2011 has been an awesome year for me. It was a year of thrills and great adventure, a year of many firsts. This year I experienced my first out of Luzon trip, first snorkeling, zip lining, rock climbing, spelunking adventures, first time in Solo Backpacking, first time in volunteering and child sponsorship, so forth and so on.

It has been a crazy yet fulfilling year of learning through new experiences, getting out of the bubble that was my comfort zone, meeting lovely new friends along the way, collecting treasured memories and ultimately traveling to those destinations I only dreamed about before. For these reasons I will always be thankful to God for giving me a wonderful 2011.

So before we put an end to this year’s chapter, I would like to share with you some of my best travel experiences for this year.

1. Puerto Princesa, Palawan 
Travel Date:  March 11-14, 2011

Jump, jump, jump at Pandan Island, Honda Bay, Palawan

Our family trip to the “Greenest city in the Philippines” last March is one of the highlights of my 2011. It was my first trip in more than two years since I’ve been entirely pre-occupied by my work & hospital duties and this trip was a form of personal reward for a year of isolation and sleepless nights. Continue reading “2011: Of travel dreams come true” »

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Joanna Jane Liwag

To say the least, I was a little disheartened when I found out that my website, The Backpack Chronicles, crashed without apparent reason last Monday, October 10,2011. I was lazily lying on bed, enjoying the chilly weather when I suddenly thought of checking this website through my ever-reliable iPod Touch. To my horror I couldn’t opened it. It was displaying an error message that had me panicking for the next 10 hours and the days after, the php FATAL ERROR message.

Website crash is a major headache!! photo credit to Ieltschn.com

To make the long story short, every single file and every single post and every single comments that I had painstakingly coded, edited, wrote and gathered have gone up in smokes. More than 2 months of hard-work and staying up-late in front of the battered laptop was obliterated into thin air. I was back to ZERO! I was back to DAY 1. I was back to SCRATCH. Continue reading “Blogging 101: Never underestimate the power of a recent back-up” »

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Joanna Jane Liwag