25 Hours from NY to Philippines (January 7, 2026)
As a reminder, my original plan was NOT to fly home for the holidays. My original plan was to celebrate Christmas in the Philippines with my daughter Violet and possibly my son Will (he was on the fence). Then Violet decided to join Elena on her flight back to New York after Thailand and I faced the decision to “continue solo” or fly home to New York myself. Having nothing to prove, I took a 3 week break and flew home to New York to celebrate the holidays with my family and extended family (see related post).
So now it’s time to resume my journey. By way of Philippines Airlines, I was able to secure a direct flight from JFK to MNL (Manila). That’s 17 continuous hours on a plane. What surprised me was the route. The flight path goes NORTH (not east or west from JFK). What? You can see for yourself via this website. Turns out the fastest way is to travel up through Canada, over Russia and China to get to Manila.
My final destination isn’t Manila, but Boracay (MPH)
The flight was scheduled to take off at 1:30am via JFK, but had a 1 hour delay so we didn’t take off until 2:30am. After the first 17 hours of flying (which turned out to be 18 with the delay). I had a 5 hour layover in Manila in order to fly one more hour to Boracay (MPH). But wait, you say, that’s only 24 hours. Right. That’s because the final hour was dedicated to getting from the Boracay airport to my hotel. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it took two vans and a boat to get there.
When I finally arrived at the Henann Regency hotel in Boracay, I was ready to collapse. I presented my passport, credit card and reservation number to the front desk, which historically is all that I would need to check in. Funny story. While I didn’t used PayPal for this transaction, the hotel’s back-office does and my legal name “William Joseph Carmody, Jr” didn’t match “Bill Carmody” which is what my PayPal account is registered. So, while I didn’t used PayPal to book this reservation, the hotel runs its credit cards through PayPal. My name didn’t match.
I have no idea what possible security breach the hotel was concerned about, but we spent the next 30 minutes going through my emails looking for a PayPal charge that didn’t exist. The issue was finally resolved when I logged into my CapitalOne credit card statement from back in July 2025 and showed that it was, in fact, me who booked and paid for this reservation. (But I’m not bitter ;-)
Thank God for my daily meditation practice. I was able to remain calm and sort through all of this while running on fumes. I realize I’m not my best when I’m exhausted, and yet I find this is where I get to discover my outer edges. How can I maintain my unconditional inner peace when dealing with disturbances.
If I caved to my emotions, I most certainly would have behaved in a way I would later regret and need to clean up. What I love is feeling the disturbance and using it to practice my commitment to inner peace. Every challenge presents an opportunity to practice my principles. By not getting angry or upset, I minimized the delay and focused on the resolution needed. And then took a long overdue nap. I find good solid sleep tends to make everything better. Happy to be in the Philippines. It’s truly gorgeous here.
