*** As we write and publish this, the Coronavirus pandemic is literally sweeping the world. Our own life and work has already been impacted, but we publish this in an effort to share our recent experiences, and in the spirit of hoping that in the coming months things recover and get back to normal.
==========
After almost 30 years of not visiting the Philippines, I have been back three times in the last four years!
Our trip in 2017 was the first time to see the Philippines for Scott and our oldest daughter, and then Scott and I returned in 2018, just the two of us. We realized this was an ideal destination for us – movie time on the long flight over, real estate scouting, our kind of comfort food, and personal enrichment as we are longtime supporters of Children International, which has two agencies in the Philippines.
This third trip was focused on two things: 1) we visited a new part of the Philippines – a week in Cebu; and 2) I created my own spa vacation.
15 Spa Treatments For Under $200
I had included spa treatments in previous Philippine trips, but this time I went all-out and did 12 treatments in our 12 days there. Scott even did a couple of massages and a reflexology, for a total of 15 spa treatments between the two of us. We spent just over $171 on 8 massages, 5 reflexologies, 1 blowout and 1 facial, and that includes tip. That’s $11.40 on average (the Philippine peso is about 50 per $1 US).
$171 is less than the cost of one treatment in the US at a luxury place. Even the value options you can find in New York City (and there’s also the ad hoc deal on Groupon) are more like $40-50 per treatment, not $11, and those places are bare bones. The spa facilities we went to were serene.
Scott and I recently celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, and I had priced out a famous West Coast spa thinking that we might want to do something luxurious. One week for the two of us would have run almost $11,000, not including airfare! We could do 3 trips to the Philippines – more if we kept to a budget. A budget is not necessary when you arrive to the Philippines though, because once you get there, the prices are so reasonable.
Two weeks in the Philippines cost $3,678
Two thirds of our expenses were air and hotel:
We got great airfares on Asiana (~$600 per person round trip). The Cebu side trip cost an additional $100 per person round trip. We opted for AirBNB over hotels, which was a significant savings of 30-50% (much more if you opt for the resort hotels). We stayed 13 nights, so our average nightly rate was $67.
Public transportation within the Philippines is not convenient, and walking isn’t easy, given the lack of sidewalks and crosswalks. It can also get very hot, though not as much in January and February, when we like to visit. You need to budget for taxis, but that is still cheap. We ended up taking Grab (the Uber/ Lyft equivalent) everywhere. We took 21 rides for $119. By comparison, our Lyft rides to/from JFK airport in New York City totaled $160. What busted our intra-Philippines transport budget were the ferry business class tickets in Cebu – worth it for $40, but that could have bought a lot of cab rides!
Food is cheap and plentiful once you get here. Yes, we spent under $300, or just over $20 per day, for food, including some nice restaurants. Activities are inexpensive, if you love spa treatments like me, or even if you want to see the sites. Admission to cultural sites, museums and nature areas are a couple of dollars or even free.
While $3,678 is a very reasonable price tag for a two-week trip for 2 to the Philippines ($131 per person per day), extending the trip to a month or more would drop the daily price tag even further, given that the high cost of airfare can be spread out over a longer time, and it is also likely that you could get a better deal on housing for more of a long term stay.
The National Museum of Manila is free and highly recommended
While in Manila on this trip, we returned to the National Museum, which houses art from the 1800s till today. It is a beautiful building with something for everyone – classical/contemporary, sculpture, paintings, costumes.
One fascinating exhibit we saw was Quadricula (HOCUS II), a series of 26 paintings co-created by Saul Hofilena Jr., a lawyer-historian (who doesn’t paint!) and Guy Custodio, the painter of the duo. HOCUS is a combination of their last names. The paintings are an expression of one’s inner thoughts on various topics and events. The works are very detailed, and for a layperson like me (I never studied art formally), the pieces were fun and accessible. They are each marked with a small angel reading a book, and I amused myself for a long time trying to find the angel in each of the pictures (that’s my type of art!).
Philippines will be our DIY spa option
It was an incredibly relaxing vacation for us, and we got double the time (two weeks!) for far less than the $11,000 we would have to fork over to a stateside spa resort.
We definitely plan to return every year or two. With a new non-stop available from JFK to Manila airport, a stopover in the Philippines is also a great option for traveling to other parts of Asia, which we already plan to do.
If we get consulting projects in Asia, we could combine our DIY spa vacation with some business, for the ultimate bleisure trip!
We are Scott and Caroline, 50-somethings who spent the first 20+ years of our adult lives in New York City, working traditional careers and raising 2 kids. We left full-time work in our mid-40’s for location-independent, part-time consulting projects and real estate investing, in order to create a more flexible and travel-centric lifestyle. 
Financial independence and early retirement is not something we originally focused on, but over time realized it was possible. Our free report, 
