There was no work today, because of the super typhoon and knowing I will not wake up early, I have decided to sleep late in the evening last night, to tweak and changed my blog’s theme and as you can see, my blog is wearing a new theme.

I have posted it in my social account and my fellow bloggers, reminiscence their blogs and blogging life back then, as  they already stopped blogging and let their domain names expired. It was the same for me, I let some of my precious domain name goes, because I can’t maintained them anymore. It was heartening to let them go, but it was for the better, I let my two travel blogs, photography, pet and food blogs expired. I choose to maintain three blogs, and I almost lost them a few months ago, but with the help of my facemask business at work, I am able to pay and renew my domain and pay my hosting monthly, as to this day.

The Blogger Theme

Anyway, my new theme was the theme I won from a blogging/writing contest back then, it was designed for blogger platform, but I tweaked it into a wordpress theme. What do you think?

We have been traveling in Eastern Europe for almost three weeks already,  we went from Hungary to Slovakia and now we are in Torun, Poland.  We stayed five days in Krakow and took an 8 hour bus ride to Torun, there’s nothing much to see in Torun aside from the old town, churches and museums.  So after visiting two museums today and walking again in the old town (as we already wandered yesterday) we called it a day and headed back to our hotel to rest, we are heading to Gdanks tomorrow.

[Krakow, Poland]

I should be blogging in my main travel blog but it was stuck in Jeju, Korea blame it to procrastinated me. (Ha-ha), anyway while looking around my facebook page I have stumbled to a link shared by a friend about a blog of  two travel buddies who are disappointed/sick with Filipino food – I Would Rather Go Hungry Than Eat Filipino Street Food Again! Not new to me, my husband is not please with Filipino food either,  I will wait until he try an authentic Filipino restaurant. Lol!

Well, I admire their courage to eat street food because I would not eat street food unless I knew the vendor or person cooking it is better to be safe than sorry. It is like you travel to India and commit stomach suicide (errr Delhi belly)  by eating street food,  I am not sure if they do proper research before heading to Philippines or even try to use a lonely planet guide on their trip, because it is quite unbelievable that they are not able to try longganisa if they went to Ilocos (as I have read in few comments) you can get these famous longganisa in the street of Vigan and they even have their famous empanada with longganisa. Even if they didn’t go to Vigan they can find longganisa in every wet market of the Philippines, they are all hanging like a wall decor in every meat stalls. So quite interesting they are not able to get one unless they really went to convenient store to look for longganisa, you know it is like buying  a loaf a bread in a pharmacy and buying  a medicine in a bakery.

Well if they stay in a hotel/hostel they should ask the information desk where to get traditional food if their travel guide (book) doesn’t say so or a simple question to Mr. Google is already a big help.  Asking people in the street is like asking for direction, some people knew and some people don’t.  If they want to Filipino street food like balut they can get them in the local market, just look for egg stalls and ask for balut but of course they have to boil them themselves unless they found a street vendor walking in the street shouting “balut! balut!” you can find balut vendor from 5pm till midnight.

Most Filipino eat heavy breakfast, consist of fried rice, fried eggs, longganisa and tuyo (fried dried fish) or tapa. If they want to eat Filipino breakfast they should went to tapsilugan or Chowking, Greenwich and McDonalds to order tapsilog, longgilog and more (see more varieties here).

Furthermore, I have read they want to eat like locals, but sad to say they failed. Filipino foods like adobo, sinigang, kare-kare, nilaga, bulalo, sisig are mostly cooked at home and can be found in a medium scale restaurants or large restaurants. Mostly Filipinos will not eat food they can easily cooked at home, so if you went to turo-turo (point-point restaurant), you will mostly see menudo, dinuguan, afritada, bopis and taghilaw or those food that you can only eat during birthdays, wedding and feast season. If you really want to eat well prepared food be ready to spend some shackles, further more if they are really in their tight budget or trying to spend $25 a day, malls in the Philippines has food courts where they can try different foods local and not.  Eat wisely,  eating in the street of South East Asia is not like eating in the street of Europe! Saving money while traveling doesn’t mean eating bluntly and sacrificing your health.

Originally posted on March 21, 2014 @herztravel

Growing your own food isn’t a rocket science, it is very simple when you have the desire and will to do it. As a kid, I grew up with my family doing backyard gardening, to sustain our daily needs at home.  We planted string beans, egg plants and ladies fingers, which became very helpful to us, because having a harvest means free meal or viand.

Today, my father still do backyard gardening and it was very beneficial to us in health and somehow in our food expenses, as it saves us from buying fruits and vegetables which are present in my father’s garden.  Growing vegetables at home does cost a bit on seeds and supplies, as we don’t have a large backyard, most often my parent’s plant vegetables on empty cans and bags.

The other day, my father came home  with ripe papayas after tending his garden, as we still have the pineapple he harvested the previous day, and the bananas he harvested a week ago, which was keep in our old fridge to ripe, we took photo of it, amaze what a simple gardening can do.

Since we can’t eat them all, my father brought some of the fruits to his employer’s house to share, which he always did.  They were very kind and helpful to us, and even treat my family just like no other. When my grandmother died, they’re the one who lend us a large sum of money without batting an eyelashes, so we could all go home for my grandmother’s funeral, they also give work to my father, even it wasn’t needed, so it is just right to share our blessings to good people, right?