Monthly Archives: January 2026

“The beach took my sandal away”

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We discovered our first full day and night 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 if you knew how little 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. 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 had to get her new sandal replacements for this trip while here so that she could continue to enjoy what limited time we still had 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).

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.

The road to paradise is not always paradise

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Before we arrived in Boracay, I was skimming reviews of our resort hotel we’d booked for our three-night stay there. One reviewer wrote, “If you’re here (in Boracay), you know you’ve made it in life.”

So, I’ve “made it in life” if I’ve come here, huh? Well, I don’t think you get that feeling at all when you are en route to the island of Boracay. The entire experience felt rushed, chaotic, and crowded. It did not feel like I was in the lap of luxury — I can assure you that.

First, we landed in Caticlan Airport. From Caticlan Airport, you have to take a shuttle to a boat to another shuttle/van to get to your hotel; Grab does not exist here. Boat transport is required to get from the airport to the island of Boracay. At the jetty port, you also have to pay tourist/nature conservation fees, and so ideally, you’d want all of these fees plus transport costs covered in one go. Chris rushed out to book our transport to the hotel while Kaia and I waited for our one checked roller bag. We got our bag and eventually came out to a shuttle van, which was going to whisk us off to a jetty port. At the jetty port, we had to wait until our group name was called before they’d load as many of us (and our luggage!) as they could onto the boat. Kaia complained multiple times: “Why is it taking so long?” By this time, it was past dusk, so everything was quite dark. It was hard to see clearly, but you could tell right away that the water was not calm when we were walking towards the boat. So we all crammed ourselves like sardines into these small boats and hoped for the best despite the trashing waters and limited visibility. We finally made to Boracay Island, where we all offloaded from an unsteady boat, got into yet another shuttle van, and then finally got dropped off at our respective hotels after what felt like an endless journey.

Chris remarked that this is how it feels in transit to nearly every tropical island resort that he’s aware of. Throughout the entire journey from mid afternoon to evening, I kept thinking about that online reviewer saying that “we’ve made it in life” since we’re here. I kept chuckling in my head over the irony of that statement. Welp, I always thought “making it in life” would mean never having to be pushed into a jam-packed van or boat and then being rushed from point to point. And I’m positive that reviewer had the same miserable, frantic transfer experience to the hotel we did!

By the time we made it to our hotel, none of us had any desire to go anywhere for food. So Kaia and I showered while Chris went out to a nearby mall and got some chicken inasal for us. And thankfully, that meal was very satisfying and tasty — exactly what we needed after a chaotic transport experience to “paradise.”

When your 4-year-old gets food poisoning and poops in her bed at 3am

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Chris and I are still taking turns waking up in the middle of the night to take Kaia to the potty to “dream pee.” We decided not to put her in pull-ups for this trip since it would be too long of a time frame out of this routine and might cause her to regress. Our bodies have a muscle memory, so we thought doing that would set her back too much. Our goal, of course, is to have her wake up on her own to pee if she needs to, and to stay dry all night. It was my turn last night to wake up to have her pee. I set my alarm for 1am, but at around 12:30, she woke up and came to our bed. I touched her bottom and realized she was already wet. This seemed a little odd to me; I had been able to wait until 1:30 or even 2am to have her pee, but I didn’t think much of it. So I cleaned her up, lay a towel on top of the small wet spot on her bed, and had her go back to sleep. Kaia fussed and indicated she wanted me to stay. So I ended up staying there and passed out until 3am, when I woke up to go back to my own bed.

Within 10 minutes of going back to my own bed, Kaia started crying. She jumped out of her bed and ran to me. And before I even touched her, I immediately smelled something very foul. I touched her bottom and even in the darkness, I could see that my hand was covered in something dark and mushy.

“Oh, no, baby!” I exclaimed lightly. “Did you poop in the bed?”

She had this pained look on her face. “It was an accident! It was an accident!” she said over and over. Then, she told us her stomach hurt. And then the sequence of events made even more sense.

I proceeded to clean her and her poopy shorts. Chris gathered the towel I lay on her bed, and luckily it caught almost everything. He emptied it into the toilet, then called housekeeping to see if they could help with this emergency cleanup and new bedsheets. Luckily, they came up right away and were quite gracious about the whole accident. We had to keep Kaia in a towel just in case — we had no idea if everything had come out, or if there was still more to come. I was bracing myself if she might not be able to control her bowel movements while sleeping for the rest of the night. It’s not like we had easy access to laundry here.

From the smell of her poop, I could tell immediately that it had to be the seafood lunch we had on the boat the previous day. Although lunch was quite tasty, it clearly did not sit well with my sweet baby’s young tummy. Luckily, Chris and I got through the night and the rest of today just fine, so our stomachs were not negatively impacted by the same food Kaia ate. As the day went on, it seemed like Kaia was doing just fine. Her poops were more solid; she seemed to be in a good, chipper mood. She said her stomach no longer hurt. So we’re lucky that this passed through her relatively quickly.

i always wondered when Kaia’s first poop accident or poop-in-bed might happen. And well, now, it finally happened, and I suppose with “good” reason since she got a mild case of food poisoning. I felt so proud of her for getting through the day and being so good about it all.

Snorkeling in Cebu’s crystal clear waters with parrot fish, clownfish, and butterflyfish

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We got picked up from our hotel bright and early to on a boat for our island-hopping and snorkeling tour around Cebu. Via boat, we visited Gilutongan Island, Nalusuan Island Marine Sanctuary, Hilutungan Island, and Pandanon Island. As we were going out to sea, I realized that the last and only time I’d been snorkeling was in the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, in 2014. How amazing is that — that the two places I will have experienced snorkeling will be the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and Cebu in the Philippines?!

Kaia was able to get a child-size life vest (after Chris had to insist upon it when the operators said they didn’t have one ready for her…), so for the first time, she got to be immersed in deep ocean waters. After a slow start, she was obsessed! She loved being in the water with the both of us. She spent the most time swimming around with Chris since he’s clearly the better swimmer. I got this video of her watching Chris get into the water with his life vest and snorkeling gear on. From the boat, she yelled down at him, “Wait for us! Wait for us, Daddy!” And without a quick enough response from Chris, since she can get impatient, she started again. “Fuzzy, wait for us!” I love how she switched from calling him “Daddy” to calling him “Fuzzy,” since that is what I call him!

A huge difference I noticed right away with snorkeling here versus in the Great Barrier Reef was that my snorkeling gear here was… a bit questionable. We got off the boat at three different points for snorkeling and had two different sets of gear. The first set I had was definitely faulty: water constantly kept flooding into my mouth every time I tried to breathe through the tube, so I was never able to use the breathing tube properly. Because of this, every time I went to swim and look for fish, I just had to hold my breath for as long as possible. The second time we went out to snorkel, I had a different set of gear, and the breathing tube finally worked as it should. I was able to experience the fish and the coral, and it was enjoyable… other than the fact that this area was a bit dead for fish, and we had to move to a third location. At the third location, water kept flooding into my eye mask every now and then, so I had to constantly empty it out and try again. During our Great Barrier Reef snorkeling adventure, everything worked as intended every single time, plus I had the added benefit of flippers to help me move along faster! It’s a bit hard to compare these two snorkeling outings since that was a group tour in Australia while this was private and in the Philippines, but it’s my only other experience with snorkeling. It also made me realize why some people who love snorkeling prefer to buy and transport their own gear; this way, they know it will work well and they will know how to use it.

Once I got my snorkeling gear to work, though, I was obsessed with finding all the rainbow colors in the ocean. The coral here is nowhere as colorful or stunning as the Great Barrier Reef (they don’t call it “great” for nothing!), but occasionally I did see live coral. Sadly, most of it looked dead. But I felt like here, I got closer to very colorful fish than I remember getting in Queensland. The depths of the water in the area of the Great Barrier Reef we were in were far deeper. Here in Cebu where we did our island hopping, the water was relatively shallower. Here, I distinctly know I saw endless clownfish (hi, Nemo!), angelfish, butterflyfish (the yellow, silver, and black patterns on them were so fun to see!), rainbow fish (these looked fake!), parrotfish (so many fluorescent outlines – I loved their purples, electric blues, and greens!), and many others. We saw lots of schools of tiny fish swimming, plus the most number of starfish I’ve seen in my life out in the wild. We saw large ones, small ones, and some very interesting blue starfish. It’s crazy to think that these bright electric colors truly do exist in nature — they are not just made up!

We also got to swim and splash about at Pandanon Island, where you could walk out for what felt like miles and miles before the water would actually get past knee-high. This made it fun and safe for Kaia to splash about; there were pretty much zero waves to worry about. The water was bright turquoise blue where you can always see the ocean floor — it was like the postcards you see of exotic destinations in the South Pacific, except this was actually real and not photoshopped.

We were also served a delicious lunch on our little private boat — an amazing spread of barbecued prawns, mussels, chicken, and rice. I have no idea what kind of marinade they used to cook the seafood and chicken, but I will say that it was a really addictive blend of salty, tangy, sweet, and umami that had me licking my fingers at the end. Kaia devoured the food, as well, and most definitely loved her mussels and chicken. Given we had no regular restroom on board (there was a pot that you could manually “flush” with water that was enclosed.. and comfortable for someone maybe half my size!), we were given a communal bucket filled with water to “wash” our hands. And then Kaia had her first non-Cavendish banana: a little Filipino banana that was far more yellow in the flesh than she is used to. She kept remarking how “so yellow!” it was. I ate one of the bananas, and I immediately tasted the difference: it had an almost custardy after-taste that just lingered. Yum.

We ended the day much tanner than we started (I am so happy I am embracing my rashguard, as it meant that I didn’t have to put any sunscreen on the upper half of my body other than my face, or reapply, which I hate!). And our New Year’s Day dinner was at the famous House of Lechon, where we enjoyed a half kilo of lechon, pork cracklings (as Chris said, “it tastes like a heart attack,” and we unfortunately could not finish these), more kang kong, garlic rice of course, halo halo, plus a tiny shot’s worth of pandan jelly and cream.

This was definitely a memorable New Year’s Day, and an amazing and fun way to start off 2026.