In travel, you mostly only hear about amazing sights or thrilling activities. But I assure you – our everyday is not that glamorous! A Day in the Life is where I capture the small moments that make up a typical day and give you a peek at what life really looks like in pictorial snippets, as well as some of my recommendations and idea for cost.
As soon as I wake and before I’ve even rubbed the last vestiges of sleep from my eyes, D demands “go make some breakfast.” Ugh! We’ve continued our 4 hour body diet on Boracay and it recommends eating breakfast within half an hour of waking up. D takes this very seriously. But he acquiesces to a few minutes of cuddling before practically pushing me out of bed.
Breakfast on the diet is simple and boring: beans, scrambled eggs, and whatever leftover meat and veggies we have.
11:00 am: breakfast of beans and protein
After we get this little bit of food down, we start our day. One thing I love about the relaxed island life is that I don’t need to get all “done up” (not that that’s an option anyway, as I got all my makeup stolen). I throw on a bikini, slip on the only beachy dress I own, toss my hair up in a bun, and I’m ready to tackle the day.
The first order of business is to get some caffeine into D. So we walk over to the tiny hand-drip coffee shop down Station 3. There are a ton of cafés on the beach, but D swears Coffee Bloom has the best coffee as the others mainly only serve the instant crap. We come here so much that we don’t even need to tell the owner/barista our order anymore. She just knows: black iced Americano with cinnamon powder (yep, another diet recommended technique, but it actually does make black coffee much more palatable!).
11:30 am: coffee at Coffee Bloom (cost: 100 PHP, or US $2.25)
Now properly caffeinated, we walk the 20 minutes or so to the D’ mall market in Station 2 for our grocery shopping. The sun is strong and the walk is hot and sweaty. Since we are cooking most of the days, we need to go to the market about every other day.
12:00 pm: walking to D’mall. this area is always very crowded
There are 3 major markets on Boracay: Talipapin (a mostly locals veggies & meat market on the main road), D’Talipapa (the seafood market), and D’mall. D’mall is the most touristy and the farthest one away from us but we still prefer shopping there because it also has an international grocery store. We like to buy the ready cooked rotisserie chicken too.
The produce is so unbelievably fresh and affordable. We load up our bag with long beans, eggplant, morning glory, squash…. whatever looks fresh that day.
12:15 pm: shopping for groceries at the D’mall market (cost: 435 PHP, or $10 US)
Once home, depending on what we feel like, we either stay in and work on our laptops or go hang out on the beach. Since it’s no fun talking about working, this Day in the Life is a beach day. Some afternoons, I kill two birds with one stone and take my iPad out to the beach and draft blog posts while lounging under the umbrella.
2:00 pm: getting some blogging done on the beach!
When we get hungry again, we head to the restaurant next door to grab a bite. On Boracay, all the restaurants are lined up in a row on the sand. One of our favorite ones is 357 Boracay next door to our rental. The prices are reasonable and it has some of the best Filipino foods we’ve tried.
We always order the pork sinigang soup. D is obsessed. Sinigang is a popular soup made from a tamarind base which gives it a sour flavor. It’s loaded with large chunks of tender stewed pork and veggies, so this makes the perfect diet-friendly meal!
3:30 pm: soup at 357 Boracay (cost: 180 PHP, or $4 US)
Afterwards, we head back inside and wait out the rest of the afternoon heat from the comfort of our AC’ed room. I almost loose track of time and jump up when I see that it’s already past 5:30 pm. Gotta go out and watch the sunset!
But first, we walk a few doors over to the little grass hut and order a few BBQ pork sticks.
5:45 pm: the grass hut where we get bbq meat sticks (cost: 90 PHP, or $2 US)
With sticks in hand, we walk back to the stretch of beach in front of our apartment building. We settle down on white plastic chairs and watch the sun’s slow descent towards the horizon. But half of my mind is on something else too: I’m scanning the beach for The Peanut Guy.
There’s no shortage of peanut vendors strolling the sand. You won’t miss them. They carry plastic bags of peanuts and popcorn and have a yellow box of balut slung over their shoulders. But I ignore all of their offerings. There’s only one guy I buy my peanuts from.
The sun is almost down, and he still doesn’t come. I can feel disappointment settling in. He’s always out around sunset, but sometimes, we still manage to miss him completely.
Finally, finally, I see the familiar form of a man ambling towards us, a bucket of peanuts in each hand. I frantically wave at him and when he’s here, I tell him our usual order of 3 bags of spicy peanuts.
this is a picture of Brian the Peanut Guy I took on another day (3 bags cost: 50 PHP, or US$1)
Having secured my peanuts, I finally fully relax into my beach chair. We munch on our peanuts and meat sticks, our feet in the sand, and watch the sun do its magic.
Now, the evening is perfect.
Total cost for the day: $19.25 US. This is pretty typical if we eat out half the day and cook half the day. Unless we go to D’Talipapa market instead and eat seafood, which is an experience worthy of its own post. Stay tuned for a tour of this crazy seafood market next!
What do you guys like to do on a beach vacation? How is your day going? :)
Aw man, I don’t know how you stay focused blogging by the beach like that! I would wanna go jump in :) Love beaches, love beach vacations. Don’t think I would ever get tired of them! (maybe I should spend a month at the beach and then see?)
Yes! Do it if you have the chance! We went in the water too, but I didn’t like staying in there too long because it wasn’t that warm, haha. It wasn’t the warm tropical waters like I thought it’d be. So I preferred to just lay on the chair under the umbrella! And i found I could concentrate a lot more too when I wrote outside!
Can I have this day!? Omg, it all sounds beautiful! I don’t know how you’ll ever leave!
We actually already left (I’m just behind on my posts… I drafted this like 2 weeks ago!). The island life is so relaxing and gorgeous, but I admit I do like being back in a city too!
Yup- still jealous! I love how cheap everything is. $2 doesn’t get you much of anything here.
It was only cheap because we cooked half the time and we would just get a few bbq sticks for dinner instead of a real meal. Otherwise, I think a plate of food is like $5 at the restaurants, which I guess is still pretty decent, haha! I’ve just been spoiled with $2 for a huge bowl of food in Vietnam!
The food looks ahhhhmazing! I just had breakfast, and Im already hungry again (especially at those prices!) :)
Haha I’m surprised you think the food looks good! One thing about Boracay is that the local food isn’t too great, though they do Western food really well surprisingly. But we only ate the “good food” once a week since we were on the diet!
Wow you all get so much for so little! If there weren’t any sand there, I would say it’d be paradise :)
Boracay wasn’t as cheap as I thought. I’d say the price for a dish at a restaurant is around $5 (and we never ate at the more expensive areas!). We managed to cut the cost down by cooking a lot and just eating bbq sticks and peanuts for dinner, lol.
If you title your post “A day in the life: Boracay” but went ahead and talked about staying indoors and working, I swear I would’ve un-followed you! LOL!
Lol!! I made sure to pick a more interesting day, but yep, this is pretty much it: cooking, market, beach, and sunset!
This pictures make me want to hop right on a jet to Boracay…. This sounds like the perfect day to me. Beaching, blogging, EATING! ;D I love that you have a specific peanut vendor… I do things like that too. Once I buy from someone and like the experience, I feel partial to that person. Almost like they’re there just for me. Can’t wait to read (and drool) about the seafood market!
Yes! I’m pretty sure that his business increased by a decent percentage since we got there and kept on buying peanuts from him. His were the BEST! Oh man, the seafood market is insane. I can’t wait to share about it!
I had a look back at some of your previous day in the life posts, and I love reading them! Definitely something you need to see more of in blogland, regular travel days. So what’s so special about The Peanut Guy?
I don’t know what it is, but his peanuts are just the best, especially his spicy ones! The peanuts from the normal vendors are just all blah. I’m pretty sure we were his best customer during the month of March!
Gorgeous photos! I love the reflection of the palm tree in your tablet screen. Looks like paradise. But…your makeup was stolen?!?! I’m going to have to click through and see what that’s about. How odd!
V
Life+1
Ugh.. the makeup being stolen was the least of the stuff that the thief made it out with… But still, seriously?! Who wants used makeup that I’ve been traveling around with for a year?!
Oh man, I loved this glimpse into your time there! Your visit was definitely much more interesting than when I went on a beach vacation in Mexico with my in-laws. It was beautiful, but there wasn’t that much to explore. The one great thing we found was a seafood restaurant far away from all the touristy stuff; we were the only tourists there, and the food was incredible!
I love when you make a little discovery off the tourist track! I think sometimes, you don’t need to be always exploring something while on vacation. Sometimes, you just want to do nothing and eat and lay on the beach!
Sounds like a pretty awesome day by my books :) Silly question, but when you blog on your ipad, do you use the built in keyboard? Doesn’t it annoy you?
Yep, it annoys me, haha. I do have a notebook but I always forget to use it. And I’m the kind of person who writes and rewrites things 100 times, so I need to be able to delete!
Ooh what a chill day! I looooove beach life. And snoozing late. And eating yummy local food! :) Sounds like a good day. Are the peanuts super spicy? Here in Peru I love the sweet peanuts they sell with little crunchy seeds… a small bag for 33 cents (US)! On beach vacation, I like to mix activities with rest… paddle boarding/kayaking/snorkeling one day and reading and chilling the next.
The peanuts are pretty spicy, with chili flakes, but I love spicy!! They’re like 33 cents a bag each too! The sweet peanuts from Peru sound so yummy too! We were too cheap to do a lot of activities! But at least just swimming and lounging are free!
Hi there! You must be referring to Bukid Talipapa (Talipapin). It’s really up on a hill (that’s why it’s called bukid), so it cannot be seen from the Main Road. It was a good decision that you bought your fresh produce at D’Palengke (of D’Mall). Among the 3 markets that you mention, D’Palengke has the freshest display of produce here in Boracay. :)
Oh yes! We did go to Talipapin a couple of times, but it’s more of a hassle to get to. We liked D’Palengke the most, though I feel like the produce was a bit more expensive there!
Yes, true it’s really a hassle to get to Bukid Talipapa. The prices at D’Palengke are really more of the same when compared to those at Bukid Talipapa. Those at D’Talipapa are the highest among the three.