The Stats

Just want to leave this post to give all of the readers here some of the more interesting blog statistics about you the community that has begun to follow it.

• We have had 1,693 
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The above map represents reader locations globally.

The scope of the viewer ship of the blog has begun to set in and we are making efforts to make the posts more user friendly for translators.  We want to thank each and everyone of you for taking the time to read and enjoy the stories, info, pictures and travels on WanderingBlindly.com.  

We look forward to bringing fresh content and information and ansewering all of our reader questions so keep them coming.

Keith Leeper (GoldenOne)

Webmaster/Contributor

WanderingBlindly.com

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My Sympathy for the Manila Flood Victims

 I got lucky on my first trip to the Philippines, because in nearly two weeks of total time spent in the northern region known as Luzon (where Manila is located), I never had to deal with floods.

True, Typhoon Isang arrived in Manila at the same time as me in mid-July 2009, and there was constant rain for the first two days and nights of my trip because of that. But it never got nasty enough to cause the crazy flooding that they have there right now.

I talked with a friend who lives in the Quezon City area of Manila last night, and she was telling me that the flooding is really, really bad. Her brother-in-law is a taxi driver, and he hasn't been able to drive his car lately, just like anybody else in that area.

Of course this is potentially devastating to many people who work 7 days a week in order to earn just enough money to get by on. It's a hard enough life for many of those Filipinos even in times of great weather. So when things turn ugly like it is now, it gets much harder for potentially millions of families.

I now think of my dear friend who lives in the Las Pinas area of Manila, and the gracious family who took great care of me in the Makati area, too. I'm anxious to talk to my friends soon to see how they are doing, hoping that they weren't hit as hard by the floodwater as soo many I have read about in the news.

From what I read, Manila got 13.4 inches of rain between 8am and 2pm on Saturday. Manila's average rainfall for the entire month of September is 15.4, so they got nearly a month's worth of rain in 6 hours. Apparently it was tropical storm Ondoy (code-named "Ketsana") that caused the flooding.

I want to point out that none of these photos are mine. I found them at a website called nowpublic.com, and since I'm not in Manila right now, borrowing somebody else's photos is pretty much my only option to show my readers the plight of the Manila flood victims. 



If you want to help out, what I recommend is making donations to the International Red Cross.Any donation will surely be much appreciated, so please lend a helping hand if at all possible.

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I Got my Replacement Camera Today

In a previous post back in August, I mentioned how my supposedly waterproof Olympus Tough 8000 digital camera was flooded with saltwater during a Bantayan Island snorkeling trip. Luckily for me, it didn't die, but instead would alternate days that it would or would not work. So I was still able to take a lot of photos during the last couple weeks of the trip, but I dreaded having to send it back to Olympus for a warranty claim upon my USA return.

I emailed Olympus a couple of weeks ago, and I got a reply the following day instructing me to fill out the included PDF and mail my camera to their New York service center. After about a week of putting it off, I finally mailed the camera and PDF to them, and a few days later I got an email saying that they had received my camera. That was September 18th, or 6 days ago.

On September 22, or 2 days ago, I got a email from UPS saying that they were shipping a package to me from Olympus, via their 2-day air service. Sure enough, UPS dropped of a package today, and upon opening it I noticed that Olympus didn't bother trying to fix my camera, but instead just sent me a brand new one. I was hoping they would send me a new one, since I believe that once saltwater gets into something like a camera, it's pretty much ruined.

I'm really impressed at how quickly Olympus took care of my problem camera, and I'm definately gonna pay more attention next time to their warnings about making sure you grease the seals on the two waterproof doors of the camera with silicone grease to help keep that nasty water out. I've talked to a couple of engineers who agree with Olympus that using that grease really does help to make a difference.

One lesson I learned on that first trip to the Philippines is that, if you are planning on taking lots of photos well beyond the capabilities of a camera phone, you have to get yourself a nice little back-up camera. Even if I just went out and got myself the cheapest digital camera I could find, it would have been a worthy contingency for any meltdowns suffered by my beloved Tough cam. Next time I will definately have a second digital camera with me, no doubt about that.

It sucked to not have my one-and-only digital camera for my friends' wedding a couple of weeks ago, because at that time it wasn't working at all. That was about a week before I gave up and sent it in under warranty. It was annoying seeing some pretty cool potential snapshots that I never got to take, but at least other wedding guests got lots of photos, so I never really ended up missing much. Nevertheless, it would have been a good opportunity for me to practice and mess around more with the menu settings, etc.

For this post, I decided to just have some fun, choosing pictures that I thought turned out pretty cool, without any real relevance to the topic other than demonstrating what photos taken by my Olympus Stylus Tough 8000 can look like. I picked out some of my favorite pics from the Miasong portion of my recent Philippines trip. I hope you all like these photos, because each one of them makes me smile every time I see it :)

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Mang Inasal, my Favorite Chicken

When it comes to dining out in the Philippines, there is a great variety of choices no matter which area you are visiting. The constant, unwaivering theme of the entire country, at least in culinary terms, is white rice. White rice is everywhere, and it is served with everything. In fast food chain restaurants, there is no exception to this rule. It's much more common to go to McDonald's, for example, and get your burger served with white rice instead of the ubiquitous French fries that go hand-in-hand with fast food items back home in the USA.

My favorite fast food chain in the Philippines is Mang Inasal. They have barbecue chicken that is just ridiculous. I mean, it's really tasty. I've had it a few times, and each time there was always an employee running around the dining area with a big bucket of fresh, hot rice balls. This is how they follow up on their promise of unlimited rice with certain meal choices. Personally, I think the white rice does nothing but get in my way as I'm really having at it with that great BBQ chicken.

And speaking of that chicken, I have yet to try anything else on their menu. I just skip the burgers and sandwiches and go right for the Paborito Meals, which is where you find a big section of barbecue chicken on a bamboo stick with a ball of white rice (fittingly wrapped in a bamboo leaf) for p79, or the equivalent of about $1.60. This value really helps me, since I'm always on a pretty tight budget. It's just nice to be able to have a quick bite of delicious food while out and about without having to first hit the bank machine.

Yes, they do have dessert selections too, but I always pig out so much on the chicken that I never have room left for dessert. Usually the only time I eat something like ice cream is when I haven't already eaten a meal, like when I just go out for some ice cream. I always seem to have room for barbecue chicken, though, and one thing I quickly learned is that the Philippines is a haven for barbecue fans. Mang Inasal is just one of a multitude of places where you can get barbecue, but I wanted to mention it today because to my knowledge, it's the Philippines' first barbecue restaurant chain. The first one I recall eating at was in General Santos City, and also ate at one in the SM mall in Davao. I'm pretty sure I ate at one in Manila at some point, too. The chain continues to spread throughout the Philippines, which is just fine with me.

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Map of Places Traveled

Here is an interactive collection of the places being written about to give a better idea of where it all happened.

Any and all questions, suggestions and comments are welcomed.

Joe C. Bogo

www. WanderingBlindly.com

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Buying Fresh Seafoods, etc.

Here are photos of fish, shellfish and other seafoods, as well as vegetables and other food items that are available at the typical Filipino wet market. With all this fish and other seafood in one place, all the smells are there. It's usually not too smelly, though, as long as the majority of the goodies for sale are still fresh and not long-dead and decaying. I never got overwhelmed by fishy odors at this Davao wet market.

 

 

These photos were taken at a wet market in Davao City, Mindanao, Philippines. I went to this particular one a couple of times during my time there, and I have been to wet markets that smell far worse. For example, the wet market on Bantanyan Island, Cebu, Philippines that I went to with a few friends had a pretty rough smell. I think I turned green immediately upon entering that market, because not only were all the fish/seafood smells there, but also what smelled to me like a nearby sewage treatment plant. Not the best combination of smells, especially for a guy who is already dizzy from sunstroke.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The seafood lover will find pretty much whatever they desire in places like this. Of course, there are plenty of fresh spices, peppers, assorted vegetables, rice, really everything else you need to quickly make a banquet based on whichever selection of seafoods you choose. In one stop, you can buy squid, candy, rice, cigarettes, hot peppers, ice, cheese and even a cold mango shake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are visiting a bustling area like a market in the Philippines, I see no immediate risks involved in doing something like taking pictures. As long as you keep a grip on your camera, use the camera's wrist strap and always mind your surroundings, there's not much reason to worry about somebody snatching your camera. I personally have not had any troubles yet with pickpockets, bag snatchers, etc. Then again, during 45 days in the Philippines, the only pair of shorts that I wore was a pair of Kuhl cargo shorts that have a zipper pocket on the front of each thigh, in addition to the usual velcro pockets. I kept my wallet and passport in these zipper pockets, and I always used my camera's belt pouch and wore it right at the front center of my belt, directly above the fly. Not once did I ever keep ANYTHING in either of my back pockets, and I think that helped me quite a bit.

 

 

 

One thing that I noticed a scarcity of during my first trip to the Philippines was cheese. The only times I recall ever having cheese in the Philippines was any time that I had pizza. It seems like most Filipinos, or at least the ones I ate with, rarely if ever bother with cheese. I'm a big cheese fan, but I didn't even really miss it in the Philippines. I guess this is because there are so many good dishes there without cheese, that there is not much need for it. But rice? It is EVERYWHERE.

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