My name is John Red. I’m a dad, a traveler, and someone who has never been able to write a short packing list.

I’ve been to a handful of countries, but I keep coming back to Palawan. Not because I ran out of places to go — because nothing I’ve found elsewhere comes close. The water, the remoteness, the fact that some of these islands still don’t have Wi-Fi. I find that unreasonably appealing.

Real Palawan Guide exists because I couldn’t find the honest version of these trips before I booked them. Every guide I read was technically accurate and completely useless — beautiful photos, no mention of the bucket-flush toilets, no real cost breakdown, no sense of what it actually feels like to arrive somewhere that remote at 7:30 in the morning after a five-hour van ride.

So I wrote the guide I needed. Then I wrote another one.

I’m not a tour operator. I’m not a travel journalist. I’m a paying tourist who takes notes — and thinks you deserve the unfiltered version before you spend your money and your vacation days on a place this far from everything.

If something I wrote helped you plan a better trip, that’s the whole point.