Pantoja-Hidalgo has been writing for Philippine newspapers and magazines since the age of fifteen. She has worked as a writer, editor and teacher in Thailand, Lebanon, Korea, Myanmar (Burma) and New York, United States. Her interesting lifestyle, the result of her husband's fifteen-year connection with UNICEF, is reflected in her writing. Pantoja-Hidalgo was originally best known for an unusual kind of autobiographical/travel writing, which includes "Sojourns" (1984), "Skyscrapers, Celadon and Kimchi" (1993), "I Remember" (1991) and "The Path of the Heart" (1994), "Passages: Travel Essays" (2007), "Looking for the Philippines" (2009), and "Travels With Tania" (2009). Pantoja-Hidalgo later won numerous prizes for her fiction, creative nonfiction, literary scholarship and edited anthologies. She has frequently published many of her creative and critical manuscripts in major publications in Finland, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and the United States.