Nic Trips

For this year's winter break, as soon as I finished up with my English camp, I flew off to China for a short, 5 day vacation. I flew into Beijing from Korea on Saturday afternoon and met my mom at the airport. I was so happy she agreed to visit me and take this trip together. Lucky Family Hostel During our time in Beijing, we stayed at Lucky Family Hostel. Normally, to be allowed entrance into China, you need to have applied for and paid for a visa ahead of time (and they're pretty expensive), but - there's a loophole! China has a policy, in order to accommodate people with long layovers, that allows "in transit" citizens from certain countries (USA included) to stay in the country for 72 hours without a visa. This means that you have to fly into China from another country, and then show your ticket proving that you'll be flying out again, within 72 hours, to a  different  country. Thankfully, China counts Hong Kong as a "different" country....

I picked up Andrew from the airport in the late afternoon on Thursday. From there we took a taxi to the bus terminal at the abandoned Costal Mall to catch a bus heading for Tagaytay. We arrived there around 9 pm and checked into Our Melting Pot Hostel. This was a clean, spacious and adorable house with what we would soon realize was the most kind and helpful staff ever. We spent the entire morning of our first day in Tagaytay sitting around the hostel and planning the details of the rest of our trip with the help of the staff. Then they gave us some instructions on our trip to the volcano and a recommendation for a restaurant for lunch. The restaurant we went to, called RSM, was a gorgeous and fancy Philippine restaurant with an incredible view of the lake. We got a ton of food and rice to treat ourselves to our most expensive and fancy meal in the Philippines, and it still only came out to 750 pesos (about $17). The food was delicious, accompanied by some Philippi...