks of travel and do some booking because that really needs to be done since we are leaving in two. So we come back to find that our power is out and so is everyone's power on the whole island. And they couldn't make us dinner unless the power came back on. And all we had eaten were all those snacks that we showed you. And so I was a little hangry, a little frustrated.
It was just, like, adding one more frustrating thing to the day. It ended up being pretty cool because there was a German couple that was here with us as well when the power was out, and neither one of had anything to do. So we ended up striking up a conversation and talked for, like, two hours. We compared, like, the differences between the US And Germany and, like, got to see the Germans view of Americans, and then, you know, they wanted to know the Americans view of Germans. And so it ended up being, like, this really cool time of the first time we've been able to, like, really connect with other travelers.
So I was glad that we had a happy ending to our day of dead ends.
And I hope this doesn't come off like, we're complaining because we know that we are super lucky to be able to get to travel, but we never want to try to make something look way better than it really was.
Every day of travel is not going to be glorious and fun. Boring days happen and unfortunate days happen. We want to share those days, too, and not just the good stuff.
Yeah, we want to share, like, the real side of travel.
Yeah, today was real.
Real annoying.
The power eventually came back on, and I got to book everything for the next month of travel, which I agonized over for about three days, trying to figure out exactly where we wanted to go and what the best use of our miles and points were. And I'm really pumped about the next month. Me too. Now I'll show you where we're going. I am going to bet that when I zoom out, this is going to have to load again, just completely frozen. We're going to find better Internet so we can show you where we're going. All right. We have better Internet, but we do have some extra background music because we're in the restaurant of our resort. So we are currently here in the Philippines, and tomorrow will be for flying to Singapore. Gonna spend four days in Singapore, and then the plan was to go right up here to Kuala Lumpur, but since it's Chinese New Year, everything is more expensive than we planned on it being. So instead of going there right now, we're gonna fly from Singapore all the way up to Hong Kong, and we're gonna spend four days there. After that, we head over to Taipei, Taiwan. From there we're gonna fly back down to Kuala Lumpur. And then from Kuala Lumpur, we're gonna fly to Yagon in Myanmar. We get to Yangon around February 25th. So that's like the next month of our travels. And that's what you can look forward to watching. Kara, where are you looking forward to going most?
Oh, gosh, you put me on the spot. Add the places you just named or total.
Yeah. The next month, what are you looking forward to?
I should have paid more attention.
Kara just learned where we're spending the next month.
I'm most curious about Taiwan. Why don't you tell us about Taiwan, Nate? Why are we going there?
Well, I think it's going to be a cool country, but that's not how it started. So there is an awesome first class airline lounge in Hong Kong. It's the Cathay Pacific first class lounge. I went there on my mileage run at the end of last year and it's like the most amazing lounge I've ever been to. And we can get access to it if we're flying a one world airline out of Hong Kong. And the only one world flight that was available and reasonable was Taipei. So we started going to Taipei just so we could access the first class lounge in Hong Kong. But I think it's going to be a really cool city too.
Hope so.
And it's an extra country.
We know nothing about this country.
I've done like a little bit of research to know that it's semi safe.
It.
