About FTT

First-time Travels

Enter my world.

I love to travel. Part of that passion is to take snapshots of places I visit, including the things that catch my eye. I also like to preserve these memories through the articles and essays I write.

I’m a postcrosser. I joined this online community swapping postcards with others around the globe. Ever since I have collected postcards from my travels. Even my friends bring me postcards from their travels…so my collection is growing by the minute.

I’m a Wikipedian. I am a certified volunteer of the Cultural Heritage Mapping project of Wikimedia Foundation, supported by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.



I’m an advocate. I have served as a full-time staff to organizations like Habitat for Humanity Philippines (I was also assigned to Indonesia for seven months!) and Hands On Manila (where I had the opportunity to participate in the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service held in San Francisco, California, USA). Then, I became the Executive Director of the Dr Pablo O. Torre Foundation, Inc. (DPOTFI) based in Bacolod City, Philippines.

I’m a PR practitioner. My public relations stints were in one of the leading PR agencies in the country, in a five-star hotel, and in a major publishing company. I love to promote good things, such as the beauty of my country.

I’m a Filipina living in the Philippines and traveling within my country and outside of it. I also lived in Indonesia for less than a year. I might say that the traveling bug bit me while I was still a kid, as I was always spending school breaks going for a vacation with relatives. But the itch became more insistent when I worked for an international non-profit organization and had the opportunity to go to various countries.

I have covered only a small part of our planet. The good thing about that is that I have more opportunities to do a lot of first-time travels, may they be in a new continent, country, province, city, town, village, hotel, restaurant, landmark, museum, or mode of transportation. It’s a way for me to connect to the whole world and enjoy new learnings and discoveries. Along with seeing various cultures, I also enjoy taking pictures and writing about my adventures.

This travel blog was created to share with first-time travelers my own experiences. It is an assurance for every tourist and traveler that even the most seasoned one has started out as a neophyte.

The articles here are my own thoughts, experiences and observations. No article or part of my articles may be copied, reprinted, republished or used without prior permission from the blog owner. Credits have to be provided if, and only if, permission is granted. The phrase [Source: https://firsttimetravels.com] must appear after the quoted part.

Photos in this site (which includes all my pages and blog posts) are owned by this author. Photos may not be used without prior permission from the blog owner. Once permission is obtained, proper credits should be provided [Photo by Claire Algarme of https://firsttimetravels.com].

You may e-mail me at firsttimetravel@hotmail.com or direct message me at http://twitter.com/firsttimetravel for inquiries or offers for collaboration or sponsored branded content. You can also visit my Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/firsttimetravel. Check my photos at http://instagram.com/firsttimetravelsblog.

I was part of the now-defunct Lonely Planet Blogsherpa program in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

LP 3-year badge copy

I was one of the 12 finalists in the Medical Tourism Blog Contest of the Tourism Authority of Thailand in 2010. I was one of the three bloggers who won an all-expense trip to Auckland, New Zealand through Globe Telecom’s #Wonderful Blog Contest in 2016. I was one of the 30 bloggers who made it to the cast of the Kerala Blog Express Season 4 of the Kerala Tourism Office in India in 2017.

I do freelance writing (yes, you can e-mail me for projects). I was a Senior Writer in Biz Events Asia and a columnist of Sun.Star Bacolod. Some of my write-ups that saw print:

Smile Magazine Aug/Sept. 07

Bayang Magiliw Magazine Aug-Sept. 2009

Roam Magazine Issue 3, 2010

Pilipinas Magazine maiden issue 2014. This is distributed in Bahrain.

Pilipinas Magazine maiden issue 2014. This is distributed in Bahrain.

My story was on our volunteer trip to Tacloban.

My story was on our volunteer trip to Tacloban.

micenet cover

A warm welcome from my editors in micenet Asia. Thank you for getting me as your Senior Writer.

A warm welcome from my editors in micenet Asia. Thank you for getting me as your Senior Writer.

My first article in micenet Asia.

My first article in micenet Asia (now Biz Events Asia).

Sun Star Bacolod

My first article in my Sun Star Bacolod column.

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