weather check

It’s been weeks now since we went out of the city and blame it on the weather I’d say, but that is inevitable. Well, one can always be ready when traveling and we’ve met rains in many of them and managed to survive. Thanks to our ever dependable umbrella or in my beloved country, the payong. Not only will you be dry, but you’ll also look sweet as this picture, thanks to Google for the image. 🙂

lovely under the rain

 

Whenever we travel, go to the market or just outside, we always bring this payong with us. I like the folding one as it fits on my bag without any fuss. We also search the internet for weather reports, the telly and the newspaper. If you have the latest gadgets, you can check some weather useful sites. It’s always good to go out on a battle ready.

Jet Set Go

Do you like playing games? I do but I have this particular taste before I play a game. Something struck me and I mean, I go gaga over this game the moment I saw it and tried playing it. Well, no promotion intended but I just want to share it if you like traveling or creating your own travel agency. This game is actually nice but it is somehow bitin on my part. Well, it is up for you to try it for an hour and if you liked it, then you can buy it just like what I did. Instead of paying $9 or something, I used a coupon for 50% off and I got this game for only $3.50 and that is around Php 160 in our currency. Pretty decent, yeah! 🙂

This is the cover so that you can easily locate it.

game

Here’s a screenshot that might urge you to try it. The website is this bigfishgames and you can enjoy other games there as well. So there my fellow travel lovers, if you want to try it, go ahead. This will surely make you smile.

your own travel agency

need to renew your passport?

old and new

How to do it?

Read on.

We all know that our passport applying and renewal system is a bit of a bummer. I’ve read from earlier travel bloggers their experience and how they are sometimes frustrated with the process. When it’s our turn to renew our passport, we have mixed emotions from what we have read but in the end what we did made us smile. The funny thing is, our travel time from our place to DFA is much longer that our stay there for the passport renewal. We iz happy indeed!

They key is to always be early. The new Pinoy should always be on time and at least mas maaga on the set time of any appointment. The Filipino time of being late must be erased from now on and forever.

So below are the steps that we did to renew our passport. This is the renewal application only. Hope this helps.

1. Check your passport and look at the expiration date. Count at least 6 months backwards from the expiration month and book an appointment. From what I read, you will not be allowed to travel if your passport is about to expired within 6 months.

2. Click this link DFA Passport Appointment System and make sure that you read the requirements and the what to bring. You don’t want to spend your time lining up for the photocopy section. I’ve seen it and the line is awfully long. 🙂

3. After reading everything, click on the Set an appointment tab. Fill out the form and then submit.

4. Select your desired date and time. This is the most madugo part.  Sometimes to select a date takes 2,3 or more months before you can get a schedule. Lucky us when we tried to renew our passport last May, we were able to get a schedule 2 months after. The earlier the better I would say.  May I suggest that you select an earlier time. If you can do it by 7 am then the that would be the best choice. From our experience, we chose the 8am and 8:30am and did not regret it. By that time, a lot of people are already seated and waiting for the DFA to open. I selected this time because people are nicer in the morning, they tend to smile when you greet them and is not yet irritated unlike those masusungits that you might meet in the afternoon.

So the earlier schedule, the better and you cannot bring anyone with you so don’t ask your friend to go with you or your yaya unless they will file for a new passport or renew as well. You will not be allowed to bring anyone inside if they’re not applicants.

After opening, we lined up inside DFA with their Zuma-like chairs (i’m just being funny) and luckily a lot of counters are open. When it’s your turn, greet the person behind the counter. A short “Good morning sir/ma’am” and “Thank you” will come a long way. Submit your old passport along with the photocopy needed (Make sure that your bring the photocopy of the documents needed) and tell them if you like 10 days or the regular 20 days processing. You will then be given a form that you need to pay in the 2nd floor. After paying, you take a seat in the Photo & Data capturing section. From my guess, it took us about 20 minutes to line up and pay from our scheduled time. We waited around 20 minutes for our photos to be taken. Small chit-chat with the employees and rapport is needed at least. This is important especially if you don’t like your first picture so that you can ask them if they can take another picture of you in a better way.  It worked on my part. You will then check the entries if they are correct and viola, you are done.  You will have an option to pay for your passport to be delivered or you can pick it up. Based on my experience and snooping around, having it delivered may cause some delay so it’s better to just pick it up and make some lakwatsa after.

FYI, you will be given a new passport number with standard 44 pages. It will expire after 5 years. They will also scan your right thumb for the bio-metrics part and I think the data is stored on that little sim card like icon outside our new passport. So there, in an hour or less we got our passport renewed. Remember, always select the earliest time, bring the necessary documents,  and your passport renewal is just a breeze.

*this entry is based on our personal experience only. 🙂

Hello world!

Have gulay, will travel!

Yes, indeed. I think that motto fits us.  Vegetarian travelers on a budget. Anyways, here we will try post our travels from budgets to what have you. Anything and everything about our past and future adventures is here.

Get your backpacks ready and we are here to conquer.