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Christmas/ hanuka and Easter/passover vacations are the best times to take the kids and go on an amazing vacation in the Philippines.
Granted, there is summer vacation, but it’s actually the summer that isn’t a very good season in the Philippines, and if you go there during summer vacation there’s the chance you’ll get some rains and storms. Nothing terrible, but it’s something to consider.
What else, I heard from many families recently that they are looking for an interesting and different destination, something to refresh the annual vacation in Europe.
And hence the Philippines are the perfect destination 🙂

First of all- check out our best tips for family travel in the Philippines.

And now- Here are four places that are simply wonderful for a vacation in the Philippines with kids:

1. This hotel in Mactan, on the island Cebu. An awesome start to a vacation. It’s not cheap, at around 200$ a night, but it’s well worth it. Everything you need in a vacation without moving too much :-). A huge swimming pool, complete with slides and bridges, SUP (stand up pedal surfing) and sea Kayaking, and if you ever leave the swimming pool you’ll find a climbing wall and a kid’s playroom, a private beach, free bicycles to move freely inside the hotel grounds and more…

There are many things to do in Cebu, here are few of the lesser known attractions for families.

2. After few days in this hotel, book a (very) short flight to an amazing island called Camiguin. It’s a tiny island with a few interesting attractions. It has beautiful black-sand beaches. And hot springs, and giant Clams that are definitely worth a visit. You can go snorkel-diving around the island, or even tour around it on a bicycle on the friendly island surrounding road.
You should quietly spend a few days on that island. Enjoy the hot springs, the massages, and sleeping in your favorite guest-house right next to them. That way you could go on a tight romantic dip after the kids went to bed…❤
Staying there is very cheap. Staying in a family room in the guest-house will cost no more than 50$ a night. And it includes free entrance to the hot springs 24/7

3. From there continue to the marvellous island Bohol. Recommended hotels you can find here . OR – you can stay at a private beach house. In Bohol you can enjoy all sorts of attractions like the Chocolate hills, the Extreme park, sailing on the Loboc river, and most importantly- Dolphin watching. Don’t miss  it! It’s an amazing experience.
Estimated costs per day will be around 150$-180$, including accommodation, meals, and attractions.
By the way, in Bohol’s biggest city, Tagbilaran, there are a few nice malls that have cinemas (with 3D) restaurants and shops. One of my children’s biggest enjoyments was the arcade in ICM (island city mall), that they always left with some nice prizes.
To divers, that’s also the place from which you can go on breathtaking dives in the area. In Bohol there are also several interesting underwater reserves. I’ll never forget the sea Turtles we saw while snorkeling around Bohol. It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life.
If you don’t dive and want to take a course, in Bohol you can find a few good options for that.
There are also sea-Kayaking tours that you simply must check out.
To more adventurous families I warmly suggest going on an independent tour around the island. Bohol allows for a fascinating view into the life of the locals, with the tiny fishing villages, fragrant markets, jungles, and virgin beaches. Tourist free gems are hidden around every corner if you only go in deep enough.

Bohol also offers few Adrenalin-rush activities. check them out here.

4. From Bohol you can move on to the enchanted island Siquijor, with its white beaches, snorkelling, night sailing and watching thousands of fireflies, kayaking, and quiet. The hotels here are good and don’t cost much, only about 60$a day all expenses included. I wrote about it here.

-From there the move is pretty simple back to south Cebu, where the bravest can swim with Whale Sharks. The experience is not cheap (I haven’t done it, my youngest wouldn’t let her mom swim freely like that with sharks. I am waiting for her to grow up…), and costs about 150$ per person.

-Finish the trip in Manila, the shopping city.

China is a destination on which opinions divide. Especially when thinking about China with kids, if you ask around you’ll get more than one opinion. Before I went there I got a confusing shower of information, ranging from ‘don’t ever go there for any reason’ to ‘my sister went there with her four kids and they had lots of fun’.

They told me it’s impossible to find bread. They told me the Chinese don’t speak a word of English, and even the way they count to ten isn’t the way we know. They told me they have pastries filled with sweet green Beans and that it’s a delicacy. And that they eat Pig’s tails. They told me that the views are incredible but the people aren’t nice. They told me the south is awesome. They told me the north is awesome. A couple I met in a guesthouse in Pokhara (Nepal) gave me a Hebrew-Chinese dictionary and out of genuine concern warned me not to go there. Anyway..

I was thinking whether to go to China or India. But I’ve already been to India (three time) and the tickets to China were really cheap and I had to escape the monsoon in Nepal and anyway I’ve been meaning to go to Mongolia and China is really just on the way…so should I give it up??

No. so I went there.

And I was terrified. Alone with three kids in a country where no one speaks English. Where they eat pig’s tails. petrifying.

We landed in Chengdu where we spent two weeks including a trip to the panda reserve and a five-day trip to Jiuzhai valley and a visit to two national parks: Jiuzhaigou and Huanglong. A trip that was breathtaking in its beauty. As well as a meeting with a fascinating Tibetan populace that was entirely different from anything else we’ve seen in China. From Chengdu we journeyed a few days to Beijing. A journey that included all different types of buses and trains.

china with kids, family travel china

We started the journey in Xian, a city whose main tourist attraction is the Tera Cota warriors.

From there we moved on to Ping Yao, an ancient town that is amazingly well preserved. We spent a few days there walking among the ancient alleys, staying in a guesthouse that used to be a traditional Chinese home, with a charming open courtyard and stunning woodworks that covered the whole front of the building.

The town is surrounded by walls and has in it a lot of interesting building with huge historical and cultural value. It was very interesting to travel in its streets and enter ancient temples, tea houses, castles. Chinese style gardens, tall heavy wooden doors.

The food was very different from what we’ve had so far. But just as spicy.

We fell in love with that small picturesque town and decided to stay there longer than planned, and give up on a few more stops on the way to Beijing.

And so we found ourselves one sunny day, torn away from the feeling of being a million years ago and getting thrown right back into the 21st century in a ride in a cool express train that got us to Beijing in only a few hours.

I felt like I was in an airplane.

We had three days to spend in Beijing. We walked on the great wall, of course. With mixed feelings. Because the story of the wall isn’t a simple story. A lot of people died building it, and were buried underneath it. The weather was hot and humid. And of course, the thousands of other tourists that also came to walk the wall haven’t really improved the experience.

We went to the forbidden city, but after three hours waiting in lines in the hot sun we decided to give up.

We took part in a traditional tea ceremony, which was very nice and educating (and delicious).

We took photos with the ‘bird’s nest’.

The local food in Beijing was tastier than anywhere else that we’ve been to in china. In Chengdu for example we avoided local food and made do with more western alternatives- Pizza Hut and Starbucks to begin with and afterwards we found a small Sushi place, cheap and excellent and ate there all the time (and laughed that we went all the way to china only to eat SushiJ). In fact, it’s only in Beijing that we found good Chinese food.

china with kids- food  food- china with kids

click here for a post with many lesser known great attractions in Beijing

After three days we took a sleeper bus, 17 hours to the border town Erenhot. Everyone says that it’s a boring town lacking charm, but I actually liked it.

And at the end of a full month in China, we crossed the border to Mongolia, to an experience, that while we didn’t know it yet, would be one of the more amazing ones we’ve been through.

What was fun for me and the kids in china:

♦ The Chinese people were a pleasant surprise and in fact most of the people we’ve met were exceptionally nice. Even if they couldn’t understand a single word we said.

♦ The trip to the national parks was the highlight. We’re talking a work of art by mother nature. As Wonderful and as breathtaking as only nature knows how to make.

♦ The Panda reserve in Chengdu was nice, to see the Pandas living their lives, the cubs playing and roughhousing- it was an exciting experience.

china with kids, family travel china

♦ The express train was really fun.

♦ The small town, Ping Yao, was a tasty treat.

What was less fun for me and the kids in china:

♦ The food. We definitely couldn’t get along with the food.

♦ Communication problems made everything feel difficult and heavy… even in hotels in Beijing, where you’d expect at least a bit of English- they couldn’t answer me when I wanted to know how to get to the great wall.

♦ And that’s also how it was with getting public transportation tickets. If we didn’t get along with some nice locals, there’s no way we could even buy bus or train tickets or even understand where they’re going and where they stop and when do we need to change and when to get off.

♦ The big cities are very modern. It’s nice- in China there’s everything, everything is huge, everything is spectacular. But to find places a bit more ‘Chinese’ you have to work hard.

♦ Anyway, in Chengdu for example there are a few nice gardens good for a walk, to sit in tea houses and watch the locals play their Chinese games that now everyone is downloading to their smartphones…

Sources worth checking:

The national park that is also a world heritage site and part of the biosphere plan:

 

And no, it has nothing to do with volunteer work. It’s really a regular trip with hotels or apartments or rooms. Just for free.

do you know this website ( www.airbnb.com) ?

It’s one of the biggest and best website there are for finding accommodation at prices that fit everyone.

Not long ago i got an email from Yossi (i swear that’s his name), he asked me for a recommendation for cheap accommodation in Florence. And me, what do i know. I don’t remember where we booked that apartment we stayed at 3 years ago in Tuscany, and anyway we became friends with the owners and from the three weeks we stayed there,  we only payed full price for the first one..

So i went to this website, and I did some research for Yossi. I searched ‘Florence’  without high expectations. Florence, after all, is an e-x-p-e-n-s-i-v-e city.  Truth be told, i was surprised to discover it’s possible to find beautiful apartments for very  low prices.

So i sent Yossi there.

The reason i searched in this specific website, is that just a few days beforehand i searched for myself cheap accommodation on the beach in Vietnam. And when i typed ‘mui ne rentals’  this is the website that gave me most cheapest, most diverse options. And when i entered this website, and i saw it’s name,  i suddenly remembered that a few years ago a friend of mine told me she only books accommodation there.  And i remember trying to remember the  name of the website, and i even asked her about it a few times, because she travels a lot, this friend, she knows what she’s talking about, she was even in the Brazilian jungles. So of course i could trust her.

And after recommending it to Yossi i thought why not write about it in my website?

So i went and did a bit of research for you too.  First i typed ‘Italy’.  I found a lot of results for surprising prices, starting from a room for 10$ and through to a whole house on lake Garda, with a swimming pool (!) for 42$ a night. I moved on, and saw another house with a swimming pool on lake Garda for 61$ a night. Ok. But this is Italy, supposedly, i don’t know, something is going on with  the economy.. The prices are low.

 

 

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Then i checked the mother of all expensive destinations and typed ‘Tokyo’ just to see what I’ll get. I Found an apartment with park view, Internet and everything, for 422$ a week. Meaning less than 61$ a night.

 

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I continued to Paris. Actually had me interested. Because living in Paris for a few weeks is a dream of mine. It was a bit more difficult there but i tried to be ‘large’ and searched for whole apartments, big ones,  with a kitchen and everything. The price per night (even in the good quarters) was 100$-250$.

Why am I telling you all this? First of all- because if you’re looking now to travel anywhere in the world, and it doesn’t matter where or for how long- you should check the offers on this website. If you book through the link in my website you’ll automatically get 35$ free to book with.

But more importantly: this website has an amazing ‘referrals’ plan. According to it, the more friends you send to use this website, and the more people book through you- the more money you’ll earn. 35$ per booking,  65$ for anyone that offers his property for rent.

So it’s not really cash but more of coupons you can use on the website. And that’s why the title says ‘how to travel the world without paying for accommodation’. Because that’s exactly what you can do!

Think about it: say you’re planning a family trip to Italy in the summer. Or in Christmas. Or any holiday. It doesn’t matter. If you register now to the referrals plan, and make sure to tell everyone,  within a few months you could earn enough to pay for all your accommodation! Or at least lower them drastically. Worth it isn’t it?

*by the way, if you have a property you can rent out you can even make some real profit. Jusy saying.

What do i need to do?

Enter the website.

You’ll get a small window where you’ll need to fill email and password or login directly through Facebook. And that’s it.

Email confirmation will be sent within seconds and once you confirm your registration you’re signed up.

After registering you’ll automatically see your namw on the top right cpenre of the page.  Scroll down until you see “travel credit”.

Click on it. You’ll get many different ways to refer your friends- through their email, through your email, through Facebook,  Twitter, or through your personal link.

And that’s it.

You don’t need to book through the website or even know it to be it’s ‘referrals’. All you need is what I wrote here.

It’s all so very simple it’s really a shame to pass up the option to make your trip so much cheaper.

We have been saving hundreds of dollars using this program. Just recently we stayed at Singapore, Vietnam, and Bangkok for few nights at a time, absolutely free!

My new ebook is now available on amazon. click here, and find out how to travel the world with your kids for less then 1400$ a month (while staying at nice hotels, eating great food and forgetting all about laundry :-)).