Philippines

I saw this Dragon in the Philippines...... don't you just love him.

31/08/2006 The English contingent arrived in Manila and everyone travelled to Pila in the afternoon after stopping over in the MALL OF ASIA. It seems that malls are very popular in Malaysia and the Philippines and after discussing this with people it seems that the root cause of this is air con. Malls have it while the outside does not hence everyone likes to hang out in the Mall. The clothes were very reasonable and had a variety of products. Normally on the counter you would expect impulse purchase products. In the clothes shop these were silicone fillers for bras.

We then found an ATM that would take Visa. However the Bank of China only allowed £40 to be withdrawn at a time.

We then proceed to Pila where we were the only guests at RL and proceeded to eat a humungous amount of food while torturing the locals with appalling and rather loud karaoke (origin of this art form http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke).

01/09/2006 The next day we tried on our Barongs and then proceeded to the Pagsanjan falls (I thought they had a different name but hopefully this is the correct one). The Jeepney are great fun and people kept on jumping on the back off our vehicle (I’ll have to find a photo of them). There basically customised long wheel based jeeps with a covered back.

We got to the falls and then on a shallow 4 person canoe travelled up the river. Initially we went in a convoy being tugged by a canoe with a motor and then the two guides started paddling. The gorge was beautiful and we passed people finishing with home made spear guns and then reached some rapids.

This is where it got rather exciting as the guys kept jumping out of the canoe to push us up the rapids. This continued for about 45 minutes until we got to a stop off point at the end of the gorge.

We departed from the canoes and went up to the falls via some pontoons made out of bamboo. There was a cave behind the waterfall and some of us spent a fair amount of time trying to get as close as possible to the waterfall without swallowing too much water. (The life vest helped).

After this we proceeded (soaking wet) back down the rapids (pic of a wet me at falls) and then on to Pila and Helens house for a feast and some more Karaoke (all Philippines are excellent at this, 99% of Europeans are useless. My secret is slow talkative songs which are generally nursery rhymes that also has the benefit of a, they are short. b, they have an added comedy value).

02/09/2006 Wedding Day

The wedding was excellent I need to get a picture of the candel bit in the ceremony as that was rather touching.

Discussions in the pub in the UK had given us a few concerns about the rainbow theme but it looked great. We are not used to the theme concept in the UK but it seems to be the thing to do in the Philippines.

03/09/2006 Travelled back to Manila for a flight to Tagbilaran in Bohol where we would spend 3 nights. This was with Cebu Air (The fun Airline).

04/09/2006 Bohol – Dolphin watching on the outrigger shown below, snorkelling and then mucking about in the pool.

The pictures below are two sisters Denise and Karen that helped out throughout the trip.

05/09/2006 Bohol – Tour of the island which included the bridge shown above. I wish someone had told me that only one person was supposed to be on the bridge at a time. As part of the tour we also saw the worlds smallest primate. (Its body is smaller than a coke can).

06/09/2006 Bohol – The following day it was Nicholes birthday (the boy in the picture below, with his sister Kyla and mother Ellis). In the morning I went diving and then on to Cebu by boat. Unfortunately no pirates were sited just really cold aircon with a movie. When we arrived in Cebu it was raining. We went out for food which included some dinky little crabs and then followed this with a live band and drinks. Which were then followed by more drinks in Jonathan’s room and a rather late night.

07/09/2006 Muggins here the had been silly enough to have a wake up call booked so that he could go for breakfast alone after having 150 minutes sleep. Everyone else got up hours later. We then toured the local market and went to Manila by plane from Cebu.

08/09/2006 Manila

09/09/2006 In the morning we travelled from Manila to Pila and in the afternoon Mark and I went out on Jet Ski's this was fun but expensive. We got quite good but I pushed the envelope a few times and lost my googles. Boo Hoo. In the evening we traveled to Tagaytay.

10/09/2006 We got up to leave at 5 (or 6) to walk up the Taal Volcano. This was a good idea and we celebrated Marks birthday on the top (hence the hat and balloons). At 9 o'clock some of use decided to walk down into the crater for a swim. Some of us made it and I had a swim. We were all exhausted, cut up and I turned pink and am now peeling. It was great fun and I have now been swimming in an active volcano... I'll get a hot and sticky photo of me to go in here. Then it was back to Pila.

11/09/2006 Manila – I departed back to Malaysia and then the UK for work on the 12th.