Category Archives: Travel

First world problems: Bad food at CLT airport, the wait list that keeps you waiting at the CLT American Express Centurion Lounge

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Trying to eat “healthy” while on the road, especially for work, can be really challenging. You often hear of people who travel frequently on business say that it’s hard to eat a well-balanced diet when you are constantly on the go. Even when you think you may be choosing the “healthy” option, hidden *extra* things like fats, sugars, and weird thickeners and preservatives lace your food with all the nasty things you’d ideally like to avoid.

When I got to CLT yesterday, I wanted to get some kind of fruit in, but I wasn’t sure how to do this. I scanned all the food options in the “plaza” area of CLT around the E gates, and I found an acai bowl stand. That sounded promising, I initially thought. I went up to the stand, decided on a protein acai smoothie, added some mango, and ordered. But when I took the first sip, I almost gagged.

“Is there added sugar in this?” I asked the employee who made it for me. It tasted like there were several tablespoons of sugar added to this. Acai is not naturally sweet at all; mango and berries would also not have made this that sweet. So where the heck was the intense sugar hit coming from?

She shrugged her shoulders. “I just followed the proportions,” she said to me nonchalantly.

I hate wasted food. It’s ingrained in my DNA; it’s almost like I feel pain in my body when I have to throw food out. As a young child, I got lectured and yelled at more times than I can count by both my paternal grandma and my mom that they grew up with barely enough food, so Ed and I were lucky to have more than enough to eat every single day. So even if food didn’t taste good, we were still expected to eat and finish it. So, I ended up drinking the rest of that likely-refined-sugar-laden acai smoothie. I rationalized it in my head as, well… I barely ate anything else today, so who really cares if this is what my body has to feed off of today?!

Chris kept reminding me to go to the American Express Centurion Lounge at CLT because last year, he signed me up for an American Express Platinum card (for a big bonus that he insisted was worth it), and one of the perks was that I could get airport lounge access (when I wasn’t with him, since I get access when traveling with him due to his Qantas status). I checked the status of the lounge online, obtained the QR code, and went to the front desk. And then, I very politely got turned away because the front desk guy told me they could let me in only up to three hours ahead of my flight; I was there 3.5 hours ahead of my departure time.

I know this sounds spoiled, but wow. I felt like such a pleb in that moment. I just got turned away from an airport lounge when I was supposed to have this shiny card that would get me access. AHHHHHH.

So after twenty minutes (and eating a subpar sandwich for dinner), I went back into the AmEx app to see if I could generate a new QR code. Well, I had no such luck: I had to get on the wait list. I put my name in, and I got a confirmation I was on the wait list. And well… 1.5 hours later, I never got off the wait list. By that time, I had to walk 12 minutes to a different concourse to get to my gate to board. The entire experience was miserable, unsavory, and definitely did NOT scream “premium experience” whatsoever. Or maybe I’m just annoyed and cranky because this entire travel experience thus far has been awful, and I’m getting older and just feel like I am losing patience for situations like this.

Too many people have this American Express platinum card. Unfortunately, as classist as it sounds, you just cannot create premium experiences for everyone. Because if everyone has access to the premium experience, then it is no longer a true premium experience. Chris poked fun at me, saying that I am just spoiled now by always having access to fancy lounges through him. That’s probably true. When you have nice things… you kind of get used to them.

Maybe I am truly a capitalist after all.

Flight cancellation, terrible service, and an unexpected overnight stay in Charlotte

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I guess I spoke too soon. After five delay notifications and my flight getting pushed back to 8:30 from an original departure time of 3:50, AA officially cancelled the flight, stating that they did not have a complete flight crew and could not take this plane from Charlotte to Denver.

I immediately called the AA Executive Platinum desk. They said the earliest they could get me to Denver was 9pm Wednesday night. I would be missing an entire day (that’s 50 percent) of our entire program. I chatted with my manager, who suggested that I still come if I could fully participate in the sessions all day Thursday. Given our company’s getting acquired, this will be my company’s very last annual kickoff. If this weren’t the case, I might have seriously considered just going back to New York. But I wanted to be there for this, even half time, and I wanted to see my colleagues and attend Thursday night’s party. So I booked the flight tomorrow night. And as per usual because American Airlines’ service is just getting worse and worse, the phone agent told me the recorded reason for the cancellation was “weather,” and so unless a gate agent gave me a hotel voucher, they could not give me a hotel voucher over the phone. It’s always fun when AA lies on paper about the real reasons for a flight cancellation, but then gives blazingly loud announcements at the gate that it’s due to lack of flight crew. I saw the line at each of the gates — it was over two dozen people long, and there was no way I was getting in one of those lines without setting something on fire. My company could deal with my hotel. So, I got my corporate booking app to book me an airport hotel that I could stay at until Wednesday afternoon.

I got a Lyft at Charlotte to the airport hotel. After already being infuriated by this whole debacle, I immediately got even more annoyed when I realized no car had a front license plate. People can talk all they want about states like New York and California being nanny states, but you know what? FRONT AND BACK LICENSE PLATES MAKE SENSE AND ARE LOGICAL. North Carolina is clearly backwards here. When you see a sea of black and grey vehicles, and your Lyft is a grey sedan, how the hell are you supposed to tell them apart? Do you want me to go behind the vehicle and check? That is so inefficient and insane.

So I found my car and went behind him to check his license plate. I got into the car, and I said to the driver as soon as I sat down, “Do you know how ridiculous it is that your state doesn’t require front license plates? How am I supposed to know it’s you in a massive sea of grey and black vehicles?”

He responds, laughing, “Oh, I LOVE that North Carolina doesn’t require a front license plate! It’s not necessary. You found me, didn’t you?”

There went his rating. And that was an automatic “no-tip.” I don’t care if it sounds ruthless. I just told him that I found it difficult to find him, and he basically said to me in his own words, with zero empathy, “I’m so happy it was hard for you to find me!”

And it only got worse. When I got to the hotel, the line was over two dozen people long. Only one person was at the desk. The line eventually grew to over 50 people. And after almost thirty minutes of waiting, another hotel employee miraculously showed up to split the line in two. I think all of the people servicing me tonight were competing to see who could be the absolute worst.

I’m not sure how worse this night could have been. Why does our annual kickoff almost always have to be in Denver, and in JANUARY? Would it never make logical sense to make it in San Francisco, our actual company headquarters where the weather is always mild and temperate….?!

The continued effects of Winter Storm Fern: Delayed flights, accidents on the road, and an endless customer service line at the airport

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I woke up this morning to Chris telling me that my first connecting flight was delayed (a sign of his love: he monitors my flights even when he’s not flying with me). So I’d need to really hustle and run when I landed in Charlotte because my connection time between landing and boarding for my flight to Denver would be just minutes. And given the way the connections work at CLT, I’d typically land in one concourse and have to go all the way to a separate concourse, which would take at least 8-11 minutes at my usual speed-walking pace.

En route to the airport, my driver and I witnessed three different car accidents, all completely preventable and due to the idiocy and carelessness of drivers on the road. “Look at these people!” my driver exclaimed, exacerbated. “They’re driving and not even paying attention! It’s like they don’t realize there is SNOW and ICE on the road! Why can’t people just slow down? You should have seen how many accidents I saw happen on the road yesterday — I lost count!”

After I boarded my first flight, I got a notification that my connecting flight was also delayed. This wasn’t the end of the world: this small delay would mean I wouldn’t have to rush to my next gate. But then the news just kept getting worse and worse: another delay came, followed by a third, and then a fourth. At this point, my arrival time changed from 5:40pm all the way to 8pm local time. I was supposed to have a 7pm dinner reservation with a former colleague I haven’t seen since pre-pandemic. She had moved from San Francisco to Denver several years ago. She changed the reservation to 8pm to accommodate my first delay. But by the time the final delay notification came, I realized it would be far too late to meet up with her tonight, especially given that it’s quite a distance from Denver airport into downtown, so it would take time. I had no idea what the road conditions would be there, nor what traffic would be like at that time. We agreed to cancel dinner but to try to find a small window to meet for coffee or tea in the next two days.

I was disappointed, but I know I didn’t have it that bad relatively speaking. Everywhere I walked through Charlotte airport, I was overhearing horror stories of people’s massively delayed flights, cancellations, and re-routes. One guy said his connecting flight changed three times. Another person said she got rebooked on a flight in another six hours. The American Airlines customer assistance line in my current concourse was so long that it almost went into the main atrium!

As long as I get there tonight, I’ll be fine. These are the woes of air travel immediately after a major winter storm.

A good reason to go to Uniqlo in different countries: region-specific shirts!

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We don’t normally do a lot of shopping when we travel, whether it’s to other cities or countries. But occasionally, we do pop in to Uniqlo so Chris can see if they might have something he likes that he cannot easily get in the U.S. Uniqlos (Uniqlo is pretty much the ONLY store he shops at!). When we were in Denmark, we popped in to get an additional layering shirt for me because I was so cold my first two days there; we also got Kaia a puffer vest as an extra layer just in case. When we were there, though, we barely looked at anything other than layering items because we just wanted to get in and out. But what I wish we had done while there was to look at any potential region-specific shirts they might’ve had. Uniqlo makes region-specific print shirts in countries where they have a presence. For example in Japan, you can get shirts that call out specific cities like Tokyo or Osaka. In Hawaii, you can get shirts that have illustrations of Hawaiian specific foods, like spam musubi, poke bowls, and garlic shrimp. In Hong Kong, they have a fun limited edition shirt where the Hong Kong skyline was recreated using mah jong tiles (very culturally appropriate!). And when we were in the Philippines just over a week ago, they had shirts that I was compelled to buy that spoke to the local food!

When we saw the lineup of shirts while in Manila, I was super excited to see a “Mickey Mouse in the Philippines” theme that included Mickey Mouse in Davao eating durian, plus another Mickey Mouse in Binondo (Manila Chinatown) getting sugar cane juice from a sugar cane stand. It was like these two shirts were calling out to me, so I eventually decided to get both; where else was I going to get a shirt with durian on it?! It would be a rare goodie, and once again, a situation of “if you know, you know!” Most people either love or hate durian, but regardless, no one would assume they’d pass by someone on the street wearing a shirt with this loved/hated fruit on it. And with the sugar cane, I have loved sugar cane juice since I was introduced to it in the Vietnamese markets and malls of Westminster in Orange County, California, during my high school years. Most people know and recognize refined sugar, but sugar cane is the real deal, completely unrefined and pure right out of the freaking cane! I felt like this shirt was beckoning me to buy it! For Kaia, we got her two shirts that she selected: one was just a Hello Kitty shirt (not region specific, just Kaia specific!), while the second one was Mickey Mouse with mango (Philippines specific, definitely!).

While I probably don’t need more print shirts, especially after our Philippines trip, I will likely still want to stop by Uniqlo in other countries when we pass them just to see what the local prints are. It’s a fun way to get something “unique” and for the specific country you visited, but in a global store you recognize.

How the Southern hemisphere haul of food/fun items has evolved over time

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In the beginning when I’d go with Chris down to Australia for Christmas, I didn’t really have anything I really loved or wanted from down there, as I was getting acquainted with what was interesting there to bring back. So in our large checked bag back to New York, it was mostly things he wanted to bring back: his favorite snacks that cannot be sourced here, like Arnott’s biscuits (Tim Tams, obviously, but many other lesser known ones like Scotch Fingers, Mint Slices, Iced Vovos, TeeVee snacks), Arnott’s savory crackers like BBQ shapes, and The Natural Confectionary fruit snacks. He also has loyalty to certain brands of body products he uses, so he would always make a stop at Chemist Warehouse and bring back several of his favorite roller deodorants.

Eventually, though, I started finding things I liked a lot or knew I could get cheaper there, and the list of items to bring back expanded: in a few years time, I was making sure we brought back things like tea tree oil, which is native to Australia (and cheaper there than in the U.S.). It is used primarily for cleaning/disinfecting, but can also be used on the occasional pimple or bug bite. I also started finding brands of sunscreen I like there (they should at the very minimum make high quality sunscreen there, right?), so I would always make sure we brought back at least a handful of bottles of these. I also found brands of clothing I liked, like Peter Alexander for sleepwear and Kookai for clothing.

Then, we started finding things we liked together: a family-owned fruit wine shop up in Queensland, various wineries or distilleries that made wines and gin we fell in love with. The haul started increasing more and more over time (and weight of our bags, as well!).

Then, Pookster arrived, and the checked luggage items totally changed. The proportion of the luggage devoted to Chris’s Australian snacks decreased massively, much to his dismay, in favor of the birthday and Christmas gifts for Pookster that were given by his family and friends (which, to be frank, are dominated mostly by the endless piles of clothes lovingly chosen by his mom). Through Pookster, as well as through store credits from clothes that were gifted that were too small for Kaia, I discovered how much more fun it is to shop for children’s clothing in Australia: the clothes seemed to be of brighter colors (makes sense given the warmer climate), and who can resist Australian animals like koalas kids’ clothing? Where else in the world can you get a lightweight summer toddler dress covered in koalas, wombats, and echidnas wearing Santa hats?

This year, we brought back just two bottles of alcohol: a Four Pillars Christmas gin Chris’s parents gifted him, plus a bottle of reserve chardonnay from a winery where we had lunch with his cousins in Nelson, New Zealand. More of Chris’s Australian snack haul comes from Australian Costco, where this year, he picked up two big bags of The Natural Confectionary fruit snacks and chocolate covered honeycomb. Chris gets a prescription grade toothpaste for his old teeth. As written about previously, I am now getting 20% azelaic acid cream from there for my face to see if it helps with my sun spots! For Kaia, we bring back Panadol for kids, which is basically children’s Tylenol without the high fructose corn syrup (take that, United States pharmaceutical bullshit); different types of preventive cold medication and sunscreen, plus travel-sized bottles of kid-friendly things like lotion and toothpaste from natural children’s brands I like (I love Chemist Warehouse in Australia – it’s like a fun house for me!). We also get a standard sized box of Weetbix cereal for Kaia because she enjoys it; she’s a Weetbix kid!

The haul has evolved a lot over time, but I suppose needs evolve over time, and we’re all getting older, as well. When I remember, I try to take a photo of most of the things we bring back to document it each year (sometimes I forget, and other times, I feel frazzled with the seemingly endless amount of stuff brought back that I feel a neurotic urge to put everything away ASAP). Eventually, I might go through our photos and stack these specific photos over the years side by side for photographic evidence of how the haul has evolved over time. I think that would be quite fun and interesting to see!

Round robin of holiday highlights – back to the mundane

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After several weeks, I was on a team call this afternoon. Today was our first full day back from our month-long trip away, so it was definitely a mental adjustment for me. We started the call with a usual round-robin, and the topic was what our holiday highlights were. Our manager framed it as, “What was the most exciting thing you did during the holiday break?”

Let’s keep in mind that my company currently gives just Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day off as official company holidays during this period. New Year’s Eve is not a recognized company holiday. The company does not give Christmas Eve through New Year’s Day off like I hear a number of companies do even in the U.S. Back in my digital agency days, we had that entire week off (on top of accrued paid time off), and it was really nice to know that no one was actually online during that time. So whenever colleagues here refer to the “holiday break,” I always chuckle because… it’s not like our offices were closed for an entire week. What’s implied and understood, though no one wants to say it out loud, is that this is an extremely slow period, one during which the vast majority of our customer contacts are out. And being customer facing, if all our customers are away… that means we don’t have that much to do. We just need to monitor our inboxes, ensure any internal tasks are completed, and that’s it. So in reality, we’re not actually doing much work at all.

We went around the Zoom “circle,” and each person gave their update. It was mostly of the same theme: being happy to spend time with family, hosting Christmas or Christmas Eve dinner, taking kids to see X big event/show. I was the only one on the team who was away from home for this period. So when it was my turn, I said that my highlight was snorkeling in Cebu on New Year’s Day. The majority of my team doesn’t travel much at all (unless it’s a cruise), and they also don’t get excited to hear about other people’s travel plans. So their eyes mostly glazed over at my snorkeling activity. Fun.

I don’t expect everyone to travel, and I definitely don’t expect everyone to travel as much as we do. But in these moments, I do sometimes feel bored and get annoyed that everything with my colleagues can seem quite dull. I can’t really have that many interesting conversations about food, culture, or travel with anyone at work because most people don’t care about that stuff; it almost seems like a theme of the majority of the teams I’ve worked on. Even the people who claim to have traveled a lot or have taken a year off to travel don’t go to destinations that are that off the beaten path.

So while I am physically back in New York, in front of my two-monitor computer setup, and back online most of the day, my mind is still at Diniwid Beach in Boracay, sipping calamansi juice and endless all-mango smoothies.

Dining in the air on Cathay Pacific

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While waiting for our flight from Manila to Hong Kong yesterday early morning, we were at the Cathay Pacific lounge at Manila airport. It was extremely early, so we didn’t get anything to eat (other than Kaia grabbing an apple and eating 70 percent of it, as per usual). I went to make my last cup of freshly squeezed calamansi juice, honey, and hot water, and to see what the breakfast offerings were at the food bar. I noticed a man marveling out loud at all the food options in the lounge. He made his selection, was quickly served, and snapped a photo of his dish. “What could be more amazing than this?” he exclaimed out loud in an Australian accent.

“Few things are more amazing than the food in this lounge,” I said to him, grinning. We’ve had some epic lounge experiences around the world, but I will say that the Cathay Pacific lounge experience from a food standpoint is likely one of the best ever. I cannot decide if I like this lounge more or the JAL First lounges in Japan; it might even be a tie (the thoughts of someone who is obviously overly privileged!!).

We made some small talk. He’s based in Sydney, where he was born, and shared that he’d just sold his company, was feeling “unshackled,” and was heading off to Japan for three weeks with zero itinerary other than starting in Tokyo after spending the last ten days in Manila, Cebu, and Boracay (did he copy our Philippines itinerary, or what?). He told me that he’d never eaten better food in a lounge before flying Cathay. “This food is so much better than Qantas lounge food – their food is the worst!” he moaned.

I wrinkled my brow at him. “Ummmm, the Qantas lounges actually have food,” I replied dryly. “If you were based in the U.S. and flew American, you’d be lucky to even get pretzels!”

He is not wrong that the food is incredible with Cathay. Sometimes when we have flown them and eaten their food, I think that the food could be similar quality, if not better, to some of the best Chinese food we’ve had at upscale restaurants in Asia, Australia, and the U.S. I could feel my cold progressing, so I went to the food bar and asked the server if I could have a bowl of just broth instead of the full wonton noodle soup. He quickly ladled a bowl for me, and I immediately inhaled and took a sip. Mmmmm — this was like a nourishing elixir. It had that nice, clean chickeny, porky flavor, with just a hint of seafood at the end the way a legit, authentic wonton broth should have.

In flight to Hong Kong, we were served a braised minced pork noodle dish, which seemed like such a decadent breakfast. We all ate the entire serving — even Kaia! And on the breakfast on the flight from Hong Kong to JFK, we were served beef and mushroom jook/congee. Without us helping, Kaia immediately started eating huge spoonfuls of congee while engrossed in her Bluey screen time. Once again, she finished the whole damn serving! My child was eating like a little adult!

For lunch, the seasonal Chinese offering was a clay pot rice with abalone (A WHOLE ONE!), Chinese sausage, and pork patty. I was curious to see how they’d achieve the crispy rice bits characteristic of the best claypot rice dishes. Somehow, they were successful! There were large morsels of crispy rice flecked throughout the bowl. The pork patty, sausage, and abalone were perfectly cooked. The abalone piece was not only whole, but huge! Every single thing I ate on these two flights was perfect, whether it was the congee, the claypot, the tea (Hong Kong milk tea on unlimited offer… dangerous), or even the hawthorn berry jelly with Chinese yam (something I’d never order on my own at a restaurant or cafe, but hey, if it’s on the flight, why not?). Even the three pieces of dim sum served with my congee were likely some of the best dumplings I’ve had — regardless of whether it was on land or in the air.

Whenever the rare occasion comes up when I can have abalone, I always think of my dad. My paternal grandparents had a pretty large family and friends network, and so when my dad was growing up, they got invited to seemingly endless weddings all the time, all with huge Chinese banquets and the most lavish multi-course feasts. The dish he remembers savoring the most were the abalone dishes. He insisted that they were the most delicious things he’d never eaten in his life. To this day, abalones are highly prized in Chinese cuisine and command a ridiculously high price tag. A single abalone can go for as much as $125 USD! And as a poor kid growing up in Chinatown when it was considered a ghetto, my dad found these meals life-changing and completely exhilarating. The funny thing was — back then, I never thought much about abalone, but I realized that they are actually large marine snails (gastropods). I always liked abalone shells for their rainbow iridescence. I’ve collected them as gifts as well as from the sands of Brighton Beach in Brighton, Victoria, Australia (sorry, I may be the reason that there is currently a sign there that says “no removing shells”), but I never had abalone until I became an adult. I think abalone is fine, but it’s not worth the insane price tag. I would never seek it out myself or choose it off a menu, and I’d certainly never choose to pay the crazy high market prices for it. It’s mostly a texture thing that makes it unique to me; it has virtually no flavor. Frankly, if I am going to pay a premium for seafood, it better be something like crab, lobster, or Moreton Bay bugs — sea creatures that actually do have a distinctive flavor!

I am sure Cathay puts it on their menu to impress their high-paying Chinese business/first class customers. I am also sure that this tactic works. I know for sure that my dad would have savored every last bite of that abalone far more than I would have. Maybe the next time I call home, I’ll tell him I was served abalone on the flight back to New York just to get his reaction.

Mild food poisoning, but this time, for mama and daddy

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Last night when I came back from the mall with Kaia and her new (and less than $3 USD) sandals in tow, I discovered that Chris had arranged a surprise birthday meal in our hotel room. The staff and the hotel chef were there setting up. They had organized birthday balloons, streamers, and a beautifully laid out table, even complete with a high chair for Pookster. The meal consisted of a seafood soup, wagyu steak with fries, garlic rice (of course), caesar salad, plus several huge slices of chocolate mousse cake. After eating earlier in the day along with some fruit smoothies, this felt like a lot of food, but we tried to do what we could to do justice to this beautiful meal the chef had put together for us.

This morning after brushing my teeth, I could immediately tell that something didn’t feel right in my stomach. I had that strange, queasy feeling that told me that I had eaten something bad. I even started feeling light headed, and a strange, muted pain was going down my neck. After eating a very light breakfast at the hotel buffet, I told Chris that I’d need to lie down while he and Kaia went out to have one last beach outing. At 12:30, we’d need to get on our shuttle, boat, and shuttle back to the airport, where we’d fly to Manila to spend our final night in the Philippines before heading back home to New York.

As I was lying in bed, I kept thinking that at least I got food poisoning towards the end of trip, rather than at any other time; it’s the least disruptive to our days. The last time I remember getting any real food poisoning was in Vietnam during my trip with my parents in January 2008; I was so sick that I was in bed for at least three days at the hotel. Then, I needed to be near a toilet at all times because I had such awful and sudden diarrhea. That was also at the tail end of our trip. My mom got so worried about me that she called our travel agent to shorten our trip by a couple days so that I could go home and “see a real doctor!”

We got our laundry done from the laundry services just across the street from the hotel, and so all our swimsuits were washed and dried. So Kaia ended up having to wear a t-shirt and her underwear to the beach (luckily, she’s still at an age where none of this matters to her). She happily went out with Daddy to have more ocean and sand time. I took some Pepto Bismol, Tums, and lid down on the bed for about two hours. Eventually I was able to get up and feel a little bit better, but I still had this lingering feeling of malaise all over me. I went out to meet them at the beach for a little bit just to get some fresh air and braced myself for the short boat ride that was ahead. I was really hoping that the water would be calm. The last thing I’d want was to vomit in transit.

Luckily for me, the water was very calm (I guess it just gets turbulent at night during high tide). So I was successfully able to get to the airport without throwing up. This was a huge win for me because all I could think of was… the very last thing I wanted was to end this trip covered in my own vomit.

We had a good flight back to Manila. And after checking into our hotel, having a light dinner at the lounge, and getting back to our room, I discovered that Chris also wasn’t feeling well. He spent a good amount of time on the toilet (at least it went out that way and not the other way), and then eventually went to bed. He clearly was not well. Kaia’s stool also wasn’t extremely solid, but her mood seemed to be happy (I’m so thankful to have a happy child). So preventively, we gave her one Tum before bed (she loves these things now! She keeps asking if she can have more medicine…). After a few hours of sleep, I woke up in the middle of the night to get Kaia to dream pee, and I realized that my upset stomach feeling was gone. What replaced it… was a general unwell, cold feeling. My throat was still sore, as this had begun on New Year’s Day. I was still coughing. I had phlegm. And I had a feeling some coughing fits may be in my near future, which is such terrible luck for me because I just had a cold like this back in late October!!

Traveling while feeling unwell is never fun. But being sick on a plane with recycled air is probably one of the worst situations. At least we are flying Cathay Pacific, so if I need hot broth, I have a feeling they will be able to provide me a very good one!

“The beach took my sandal away”

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We discovered in Boracay that during the day, it’s generally low tide and the waters are calm and serene. At night, though, high tide arrives, and the waves can come all the way to the steps of businesses (that is REALLY far in if you knew how small the current was during the day!). As with most islands, typhoon alerts are very much a real thing to be cognizant of and concerned about.

Yesterday early evening, Chris was having a massage while Kaia and I played in the water and built sand castles at White Beach. But given we’re so close to the equator, the sun set relatively early, so people started leaving the beach. We eventually left the beach and spent some time walking on the streets to find a restaurant. The place I originally chose had a wait, so we had to find somewhere else. After further browsing, I ended up choosing a restaurant to meet Chris at that would be most convenient if accessed by going to the beach first. What I wasn’t prepared for, especially in the dark, was how far in the tide would be. Luckily Kaia and I both were wearing waterproof sandals, so we were able to walk through the shallow waves easily. But I did feel a little uneasy, wondering if one of her sandals would just disappear with the force of a wave. We met Chris at the restaurant and had a quick dinner.

But after dinner, there was no escaping going back into the water in the dark. There wasn’t a way for us to get back to the hotel via the street; none of the businesses would let us go through their businesses to get to the street (okay, so maybe not everyone here is hospitable). So we had no choice but to walk at the edge of the waves to get back. This time, Chris held Kaia’s hand and walked through the waves. And a few minutes in, Kaia yelled out that she didn’t have a sandal on anymore. We turned on our phone flashlights and tried to see if a wave would bring her sandal back in, but to no avail; the waves had swept away her sandal forever! She ended up having to walk barefoot on one foot for the distance back to the hotel. It wasn’t a long distance, but it was still very annoying. And we were obviously very unhappy to be that family who had their kid lose a single shoe! I was even more mad about this because I just gifted her these sandals right before this trip, and so she’d only been wearing them for a few weeks. I cannot even count the number of times I’ve seen a single flip flop, a single sandal, a single shoe, lying around on the streets of New York, in playgrounds, parks, and at beaches. Each time I see these, I’ve given a sad look at what was lost that I could see, but its rightful owner would unlikely ever see again.

Now, we have to get her new sandal replacements for this trip while here so that she could continue to enjoy what limited time we still have at the beach. We really liked these sandals a lot, and they matched with everything she wore. I felt guilty for not securing the strap more tightly before we left the restaurant (I always tried to strap it on tighter, but she’d yell and say she didn’t like it, and eventually loosen it).

When we got back to the hotel and cleaned up, she gave me this long, glum look and said, “The beach took my sandal away.”

And that’s the story of how White Beach took my baby’s sandal away.

The most beautiful beach in the world

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Boracay’s White Beach is widely considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We happen to be staying at a resort hotel that is just steps away from this beach. For many years, this beach was considered one of the benchmarks against which other tropical beaches were compared. It’s been called one of the top five urban-accessible white sand beaches in the world, ranked number 1 or 2 for beaches across all of Asia, and considered one of the top 10-30 beaches globally, depending on your source (e.g. Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, or TripAdvisor). I was curious to see if seeing this beach in real life would truly live up to all the hype.

As soon as we got on the beach, I understood immediately why it’s so popular and highly ranked: the color of the water is just immaculate, ranging in shades from pale aqua to pale jade green to deep turquoise. The sand truly is almost white here, and it has an airy, soft, fine texture against your toes. In addition, the shoreline is long and gentle, with calm waters and waves that would make it comfortable and safe for littles and people like me who are terrified of big waves. You could go out quite far and still be standing in water just at ankle or knee level.

Diniwid Beach is a little beach just across a cliff walk from White Beach. We walked along the cliff walk and admired the rocky headlands before finding a little covered alcove to park our blankets at. As far as I was concerned, Diniwid Beach is basically like White Sand Beach, just much quieter, less open, with fewer people and thus more of a relaxed feel. I was all for this! I especially loved our little shaded alcove right under some big trees we camped out at, which you definitely would not be able to easily find at White Beach, which is far more out in the open with fewer coverage areas. We spent the majority of our late morning here today. Chris and I took turns splashing in the water with Kaia, and I also spent a good amount of time building a sand castle with a large moat (as I keep telling Pookster, the best sand castles always, always have a moat — it’s a non-negotiable!). I found some interesting shells amongst the coarser sand that my toes dug into and tried to collect those. And as soon as I (dumbly) announced to Pooks that I would be taking a photo of my sand castle…. she went ahead and sunk her arms into it. And there went all my hopes and dreams…

Eventually, I stopped taking photos and videos of White Beach and Diniwid Beach because I realized I just had to soak in these sights on my own. No photo or video was going to ever fully capture how spectacular these beaches were. After seeing these beaches and wandering around the different streets throughout the day, I realized why people choose to spend a full week or even over a month here — Boracay has a really great mix of tourists and locals, touristy and local businesses, and a fun, relaxed vibe. You can have a $0.10 USD Filipino pastry from a local bakery, or you can have a $35 USD plate of Thai crabs at a tourist-centered restaurant that is just down the street. But either way, you can enjoy the beauty that is right in your face here.