Isabella's Postcard from the Philippines!
A belated look back at our trip to the Philippines in February/March 2025. We were in Manila, Subic, and Boracay, had several mango shakes, and picked up some needlepoint supplies for Postcard Row!
Belated mabuhay from the Philippines! While I was keeping up with our weekly Substack POSTs from the PI (Philippine Islands), I totally forgot about sending special postcards from our travels! I figured you all still might want to see some of what we got up to, especially as I still managed to make needlepoint a big part of the trip.
I often get inspiration for canvases ~in the moment~ or at least too close to the moment to prepare and have canvases painted for taking photos during an event or vacation. Enter, painting needlepoint canvas designs on the plane. I packed acrylic paint markers which work in a pinch (and for sample purposes) and painted two canvases on the plane!
For some background, both of my parents are from the Philippines, and I grew up visiting family there every few years. I haven’t been back in a while, Andrew had never been, and my grandma isn’t doing well, so it seemed like a good time to get out there and go. My parents also decided to meet us there so we wouldn’t be lost!
Manila:
Two of my aunts live in Rockwell, so we spent a lot of time in Manila, and at Power Plant mall specifically. Mall culture is alive and well in the Philippines, most importantly because it is air conditioned! We also of course made several stops by my favorite places to shop, tiangge or the markets that peddle Filipino goods (and dupes)… I bought a lot of jewelry as usual.
Subic Bay:
We were in Subic (3 hours north of Manila) for a few days to spend time with my grandma and other extended family members that live there. It was very fun to bring Andrew to our “ancestral home” that I grew up visiting! I brought my Tory Burch monkey needlepoint clutch around hoping that we would casually drive by some monkeys on the side of the road, and eventually (on purpose) drove around and found them! I was too scared to get out of the car to take pictures with them though..
Boracay:
Boracay is the white sand beach resort that is probably the most popular of the Philippine resort islands. I had been here once before, in 2012, and its generally the same! We stayed at a different hotel this time, and my parents had the villa right next door to us, so it was fun just yelling over to their room if we were going to meet up for water sports or dinner. It was so nice and relaxing, and we absolutely loved our hotel, but there are only so many restaurants on the island. Next time we visit, we will have to check out something else… maybe El Nido or Bohol?
The mangoes (and mango shakes) in the Philippines really hit different. We brought some to our hotel from a market and they cut them up for us at breakfast the next day!
As many people in the needlepoint community know, a lot of needlepoint canvases are painted in the Philippines. I, of course, had to take the time to personally pick up some of our Postcard Row canvases so we could get them back in stock for all of you to stitch!
All in all, I think our trip to the homeland went really well, and I think Andrew really enjoyed it for his first time going over there. It also helps that everything is extremely affordable and that we had relatives guiding us anywhere we went. The main downside is that it takes 15 hours to fly there, so we can only really go when we have major blocks of time to take for vacation, which is unfortunately not common with our current day jobs. Hopefully it won’t be another 8 years until I get to visit again!
xo,
Isabella