Palau Solo Honeymoon Turned Fiery Fling

Preface: Welcome to another of my new “Travel Stories” section of my blog, where I write mini-books about what really goes on during my epic, endless solo travels around the world! Some of these stories just aren’t safe for social media, and most of them definitely require more space than a caption to explain!

I also really love writing! Before I was automatically labeled as a social media influencer, I was a blogger, with dreams to also be a book writer. So now that business is going well, I have more time to do my passion of writing!

My first actual book was published last year, and it explains how I first started all of this and helped create the concept of getting paid to travel by promoting places on social media. If you haven’t already bought it, please check out ‘Yes, I’m a Woman and I’m Traveling Alone’!

These Travel Stories that I post on here will likely be a part of my complete third book…after I finish writing the second book about how I went nomadic at twenty six, and became one of the world’s first travel influencers.

Last, I’m sharing these stories because I like to tell stories of my adventures. If you have any negative judgments or opinions, please feel free to not read them! But I do hope you’ll enjoy knowing the truth behind my travels, schenanigans, and personality!

Chapter 1: Getting a $2k/Night Over-Water Bungalow in Palau for One

Let me just start this little love story by telling you where Palau (the country, not the city) is, and how big it is. It’s in the middle of the ocean, and so small that you’d have to 10x zoom in on the map to find it.

Next let me say, that like some women, I have a constant thought of “Why do I never meet any cute, nice guys when I travel”…you can probably guess where this story is going…

But! It didn’t start out in any way, shape, form, or even inkling of a thought! I spent months researching how to plan my travels in Palau, and pitching hotels and tour companies there to collaborate with.

Just in case anyone isn’t aware of how my job works as a travel influencer/blogger; pitching collaborations is a huge part of the job. It’s how I have traveled the world either for free or paid on top of it being for free. Usually now I only pitch extremely rare or expensive destinations, like Palau, and otherwise I won’t really do a collaboration for free anymore (since I’ve been to most places that approach me).

Well, to be completely honest, one of my virtual assistants does the pitching for me these days (I write the pitch, she does the research then emails it out). I had told her to only send it to the top hotels in Palau, and was a little surprised when she was done in like five minutes. Then I did a quick search on a booking website, and saw that there were only about three top hotels, and the average price was about $700 per night! The only places to stay under that looked like three star accommodations for five star prices, or hostels, which, to this day, I still have never stayed in and I do not regret that at all.

Typically getting a collaboration when there are only three options is a bit tricky for me; I’ve always said that the more you pitch, the higher your chances are. But I also tend to forget that I’ve been doing this for freaking forever, and am really good at it, so I shouldn’t have been shocked at all when the number one resort on the island not only wanted to collaborate with me, but they also wanted to put me in their over-water bungalows…which are typically where you’d see people spending their honeymoons.

Ah, another solo honeymoon for me. I couldn’t wait to add it to the list of other solo-honeymoons I’ve had in over-water bungalows…like the Seychelles, the Maldives, and Tahiti. It’s funny how I always thought I’d need a man to enjoy such luxuries, yet there I was, single AF (well, technically it had only been since 3 months ago when I broke up with my toxic Colombian boyfriend for the seventh time), and actually VERY excited for this bucketlist destination, and to enjoy it in solitude since I’d be coming off of two back to back group trips, plus a major collaboration trip in Papua New Guinea.

That being said, let me just give you an idea of how badly I needed this solo honeymoon in Palau. My trip was scheduled for mid-April of 2023. In the four months leading up to that I had hosted a NYE group trip in Tulum, hosted another thirty-four person group trip in India for Holi, traveled to Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Okinawa (an island of Japan) for “fun/work”, hosted another twenty-four person group trip in Japan, then the next day I flew to Papua New Guinea (one of the hardest places to travel in) and started a twelve day regular collaboration that was very intense. I then went to the Philippines for five days to try to recover from burnout and catch up on my posts and work before starting my collaboration in Palau. Thinking back, I have no freaking idea how I do this.

I arrived in Palau in in the middle of the night, around 2am, because that was the cheapest flight I could find from any country, at a whopping $600 for a one way flight from Manila. The PR director for Palau Pristine Villas was an absolute angel and coordinated my airport pickup, so all I had to do was stumble through immigration (they give a really cute stamp by the way), find my invincible luggage, then look for the somehow-cheerful looking local man holding a sign with my name.

Once loaded into the mini-van-taxi, we set off for my resort oasis as he explained the areas we were driving through. I felt a bit bad because I was at the point of exhaustion where my brain was functioning 25%, but I also appeared to be attentive since I looked like a deer in headlights from being suddenly awoken on the plane with a blast of fluorescent lights to the eye and a person poking me and telling me to put my seat and window shade up.

I can barely remember being at the airport, but I remember the ride, because that’s what happens when you’re a solo female traveler on an island, alone in a taxi, in the middle of the night. All of a sudden I magically had solo-gal energy and started engaging back in the conversation. I also attempted checking the map on my phone about two hundred times, just in case, but I was so burnt out that I had forgotten to activate my eSIM for Palau when I had wifi at the airport.

‘Wellp, if I die in paradise…it could be worse.’ I thought dramatically. Then suddenly cringed at myself upon realizing how many people actually did brutally die in Palau during WWII. More on that later.

We passed the main “strip” of Palau that I had read is where everyone goes for eats and drinks, but my driver told me it’s been extremely slow since Covid. I was a bit surprised, since most places I’ve been to since 2020 have somewhat recovered, but Palau definitely has not.

About 30 minutes or, let’s be serious, I have no idea how long it took-minutes-later, we pulled up to the resort, where I was expecting a night guard to just show me to my room since it was around 4am. But to my extreme surprise, the PR woman was out front waiting for me, holding a fresh flower lei of Frangipanis (my favorite flower FYI).

I felt half excited and half extremely awkward, because I knew I looked like, smelled like, and probably was acting like a zombie. This is an insecurity I always have when meeting with PR people, hotel managers, tour company owners, and my social media followers in general. It’s because I know I put off a certain persona, or shall I say, I put on a show, online, which allows people to create their own ideas of how I am in real life. Little do they know, I’m actually a bit of a shy introvert with extreme ADHD, which means when talking to you I probably am thinking about 20,000 other things. And while my hair and makeup always look good on IG, I usually use hacks like hair extensions and eyelash extensions so I only have to put in minimal effort.

Anyway, I was so ready to just walk to my room, but the PR lady and concierge ushered me to a golf cart that would be taking me to my bungalow. We set off into the night, birds and bugs chirping away, and then suddenly, strangely, I had anxiety. In case anyone doesn’t know about my near death experience…I never had anxiety before, then suddenly I almost died while traveling four times in a row in 2018. I developed such bad anxiety and PTSD that I could barely be on a plane, train, or in a car. I thought my career was over. But I refused to accept defeat, and battled through it. So now, whenever I feel anxiety, instead of feeling scared, I try to think of it as a challenge to battle again.

This battle was slightly difficult. Not only was I on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, but also on a dark, silent pathway leading to a seemingly creepy looking cabin over water. Suddenly every horror movie I’ve seen previews for (bc I can’t actually watch them) was previewing IRL.

As I tried to force a super excited demeanor, they showed me around one of the most beautiful over-water bungalows in the world. One that people spend their savings on to stay at. Well, or one that others spend what they make in an hour on, I don’t really know. And that latter part makes me feel better about saying that I was still terrified AF for some reason, and my anxiety was not backing down.

This place is haunted. I’m going to get murdered by ghosts. Something feels weird. I’m going to have a panic attack in Palau and there’s no hospital nearby. I might have to finally take one of my emergency Xanex. Not the thoughts one would think you’d have in a $2000 per night over-water bungalow, right?

I checked the time difference for USA and decided it was an appropriate time to text the only person I ever let see me struggling; my mom. ‘Hi, I just got to my bungalow but I think it’s haunted and now I’m going to have a panic attack and die.’

Let me pause here to just say; could you imagine being MY mom? Not only do I travel the world for a living, but I opt to specialize in remote destinations and dangerous adventures. The amount of times I’ve had to text “So I’m ok, but this happened…’, and also the amount of times I’ve gotten a text along the lines of ‘I just saw your stories!! I can’t believe you did that Alyssa!!!’ is uncountable. In fact, I just did it right now, I literally sent, ‘Hey I’m going salsa dancing solo in Tulum, just letting you know since I normally don’t go out at night’. Her response was, ‘Ok, turn your live location on.’ …I’ve trained her well.

Anywho, like a true #MyLifesATravelMOM, she calmly reassured me that my $2k over-water bungalow was not in fact haunted, and that I should enjoy the big comfy bed finally after the intense two months of travel turmoils I’d just accomplished.

‘Twas true. I needed to chill the f*ck out. So I gave up on exerting my energy for unrealistic fears and embraced being in one of the most luxurious bungalows in the South Pacific.

But first, and to give you an idea of how intertwined my life is with my work; I took a quick video of the entire suite while it was nicely made up. AKA, before I exploded my luggage everywhere as if I owned the place. Yes, I am luxury travel jaded AF and these days I mostly just see the comfy bed, hot shower, and if the PR team was gracious enough to leave me a bottle of wine and snacks.

I quickly made some videos and photos, then changed into a clean-ish tank top without showering, since the shower was surrounded by floor to ceiling windows on all sides with only slate wooden blinds that I was sure someone could see through. Not that anyone would be in the lagoon that my bungalow was over…or would there be?

After plugging in my phone and portable battery, and pouring a large glass of cold water from the mini-fridge, I plopped down onto the cloud-like bed, and tried my hardest not to look at the creepy art on the wall, or listen the any slight noise outside. I wanted to doom-scroll through Instagram, but it was almost 5am, and I had super important things to do in the morning; like take drone footage of me in my private infinity pool. So I turned on my Bob Marley playlist (for some reason it makes me fall asleep) and passed the f*ck out.

Chapter 2: Waking Up in Palau Paradise

Sun beams and chirping birds awoke me out of one of my nightly lucid dreaming adventures, but I wasn’t mad about it. In fact, I was excited, as if it were Christmas or something. Er…I mean…as if it were Christmas when I was a child…I swear I don’t still get overly excited for PRESENTS!

I was feeling more than better than the night before. My anxiety was gone, my exhaustion somehow was replaced with energy, and my desire to be creative (AKA do my job) was back in full swing. Without even checking my phone first for Whatsapp messages, emails, and social media notifications, I flung the thick down comforter off of me, hopped onto the wooden floor, and bolted to the glass doors. Technically it was like Christmas, or rather, my birthday, and I felt like I was about to get an extraordinary gift.

The window shades were controlled by a remote system on the wall, so I tapped the up arrow and took a step back. I watched in awe, as if my life’s a travel movie or something, with the curtains opening across a cinema screen.

A ridiculous smile spread across my face, as I decided I was no longer in a creepy horror movie cabin, but instead in my ultimate dream house. Yes, I considered it my home, and I planned to relish every moment of it.

I opened the two glass doors, smiling even bigger, as I took in the site of my two sunbeds (even though I only needed one) complete with plush striped cushions and matching umbrella, positioned perfectly on the deck in front of my private infinity pool. The tiles of the pool sparkled a pearly blue color, making the water look extremely enticing to jump in, and the infinity edge aligned with a greener shade of blue lagoon water, with a view of the over-water-ocean-villas in the distance. Those ones were even more expensive, and I was supposed to switch to one in two nights for a night, but as a pool-connoisseur, I didn’t really want to leave this bungalow. Ever.

I noticed a glorious outdoor shower, and next to it were the windows enclosing the indoor shower, which I went to go open to see how epic that bathtub view was. Can confirm. It was incredible. And unless someone came to clean the pool, or swam up in a kayak, it was totally private.

Once I got every window blind open, I started doing a weird shuffle left and right, because I couldn’t decide what I should do first. You need to shower still! No don’t shower because you’re just going to go in the pool! Film before you mess up the perfect scene! Wait, but you need to be in the scene, go put on a bathing suit!. These are the typical conversations I have in my head with myself.

I lunged into the glorious walk-in closet, where I obviously had hung nothing up and instead just dumped my travel compression bags out on the floor, spilling my “tropical-country”-clothes everywhere. The two big compression bags with my sarees from my India trip, and winter trendy clothes from Japan stayed in the big suitcase that I didn’t dare try to open. 

It only took longer than normal to find a bikini because I had strangely only packed one for my two month, eight country trip. At the time of packing, my brain must have only been focused on India, Japan, and Papua New Guinea; three places I wasn’t expecting to wear bikinis. But how in the actual hell could I have forgotten about Okinawa, Palau, Philippines, and freaking Bali?! If I would have been thinking clearly, I would have packed at least seven swimsuits.

Luckily I was able to find one do-able bikini in Boracay before coming to Palau for a decent price, but it definitely showed my entire underboobs. Not that most people think that’s a bad thing, but it’s not exactly what I want to be showing on a work collab. So I opted for the one that I brought; a colorful striped string tie bottom that had a little too modest coverage for my taste, but the coverage and secure fit of the top was definitely a winner. Hashtag sponsored by B*Swim.

Bikini clad and cameras ready, I set up my six foot selfie-stick-tripod to overlook the pool, and paired the camera on it with my phone so I could see the preview. Then I hit record and did my usual “Casual low-effort glide into the pool and up to the infinity pool edge”. Why I try to make it look like I’m there on vacation without a care in the world when really I’m there working and highly stressed about getting good content, I don’t know, especially when I know humans enjoy seeing others suffer, but it’s what I’m used to, and what works for brands, so I’m sticking to it.

After spending about half an hour on photos, videos, and drone shots, which, by the way is not bad at all compared to most content creators, I put the cameras down on a sunbed as if they were my children, and actually swam in the pool, dare I say, for fun.

I’ll never forget that moment. Likely because I literally told myself to never forget it. Swimming back and forth under water, eyes open like a mermaid, marveling at the glistening tiles on the floor. Popping up at each end to see the blue sky and blazing gold sun, and of course, my extraordinary luxury private overwater-bungalow. It was moments like those that made me smile and whisper to myself, “You made it! This was your initial dream and you freaking made it come true!”

I allowed myself an extra half an hour to keep swimming and basking in the moment before continuing to work for my stay. But of course, that only lasted about seven minutes before I got antsy and the urge to create content overtook my brief attempt to relax. For the record, I very much dislike “relaxing”.

Taking my sweet time though, I swam to the two perfectly positioned lounge chairs, and reached up to grab my phone. Tapping open the Instagram app, then the plus sign to add a Story, then applying the Zanzibar filter I paid a coder to make for me, I aimed the camera at my face and started talking.

“Happy Tuesday everyone! And welcome, to my solo-honeymoon in Palau! This is my private overwater bungalow at Pristine Villas and Bungalows, hashtag sponsored, where I’ll be living for the next few days!”  I spun in a circle so that the background showed a three sixty degree view of the stunning area. Then added some captions, tagged the resort like I was supposed to per our contract, and hit send. There. I worked.

The PR woman must have also been in charge of their social media accounts, because the Story was immediately re-posted on the resort’s account, followed by a Whatsapp text from her asking if I’d like to join her for a quick tour and then lunch at the restaurant. Normally I kindly decline property tours if I’m not getting paid to be there, but since the value of this collaboration was close to six grand, I accepted, and reluctantly dragged myself out of my glorious pool to get ready. 

I switched into my dry bikini and threw on my crochet coverup. Then I piled my hair up into a purposely messy bun, and put one of the frangipanis that were placed as decoration on the counter behind my ear. Since my eyelash extensions that I got in Okinawa still looked incredible, I didn’t have to spend any time on makeup, and just swiped on my usual NYX Buttergloss in Tiramisu. Then I strolled out of my bungalow and along the jungle pathway that led to the hotel part of the resort, where there were about two hundred regular rooms that still cost four hundred dollars per night. 

I was extremely happy to see the beautiful white sand beach, with chic sunbeds and several towering palm trees. I’d definitely be going there after lunch. Continuing on the walkway towards the hotel, I passed the circular pool bar that already had four customers, and then the very inviting communal infinity pool. Normally I’d be all up in a pool like that one, but since I had my private infinity pool, it wasn’t as appealing. The crystal clear water of the ocean however was a different story.

In the open air restaurant, the PR woman was waiting for me. Seeing her in the daylight, I could tell she was from the Philippines, and likely younger than me since she was wearing braces. Then again, I could very much be wrong, considering that Asian women seem to never show signs of aging, and getting braces as an adult is normal.

She greeted me excitedly, and told me how much she loved my Instagram and blog. In response I told her how excited I was to post about my epic overwater bungalow. In true Philippine form, she asked me several questions about why I was traveling alone and if I had a boyfriend. This is in addition to the multiple times she re-confirmed via email that I would not be bringing a plus one. Some people just don’t understand that it’s not easy to find a man (or even a friend) who will drop almost two thousand dollars to fly to a remote island in the South Pacific for a week.

That’s actually the only reason why I don’t like going to the Philippines. It’s the only country I’ve been to out of one hundred and twenty seven where I get asked on a daily basis, multiple times, why I’m alone and if I have a boyfriend or husband. I know it’s a cultural thing, since marriage is important there, but holy hell is it annoying. In fact on this recent trip to Boracay, I put my solitaire aquamarine gem ring on my left ring finger just to deter people from asking. And when they’d ask anyway, I’d entertain myself by telling them he’s at home working and taking care of the kids while I travel. 

Anyway, the PR lady suggested I try a local dish that consisted of a small crab with its meat cooked in coconut foam. It was beyond delicious, but way too tiny, so I ordered a plate of tuna sashimi as well. Considering that both dishes costed thirty dollars, and were the cheapest things on the menu, I easily decided that they would be my only meal for the remainder of the trip.

After lunch, she asked me if I would take photos of the regular rooms and suites, which is not something I’d normally post anyway, so I made the excuse that I couldn’t because I wasn’t dressed for photos. Then almost as if she knew me well, she offered to have one of the suites set up with a bottle of wine around sunset to do photos then. For a free bottle of wine that probably costs one hundred dollars or more, yes, I will take some photos.

The tour didn’t last long since everything was in the same area. She hinted at wanting some photos of the main pool, and a drone video of the secret infinity pool on the bungalow side of the property, both of which I was planning to do anyway, so my work for the day was minimal. Then she surprised me with the information that she was also including a massage at their beautiful Balinese spa located in a luxurious treehouse. This was definitely claiming one of the top spots in the most luxurious collaborations I’ve ever gotten. Runners up are the Shangri La overwater bungalows in the Maldives, and a stay in the Umaid Bahwan Palace in Jodhpur, India that’s regularly about $30k per night.

As soon as she left me, I went straight to the activity counter next to the pool to get a complimentary snorkel and fins. Then I waddled into the water, and launched myself face first, pleasantly surprised to see endless coral right at the shore. Well, it wasn’t exactly great for swimming, but to have such easy access to snorkel around coral was amazing. Of course my ADHD made the snorkeling session only last about thirty minutes, so I decided to head back over to the bungalows to get the drone footage while it was still sunny. There was literally no one over there, which made things a lot easier, because I usually refuse to fly my Dronita if other guests are present. I also usually don’t walk on the edge of an infinity pool where there’s a sheer drop into the jungle if there’s other people there watching me, but there wasn’t, so away I walked. And I’m not going to lie, it was slightly terrifying, especially trying to balance while also flying a drone straight over my head.

With most of my content already filmed, I decided to spend the rest of the day drinking some local beers on the beach while I edited all of the footage. I was still extremely behind on my posts, and still only halfway through my Papua New Guinea content, but since the PR lady was very interested in getting the content, I decided to over-deliver by getting it to her while I was still there. 

Later on I went to the suite to take photos at sunset as promised, more than excited to leave with my bounty; the bottle of wine. I had the same meal for dinner that I had for lunch, then went back to my bungalow to try to sleep early, since I had a boat tour of the Rock Islands in the morning.