Day 123: Conference Day 2

Tired and hung over today, but it's the last day of the conference so we have to make it count. Back on the shuttle bus (this time accompanied by a Kiwi PhD living in Nepal who I'd been chatting to the night before), and arrived at the conference later than yesterday but still in time for the opening speeches.

First we heard from a VP at Agoda who talked about his visions and plans for the future, followed by the Philippines Secretary of Tourism to welcome us. She was supposed to speak on Saturday but apparently wasn't well.

Today's sessions for me were: writing expert hotel reviews (not just the junk you see on TripAdvisor), how to use Snapchat, and a super interesting and inspiring one about Hyperlapse videos which sort of blew my mind. What are Hyperlapse videos? You'll have to wait and find out!

In between we also had a lunch session done Filipino style - we all ate standing, with our hands, using banana leaves as plates. Difficult, but you get the hang of it pretty quickly. Some tasty stuff there, but as I may have said before - there's a reason you've likely never encountered a Filipino restaurant.

More speed networking which I sat out and just hung around chatted, before the closing keynote from Patricia Schultz, author of "1000 Places to See Before You Die". It was interesting, though she had a slight tendency to ramble a bit. And with that - TBEX was over! Only remaining order of business - the closing party!

The party was at Chaos Nightclub in "City of Dreams" - a large entertainment development attached to the Crown Casino (even over here we can't get away from friggin Packer). Took a while to get in since all 500+ attendees showed up at once, but once in we got stuck into the food & beverages provided. It was done in an Oktoberfest theme, with lots of German food (bratwurst, saurkraut, pretzels, schweinhaxen etc), and gigantic steins of German beer. They also had a couple of live bands playing which added to the atmosphere.

Loads of fun dancing, drinking and eating and just generally making merry with all of our new friends. But alas all good things must come to an end, and eventually we were getting back into a shuttle bus around 11pm and heading for the hotel. Although my conference is over, Shandos is going on a FAM trip (media trip) and needs to be at a hotel near the airport at 6:30am tomorrow morning.

Yes - I'll be flying solo for a week!Read more