Week 82: Maganda Umaga Philippines!

Many many people I talk to hype up the Philippines.  They talk about the beauty, the simplicity, the affordability, and the overall great experience of being there.  There won't be any dispute from me in any of those regards.  I had a great time, it was an experience of a life time, but it was not without some ups and downs.

I arrived in the capital of the Philippines, Manilla on August 16th.  A little bit rainy, but great temperature, a little muggy of course, but a sight for sore eyes, after being in the desert for so long.  It's your stereotypical major city, lots of traffic, a slight hint of sewage, not too much to sight see.  I was hankering for some cheap knock off goods, and we went to the Divisoria area.  Not for the faint of heart, and only for the hardcore of shoppers who also speak Tagalo.  I'm glad Pretch was with me.  I stood out pretty bad, not sure if it was due to height, or skin color.  Either case, one of the guys did advise me that my gold chain should be tucked away, or be prepared to have it snatched.  Kinda a scary start.  We travelled by Jeepney which was like riding a bus.  Really cheap, but very slow.  Make sure to take a couple of motion sickness pills, and be prepared to rub up against everyone.  The payment system was surprisingly honest.  You just passed the money up, and everyone passed the money back.  I was a bit sweaty at the end of all this, but got a couple of shirts for 10 bucks.

Beep beep

We spent the day getting accustomed to the layout of the land, and headed out to one of the major attractions, the Mall of Asia.  It was a pretty good size mall, noted according to Wikipedia as the 12th largest mall in the world.  I've been to a few big malls, and they just turn into little towns at that point.  No way you're able to check out all of the stores, you just go to where you want to go, find which one of the locations (usually multiple of the same store in the mall) is most convenient and you go to it.  We took a taxi, so we didn't have to deal with any parking issues.  The lots seemed fairly under control though.  We ate at a Chinese restaurant, which apparently had some good filipino food, and beer in the mall!  Awesome!  Not something I can say i've done before.  The hotel we had also had a happy hour, I got my fix of the famous San Miguel beer, and we met up with the other two folks that would join us for the trip.  A buddy of mine from Denver took a trip down with us.  One of Pretch's friends came with us, so that there wouldn't be a third wheel situation.  I think it worked out well.

We went to the buffet for breakfast, more of a western style breakfast, Hoang's eggs were raw, the dahl was pretty good.  The others didn't get a chance to go to the Mall of Asia (MOA) so we went back, and it started to pour rain!  We had a flight that afternoon, but we were alerted by email that the airline had been shtutdown due to failure to comply with safety regulations.  Not a good start.  We had checked out of the hotel too, so we were kinda stuck in limbo.  We went to go get our refund for the airlines, if we were to rebook, it would have taken at least one week.  We weren't going to do that.  The next available flight was at 5:30AM the next morning.  What to do?  With the rain being so heavy, we decided to go to the Manila aquarium, and be indoors a little bit.  We charged up on coffee, saw the marathon event that was happening at the mall, and took a taxi over to the aquarium.  It was a pretty neat aquarium, a great deal of tropical fish of course, penguins, and they even had a "snow" exhibit.  Basically a huge freezer.  Kinda funny, lots of photo opportunities of course.

We could have gone to a fish spa, but apparently putting your feet in to a giant pool with hundres of other people, iwth fish eating dead skin sounds gross to some people.  We went back to the mall, again, this time we had lunch at the KKK club, it was not what you think it was, it was a different style of Filipino food.  We had a giant fried pork knuckle.  Excellent!  In reality there isn't much to do in a mall, even one that big unless you want to buy stuff.  So we walked around and around, until the latest movie played.  We watched Pacific Rim in high definition, and then slept at the airport for a while.  We didn't do much, but it was a very tiring day.  No further delays, and we were finally on our way to Bohol.

The name of the place that we stayed was Isla Hayaya, which was near Bohol.  We were still exhausted from the lagging day yesterday, and had lunch, and took a nap.  We arrived at around 8:30, and didn't get up until 4:00pm!  We walked around and saw the sun set, saw a boy fishing for eels, we had a beer, picked up some starfish, and had dinner.  The food at this place is absolutely amazing.

All home cooked meals, and it felt like we were the only ones there.  We had some squid, vegetables, and a soup which tasted just like Vietnamese sour soup.  A nice relaxing day.

The next day, was tourist day, we went all over the area, visiting sites such as the Tarsier Sanctuary.  We got to even hold one.  They mentioned that under high stress, they'll commit suicide, which made holding them kinda melancholy.  You can't tell if they're smiling I think.  They just look freaked out all the time.

From there we took the 214 steps up to the top of the chocolate hills, which looked surreal, almost silly.  We finished the afternoon with boat cruise, where there was a floating restaurant on the Loboc River.  There was plenty of good food, the highlight being mango with stinky shrimp paste.  Not one of my favorites.

There was traditional Filipino dancing called tinikling.  We followed that up with some ziplining, a fresh mango smoothie, and visit the Baclayon Church.  This visit to the church was a little more significant, knowing now that a typhoon has destroyed the church.  The church was opened in 1727.  We went to a exotic animal zoo, Hoang laid on top of a python, we we headed back.

We did inpromtu swimming, and had some delicious crab for dinner.  Unfortunately one of the girls couldn't eat crab, but we made sure that it didn't go to waste.  We showed the girls some card games, BS, go fish. and then headed to bed.  The bathrooms were surprisingly nice, hot water was provided by an inline instant heater, so that was quite nice.  The mosquitos were out, but as long as we kept the natural bug spray on (I got it in Sri Lanka, and it works so much better than Off with deet) it wasn't bad at all.

August 20th was a rough day.  Stormy season in the Philippines, means high waves, and flight delays, and probable cancellations.  We got all of those.  In order to head out from Bohol to our airport, we had to take a boat over.  About 2 hours in a churning boat was not terrible.  I took a motion sickness pill, so I was ok. The television was funny, it was a variety hour type of show, full of people in drag, children, contests, and a bunch of stuff that I have no idea about.

When we got to the airport, the flight was delayed from 5 to 7pm, and then from 7pm to 9pm.  The flight then proceeded to get cancelled due to the weather.  The funny thing about all this was that we were trying to get to Boracay.  I had originally booked a direct flight over from Cebu to Boracay.  However, we were rebooked to a flight with a stop in Manilla again.  However, Manilla was where all the bad weather was happening.  Eventually we were able to convince a travel agent that we would be willing to take a direct flight to Boracay instead of going to Manilla first . The problem was the flight was in the morning again.  There was no way I was going to do another night in the airport.  The airline didn't pay for the hotel room, since it was no fault of the airline.  It was a nice hotel, near the airport called the Bellavista Hotel.  We all shared a room, had some drinks, and called it a night.  The girls ordered pizza, and we watched a cheesy horror flick.  Really cheesy.  A much better ending than the beginning.  We were lucky that we didn't have to worry like all the other folks who were unsure about the status of their family, or houses in Manilla due to the weather.

The next day was much better in terms of transportation.  No delays except for a 10 minute hover before we could land.  A bit rainy of a day, but a very pretty place.  The one thing people don't mention about the Philippines is that there is a fee for EVERYTHING.  I'm guessing this is the way the government gets paid.  I believe we paid a tourist fee, environmental protection fee, and an airport fee once we arrived.  The airport is a bit away from the island, it took about half an hour to get to our hotel.  We had to take a boat, and then a tricycle to get there.  

It was a very nice resort hotel.  Clean, perfectly situated, and inexpensive.  

We walked around in the rain getting our bearings again, and find a sigsig restaurant.  This is a restaurant that serves skillet food.  Nice and hot, and spicy.  We got cleaned up, showered, and then went to the beach, since it stopped raining.  We walked from one side of the island to the other, and found the watersport side of the island.  I needed cash, so we walked around the outside shopping center, called the "D-mall."  We changed into swimming clothes, and went swimming.  It rained while we were there, but the temperature was great.  The sand there is like powdered sugar.  You stand still for longer than 5 minutes and you'll be be halfway up your calf. It's kinda like quick sand, only more more relaxing.  

We had some more Lechon Kawali, and margaritas.  Apparently happy hour margaritas are not the best for Pretch, so we went home early.  

The next day was activity day, and we got to do a bunch of your stereotypical items, ATV's, helmet diving, ziplining, snorkeling and island hopping.  Everything was nice, Pretch apparently hadn't driving a car before, so she ran directly into a banana tree, her friend rear ended Hoang.  Insert poor Asian driver joke here.  The helment diving was pretty neat for those who hadn't dived before.  The helmet's heavy, approximately 35 kg's, so you want to get in the water as soon as possible.  Pretty much a photo shoot once you're down there, with some fish feeding.  

Not bad.  We partied for the night, had some "fresh" prawns, drank beer, and song Hoang sing Karaoke.  It was a nice day.  

The next day, we did para-sailing in the morning, and windsurfing in the afternoon.  Apparently you need to be fairly athletic.  I failed horribly, and ran out of gas about 1/2 a mile away from shore.  Got tired.  Not a good time.  The girls got tan, and we decided to be gluttonous for dinner.  We found a fresh fish market called talipapa, and ordered a great deal of fish, clams, lobsters, and tuna for dinner.  We ate way too much, but it was great way to end our time in the Philippines.