Cambodia Day 1: Bayon Temple + Tips

4:00 PM Unknown 1 Comments

After exploring the neighborhood and having our first proper meal, we headed to Bayon Temple. We were half expecting our tuk-tuk driver to talk about the place, but he was really quiet. It's a good thing we were able to read a bit about the place before going. I guess that's the disadvantage of not having a tour guide.


Though some parts of the temple, including the entrance of it are not the actual ones made long long time ago, they're still pretty close.

Tip: Bring an umbrella! The sun and heat are not forgiving.

Cambodia Day 1: Getting There and Getting Around

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At the beginning of 2015, my sister and I talked about going on a trip. Just the two of us. She was the type who really liked to immerse in cultural activities and I was too. In family trips though, we don’t really get to go around as much as we’d like. So, this time we went on our own.



We ruled out other Asian countries that we’ve been to, even if we wanted to head back to those places. We also didn’t consider those our family could possibly visit in the future. Of course, budget was another constraint. Since we were willing to spend almost 5 days out, we wanted to go somewhere where our relatively small budget would fit. We ended up with Cambodia as our 2015 travel destination.

On Goals and the New Year

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Somehow, the beginning of this year came with much pressure to evaluate the previous year (2015) and set up life-changing goals.  Though I'm all for that, I wanted to see how I'd actually fair for the first month of 2016.



My sister encouraged me to do a "Life Audit". We based it from her friend's post, which was actually pretty inspiring. At the same time, we also listed or highlighted goals for 2016. The Life Audit is a mix of long-term and short-term goals and actually figuring out what you want in life.  I took a while with this.

At the same time, we got the Passion Planner when we visited the States. It was curated in a way that would make it easier to plot down tasks based on your "passion projects" or goals. My sister got me into this as well. But before getting this, I've already collected enough stickers for the Coffee Bean planner. I must say, they have a great website. I was satisfied with my 2015 Coffee Bean planner, so I pursued this year's one. Yes, I didn't collect for the Starbucks Moleskin planner. I think I would have gotten a better deal if I bought a Moleskin without the Starbucks branding, so I went with the Coffee Bean one instead.

So, I'm basically very much planned up. It won't matter though unless I actually do enough for me to at least have some progress with my goals. That though is the harder part. For me, January meant the start of another semester as well. I feel like it's only now that I'm getting settled in, now that the month's about to tend. And honestly, sometimes I just feel like keeping it simple with my goals.

How did I do for January? Well, honestly, I could have done better. Although, I think I'm off to a good start. 2015 was definitely something. It was hard. And I could see 2016 being the same way or even harder. But I welcome you, 2016, with arms wide open. It's my 25th year too, so I really want to do something great, come back to this post and be happy that I've actually reached a goal or completed a project, even if it's not the biggest one.

I wish the same for you. Let's do this.

FOTD: First Impressions

2:53 PM Unknown 1 Comments

Happy new year everyone!

Just like that, another year has started.  Last year, I've posted only 13 posts, a few posts less than my posts in 2014.  I'm really lagging behind from what I hoped to achieve in terms of consistency.  As much as I love posting here, there's always been a struggle to balance out school, chores, and social gatherings.  The blog was my go to if I had free time.

This year, I'm really hoping to keep up and at least post once a week. So, I'm going to get on with it with this photo-heavy post of my first impressions / face-of-the-day of a few "drugstore" products.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this somewhere, but in the Philippines, we don't really call brands such as Maybelline, L'Oreal, and Revlon as "drugstore" (I think). Sure, you can get them from Watsons, which may be considered a drugstore, but they're available in department stores too.  Sometimes, they're mixed in with some of the high-end makeup and skincare as well.

If you know me, you'd know I follow some beauty "gurus" on Youtube and they would talk about makeup from the "drugstore".  Some of them are actually not available in the Philippines.  Now that I've had the chance to go on vacation in the States, I finally get to try some of them.

"Drugstore" Haul! :)

Let me tell you, seeing a whole aisle of beauty products was overwhelming.  I didn't know where to start.  Luckily, the place where I got this was pretty stocked, so I didn't have a problem finding some things.  The others really run out of the "holy grail" / cult favorite drugstore beauty products.

So, here's how I started out. I've just applied my everyday moisturizer.