Perfect retired budget travel holiday home this year

Last Updated on June 3, 2023 by Ellen

Happy Thanksgiving and seasons greetings from the Philippines! Actually, Thanksgiving in America is just another workday in the Philippines.

This post – and the accompanying video – is made from Liloan, Cebu, Philippines. It’s the location of this year’s retired budget travel holiday home. Cebu is the name of the island and the province and its capital Cebu City.

Liloan is a waterfront ‘suburb’ about 10 miles north of Cebu City and the international airport. We are renting an Airbnb apartment in Liloan through the upcoming holidays.

We arrived about ten days ago and are comfortably settled into this modern one-bedroom, second-floor unit. Check out the “Kortan’s Crib” video below to see our neighborhood, amenities, and exactly what $17.50 per day gets us.

Video tour of our retired budget travel holiday home this year

As you can see in the video, it’s a clean, well-appointed, and spacious apartment. In fact, we determined it to be one of the best Cebu area deals on Airbnb (including the big monthly discount). There were some comparably priced places available in Cebu City but they were all much smaller ‘studio’ units.

We call our holiday home “the penthouse” since it is raised up and nicer than most of the surrounding dwellings. Our neighbors seem to be all native working-class and family folks. There are also plenty of roosters and stray dogs around. Thankfully, using our large stand fan in the air-conditioned bedroom at night completely blocks out any neighborhood noise.

There are no other tourists or westerners living nearby that we have seen. We are a bit of an oddity, but everyone has been friendly and kind and seem somewhat bemused by us. Everybody we’ve had contact with understands and speaks some English. I’ve made a few ‘friends’ at the corner bicycle shop where I purchased a used bike and shared some liters of beer.

There are some beaches close by our retired budget travel holiday home, but nothing like the white sand, ‘tourist magazine’ beaches found on other Philippine islands.

We have noticed a few other Caucasians while shopping at the neighborhood mall about a mile away. They were all white men of retirement age, with younger Filipino women.

There is a large department store and modern grocery and several sit-down chain restaurants inside the local mall and dozens of other shops and stores and food stalls lining the surrounding streets. It is a bustling area, swarming with motor scooters, tricycle taxis, and jeepneys, which are customized pick-up trucks that serve as cheap shuttle buses to nearby destinations and into Cebu City.

We’ve taken the jeepneys – and Grab cars (similar to Uber) – on several excursions into Cebu City for sightseeing, medical, and charitable reasons. In fact, one of the main reasons we rented our retired budget travel holiday home near Cebu City is so Ellie can get her semi-annual medical checks. As one of the Philippines largest cities, Cebu has numerous hospital facilities and many well-regarded physicians. We are currently making appointment arrangements.

As mentioned in the video, in a couple weeks, my dear mother will be joining us and escaping the Cleveland, Ohio winter. She’s a lifelong international adventurer and it will be great to have her visiting again, as she did earlier this year in Vietnam. After our time in Cebu we will all be moving on to other Philippine islands, including those known more for beaches and tourism. Stay tuned. It should be a fun time.

As always, happy trails & more beer. Life is now!