My magic 7

Apparently there’s a travel blog meme going around and I just got tagged by Gay and Chino. It was a stroke of great timing as after finishing my Guam series, I’ve nothing to write about anymore.

Most beautiful post
What is the characteristic of a beautiful post? Is it in the way it was written or how it affects the readers? Does it wax poetic about a particular destination? Oddly enough, what I find beautiful is something that is very personal: Confessions of a solo female traveler. It’s a post I wrote in celebration of International Women’s Day in hopes of encouraging girls to go explore the world.

Most popular post
Published in 2009, my post about How to renew your Philippine passport in just 30 minutes certainly got a lot of attention. Though the process I’ve outlined is obsolete, it still manages to draw in the people looking for passport renewal information, which got me updating the post every so often (read: whenever I feel like it).

Most controversial post
I’m not one for writing strongly worded prose — you can only find them in my private journals — much less write something to stir a controversy. Somehow though, I seemed to have offended someone’s sensibilities when I wrote about Airline food. Seriously. After that comment, I started having these huge cravings for croissant. Nothing beats the LOLs that came from the person who told me to go to DAM HELLL though.

Most helpful post
When I started my travel blog, I wanted it to become a resource for other travelers who are planning for their own trips. That’s why I always feel so happy when people, both online and offline, come up to me and tell me that they found my blog so helpful when they were researching and even when they’re at their destination. My puny attempt at being a travel guide book writer paid off with the Boracay Cheap Accommodation Guide post, which is still quite a huge hit among travelers. Its success inspired me to reprise the role and came up with the Guide to Cheap El Nido Resorts.

A post whose success surprised me
Though I know that visa posts will get a lot of attention, I’m surprised that my How to apply for an Australian visa and Applying for an Australian tourist visa: A guide for Filipinos are still racking up the hits even if they were posted way back in 2007 and 2008 respectively. While the information are largely obsolete (the Australian immigration update their forms every 3 months and the submission process has changed already), people still comment to ask questions that I’m finding hard to answer. What surprised me though was other readers sharing their own visa success stories and offering their own advice and answering questions for other reader.

A post I feel didn’t get the attention it deserved
I’ve published over 600 blog posts over the years and I must admit that I didn’t go beyond 2010 to look for posts that fit this criteria. However, I would like to take this chance to push this post to the spotlight: How to apply for a Myanmar tourist visa. It’s not going to win any writing awards, but I just want to put Myanmar into people’s subconscious because it’s such a lovely country to visit. Maybe I would be more effective if I finally write about my travels in Myanmar. Someday, someday.

The post that I am most proud of
Last April, I hosted the Philippine Travel Bloggers’ Blog Carnival on Solo Travel. My intention for proposing the theme is let others share their stories about going solo because frankly, after 5 years, I figured my readers would appreciate hearing other voices talking about traveling solo instead of me rehashing the same old story. It was a challenge compiling and reading all 31 entries that joined the carnival and I have to say I’m quite proud at how I managed to string them all together.

There you go, my top 7 posts (and a couple of extras). I hope you find them useful somehow.

No, not tagging anybody. Want to do this meme? Go right ahead and post. Just say I tagged you 😉