Over Chinese New Year break me and a group of friends traveled to the Philippines. I was hesistant at first to go there because I've heard of all the bad stories about the place. However, let it be known that the Philippines is one of the safest places I've been and the people there were incredibly nice. It took about two planes and bus to get there but it was worth it. Really the only dangerous place is Manila but we stayed at the airport the whole time on the way there. The trip there was pretty rough, our first flight was delayed almost 4 hours because there was a problem with the plane (made me feel great) but we also were given HK$ 75 to spend at the food court, which had a Burger King. I definitely spent all 75 at BK, spicy whopper meal (supersized), angry onions, a croissantwhich and I was full and ready for bed. Unfortunately the only bed available was an airport bench so I tried my best to take a little nap and I read alot of my book. When we boarded everybody looked beaten and ready to just get it all over with, that airplane ride kinda sucked.
Okay, so we arrive in Katiclan and chill for a bit untill we boarded the next plane, which was tiny and when we boarded, thats when it first started, the club music. The Philippine people LOVE listening to club music with it's techno beat. Anyway, there was fun poppy club music playing on the airplane! Okay other than that, it was a pretty standard hour long flight.
Finally, we get to Manila where we meet this great bus driver named No-No, atleast pronounced like that. He got us to our ferry in a matter of minutes. This was our first up close look at the Philippines, there were alot of shacks, people, dogs, cats, trees, and these things called tricycles, oh and Jipnees! Ticycles are essentially a mo-ped with a customized sidecar basically slapped on the side, they don't look safe at all, but it is the way people get around there. And then there are
the Jipnees, they are the coolest buses I've ever seen. They have a really low profile roof and they are usually customized as well, most of them were really shiny with a bunch of stickers and of course loud club music playing, they're great. Anyway, No-No got us to the ferry dock where we had to pay for tickets and an environmental fee. If you are planning to travel to the Philippines, make sure to bring extra cash because there are alot of surprising fees. Okay, we got on our super crappy boat and headed to Boracay.
We get out and it is raining :( but that didn't stop us, we hopped on a trike, yes, all six of us packed onto one. The dude charged us an extra 20 pesos just because of that. He was cool though, he managed his way to St. Vincent cottages. Their webpage makes the place look so much better than what it actually was. Our room was 4 double beds and a bathroom. The bathroom. . . not what I'm used to, basically what we had was a toilet, sink, and a shower-head stuck in the wall. There was no actual shower area, if you wanted to take a shower you had to make sure your clothes were out of the way because everything was getting soaked.
But we made it!
It was beach everyday all day. We usually laid out in front of this cool restaurant called Epic where we could walk up and get drinks or a little something to eat. The first night we sat on the beach enjoying some live entertainment and San Miguel. Astonishingly they were singing more club music, it was actually cool, live interpretations, the male singer tried his best to auto-tune himself, he was good at it too. We were all really tired and sun soaked so we went back and fell immediately asleep.
Day Two
We were at the beach again, only this time I went to buy a frisbee so we could do something other than lay, alot of the locals were skim boarding, but they were too expensive for me, although I am quite familiar with it. That night we went to one of the clubs there and it was pretty intense, there were people already on the dance floor when we got there around nine. Austin and Clement ordered these towering, flaming, drinks to start things off, I was mostly at the table and ended up leaving early and finding my way back on my own.
Day Three
This day was by far the most sunniest and probably the day I got burnt the most. I believe this night we went out to dinner to a nice little place and called it a night afterwards.
Day Four
This was our last day in Boracay we went on an ATV tour to the tallest point of the island and got excellant pictures of the sunset. Then we found out about this place called the Jungle Bar and we just had to go. It was on the other side of the island which is only about 2 kilometers so we got on a trike and headed out. This place was terrifying it was in the middle of nowhere, but nearly every exchange student was there so it was pretty awesome. They had bamboo and coconuts hanging everywhere, and if you tried you could hear the waves crashing. People were swinging, dancing, talking and playing pool, everyone was having a good time. By this time I had turned into clepto-mode and I spotted a low hanging coconut so I snatched it off the roof and proceeded to bowl using empty beer bottles and my coconut. Also before we left I jump up pulled a coconut head off the roof and ran away to a trike waiting for us. It was awesome.
Day Five
In order to make it to our flight we had to take a ferry at about 4:30 am. Which meant we had to get up at 3:00am after a night at the Jungle Bar. Somehow, we managed to get everybody up and moving. We hitched a trike and peaced out. We called No-No before we left to make sure he was waiting for us on the other side. Once we got there, sure 'nough there he was waiting to pick us up. A couple of world traveling Americans got on with us as well and offered some great stories and made the bus ride go pretty fast. The ever impressive No-No got us there on time to ride our first plane to Manila. Our flight was on schedule and everything to off to Manila we went. We planned to spend a day in Manila, so had to find a hotel. We arrived at this place that had shotgun toting police officers at every corner, we were scared but we knew this would be the safest place. The hotel was really nice and that night we went to the Mall of Asia to watch a movie. The choice. . . Season of the Witch, definitely not one of Nicholas Cage's best. but it was still pretty cool to be there. After that we went back to our hotel and figured everything out for tomorrow and then fell asleep. We woke up and headed to the airport to get on the final flight back to Hong Kong.
Cracker Nuts
I almost forgot to mention, at Boracay they have these things called cracker nuts, basically a peanut with some sort of hard shell flavored in BBQ, Cajun, or Abolone. They were the greatest things I have ever had and I brought a huge pack back with me. Well that is gone already and apprently they are only sold in the Phillipines since I haven't been able to find them. Seriously considering ordering some off the internet.
The Philippines were incredible.
We did however make a stop at the Space Musuem here, and let me tell you. Don't Go. Ever. It is at the same level of 9th grade science projects. The coolest thing they had was like a gyroscopic bike. But then we saw this amazing movie about the ocean and stuff and the most incredible part is that Jim Carey narrated it! The Pet Detective himself was telling me about the ocean in Hong Kong. Anyway that was the best part of the Space Museum by far. We also got to take a look at the Avenue of Stars which is an exact copy of Hollywood. We saw stars of people like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat and then there were a million others we didn't know. They did have a giant statue of Bruce Lee which was cool. Then we finished the night up with a little Outback Steakhouse and a Bloomin' Onion.
Friday, last night, we decided to head out toYau Ma Tei to eat some food and hang before heading out. We walked down a market for a while and I sat at a table mostly because I couldn't keep walking anymore. It was a good place, there wasn't enough room for tables on the inside so we sat on, basically card tables and little foot stool. Most restaurants are like this, kinda dirty, almost no english words and they usually laugh at us foreigners, but we like it and usually laugh with them. We ate and some of our group went out and the other stayed behind to check the market out. I chose to stay back. The stuff at the market is real cheap and I almost bought a big bottle of Polo cologne for like 10 bucks but decided against it, stuff is really inexpensive here. I was crazing a 50 cent milkshake from McDonalds so we went there and I got a Egg McMuffin and a chocolate milkshake. On our way out we witnessed a man stuff a sleeping pigeon into a McDonald's to go bag. Take it back into McDonald's to show his friend. The assumptions began, usually based off of stereotypes, was it going to be dinner? A pet? Does McDonald's use pigeon meat? The weird thing was he did it so smoothly and calmly I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time. Which lead to the conclusion that he and his buddy regularly dine on pigeon. Yum.
