Wandering Blindly.com

Juliet, Rusty's Filipino Monkey

2010-09-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

My fellow American friend here in Bogo, Cebu Philippines has a Filipino monkey named Juliet. Now, I did do a blog post featuring her back during my first visit here in August 2009, but she's too cute to not feature again. She really hated me a year ago, but it seems like we're on better terms now. Perhaps that's because I've wisely decided to always try to bring snacks to her upon my visits.

Juliet is a very interesting character. She's got quite the mean streak in her, being bourne more of insane jealousy than general animosity. She doesn't do well when a guy such as Rusty or I is feeding her snacks and a lady approaches. This usually makes her really pissed off. She's not a fan of my friend Elly at all.

Juliet is very gentle when she reaches with her tiny little hand to grab snacks from either my fingertips or from the flat palm of my hand. In these photos, I was feeding her chips, which she really likes, although I recently gave her a bunch of local Tobi peanuts (already shelled before packaging) and she loved those .

When you approach with snacks, she gets excited and begins making cute ittle chirping noises. She's very smart and remembers pretty much everything. She appears to display both good short- and long-term memory. My friend Elly made Juliet mad once and then upon Elly's next visit Juliet immediately grunted at her before she even got withing 50 feet of the cage.

Juliet does ok. She seems to live a pretty good life. Many might say that buying a monkey as a pet simply perpetuates the problem of people going into the jungles and stealing baby monkeys away from their mothers. But it seems like Juliet is living a pretty happy and contented life here, and I know she surely has a much better owner than she could have ended up with. I'm looking forward to the debating that may ensue in the comments after this post. Feel free to ask any questions you want to about Juliet, and I'll try to answer them all to the best of my knowledge. I'll be happy to record some video of her as well, if somebody asks me to do so.

Church of the Annoying 3:30AM Bells

2010-09-09T07:54:00.000-07:00

The St Vincente Catholic Church is right next to our house in Bungtod, Bogo, Cebu, Philippines. Ask those close to me back in America how I feel about church in general, and you'll learn about my natural disdain for church. Then watch their bemused reactions when you tell them that I'm not living next to a Catholic church that has day-and-night services every day. I asked some locals why there are loud bells which create a great deal of commotion at about 3:30am every morning, and they informed me that this particular church does its thing in the wee hours of the early morning and also in the afternoon, day in and day out.

Now I disagree with many of the fear and guilt tactics of Catholicism, I won't try to hide that. My dad was raised Catholic and my mom was raised Presbyterian, and when they got together they went with her side. Any time people here in the Philippines ask me which religion I am, I always have to describe Presbyterian because very few locals I've talked to are familiar with it. I usually just say that it's kind of like Catholic except that Presbyterians can eat meat on Fridays (most Filipinos who are Catholic don't worry about that Friday-no meat rule, by the way) and that also we typically only go to church on Sundays, without the mid-week mass. Sometimes I just simply reply that Presbyterian is basically the same as Catholicism but without all the fear and guilt.

That little gap between the ecorner entrance of the church and the little building, directly behind the school students walking, is the opening to the little dirt road which has my house on the left-hand side.

Being woken up in the wee hours each day by that cacophony of bells is annoying, I won't even try to sugarcoat that one. It drives me nuts. If they at least would only do that on Sundays and Wednesdays, it would not be so annoying. But come on, man.

But then again, I understand that in a relatively poor society, many people don't have much else to do besides go to church. Many of these people don't have TV, internet, etc. So it's actually kind of heartwarming to me to think that church, something which I've despised for as long as I can recall, can offer so much to these good people. The more time I spend here interacting with more and more locals, the less and less I'm annoyed by those bells. The bells of cacophony slowly morph into the bells of reason. And that makes me begin to wonder if church is really such a bad thing after all. Now if I could only begin to make peace with those roosters who live directly next to my kitchen window...

Lots of Motorbike Choices in Bogo

2010-09-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

There are several motorbike dealers here in Bogo, Cebu Philippines. Having to pay hundreds of pesos each time I need a tricycle (motorbike with sidecar) driver to take me to some beach or other place to swim, I become more and more tempted to just buy a bike. They're good on gas, easy to get around on and mostly reliable.

Inside the above pictured Honda dealership on the main street known as P Rodriguez here in Bogo, they have a few different scooter models as well as various traditional motorbikes. This above scooter is the Honda Dash, which I believe to be 108cc and retailing for about p58,000 (current exchange rate being about p45-1USD).

The Honda Beat pictured above is supposedly also about p58,000, according to the saleslady. I believe the Beat shares the same 108cc motor as the Dash, and it features an automatic transmission, too. These scooters are known to be pretty comfortable and easy on gas, with not an excess of power but plenty to get you around even in this hilly region.

The Globe internet service technician who fixed our internet connection this week arrived on a Honda Wave, and I asked him some questions about his ride. He claims that this 100cc manual-shift scooter gets around 50-60km per liter of gas. It goes for about p48,000 at the Honda dealer and more than that at another dealer down the street.

I really like the value of this Honda 155cc motorbike. The dealer's asking price is almost p70,000, giving it more motor than the multitude of similarly priced motorbikes featuring smaller 125cc motors which are offered around town as alternatives. I'd love to buy a motorbike, attach a sidecar and then be able to take whomever I want wherever I want whenever I want. This bike probably gets around 40km out of a liter of gas, and even with a sidecar loaded with a handful of people, it would still probably get around 25+ km/liter. I've always had the utmost respect for Honda cars, and I've heard of the legendary reliability of their bikes.

A few blocks down from the Honda dealership is the Norkis dealer, also on P Rodriguez. The salesmen there are cool and very helpful in explaining the differences between their various scooters and motorbikes. They sell Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha as well as "China bikes". The dealer told me that the Haojue "China scooter" they sell for p46,000 is actually assembled in Cebu City, about 100km south of here.

It would be cool to own one of these vehicles known here in the Philippines as a multicab. They're maneuverable, versatile and fairly reliable, or at least from what I've heard. This particular one is sold brand-new here at the Norkis dealership for p155,000, or about $3,500US. It has a stickshift and a 12-valve engine, and it gets somewhere around 11-15km per liter of gas.

If I could still see well enough to drive an automobile, this is what I'd probably go for. There's room for 2 or 3 people up front in the little cab, and more can ride along in the rear jumpseats I've ridden in these various times during my travels around the Philippines, and the lack of aircon in most of them never seemed to be a big deal. Just roll your window down.

The little awning top is pretty cool, and most multicabs employ them. It keeps the hot sun and also some or most of the rain off of those riding in the back.

Pictured above is Norkis' current pricing sheet for the various bikes and scooters they sell. They have financing options on everything, but interest is a real killer over time. If given the choice, I'd much rather just take the one-time hit up front on the cash price, perhaps out of savings, instead of giving them nearly twice as much over a financing period.

Pictured above3 here are the Yamaha Mio and Yamaha Novo, both of which have 115cc motors according the the salesmen. They tell me that the Mio is p65,000 and the Novo is p75,000, with a longer/roomier body and more space under the seat for which to store stuff.

This Suzuki Skydrive has a 125cc motor and goes for around p71,000. It looks pretty cool, although I'm not very familiar with Suzuki's models. A local drove his 2006 Suzuki Smash up to my house to show it to me, and he admitted that Suzuki parts are more expensive and harder to get here than Honda parts.

Behold the Haojue "China scooter". They want p46,000 for it, and it claims to have a 110cc motor, which is 10cc bigger than the comparably priced Honda Wave. China bikes are becoming more and more popular throughout the Philippines, so it will be interesting to see if they can ever reach a level of quality comparable to a legend such as Honda.

This is the Haojue 125cc China bike, and the asking price of p52,000 sounds pretty reasonable for what you get. I'd still rather go with a more trusted brand from Japan, but maybe someday I'll try one out. I've ridden around on the backs of these bikes with others driving numerous times, and I've never witnessed any type of mechanical malfunction. They seem like they do just fine.

This beast is the Kawasaki Barako. At 175cc for p80,000, that seems like quite a lot of motor for the money. I'd love to see what this monster could do toting a fully loaded sidecar up a sand-swept hill. The dealer claims that this bike has gas consumption similar to the aforementioned Honda 155.

If I ever got this bike, the first thing I'd do is change the tires, because I much prefer the knobby variety that are stock on the competing Yamaha models.

And yes, of course I wouldn't be driving myself around on any of these bikes, having my eyesight problems. But it would be cool to have my own bike that my girlfriend could take me for rides on whenever we please. We've been talking it over, and she likes the idea of having our own bike, too. Gas is around p50/liter here, so we could go quite a distance on our own instead of having to pay some driver p300 or more to wait for us as we try to swim and relax. Many places are tricky to get a ride home from, especially those cool little hidden beach spots. So unless you have your paid driver wait for you while you do whatever it is you're doing there, you run a risk of getting stuck out there and then trying to walk home. And whenever our friends from Cebu come to visit, I'm sure it woud be even better then. Getting stranded out in the sticks with five or six hungry filipinas is not the most pleasant experience, believe me.

My house in Bogo, Cebu, Philippines

2010-09-01T00:03:00.000-07:00

Windy and I moved 100km north from Cebu City up to Bogo on August 1st, and we spent a few days sleeping in a spare bedroom at our friend Rusty's house. Then on August 4th we moved into and began renting the right half of a big 2-story side-by-side duplex a short walk from Rusty's house in the barangay Bungtod.

The first floor is an open living-dining-kitchen area, with plenty of space for living and entertaining guests.

This place was constructed not long ago, and from what the local Filipino owners told us, the only person to have rented it before us was a German man who rented it for just one month before moving on.

It's fully furnished, with tables, chairs, couch, outdoor patio furniture and beds, etc in the bedrooms. The only essential things I needed to buy were a big stand fan, a refridgerator, a bottled water dispenser and a gasul cooktop (the local word for propane is "gasul").

There are several different little appliance stores in Bogo. I found the best deals on refridgerators at the store called Imperial which is withing walking distance from the house (as is most everything else). The ref was stickered at over p14,000 but they gave it to me for a cash price of p11,900 plus I think p100 for delivery. Exchange rate is around p46 to $1US. We got the gasul cooktop at the Prince Warehouse store about 1km away, and it cost about p1,000 plus p2,000 for a new 11kg gasul tank and about p400 for a really good quality regulator. The water dispenser with hot water element cost about p1,500

There is a laundry area right off of the kitchen, and you can walk through it to get to our second exterior door. I can't call it the back door because it's right by our front door. As you can see, all of our laundry is hand-washed in the true Filipino tradition.

The downstairs CR ("comfort room", Filipino-speak for "bathroom") is simple, a little underneath-the-stairs space with a toilet and a water tap coming from the wall. It works. The toilets in our two CRs have flushers, which is a luxury here.

As you walk up the stairs, you arrive at the landing of the second floor. There's plenty of open floor space up here as well.

This view in the above photo is from the upstairs landing looking down at the halfway landing and also over at the indoors balcony which overlooks the staircase as well.

This is our waterbed. I will repeat that. We have a waterbed. It's the first one I've ever seen in the Philippines. Windy hated it at first but then became more used to it, although we are both routinely annoyed by not having a regular bed. Imagine sitting on the edge of a waterbed trying to type on your laptop as your butt keeps sinking down and shifting from side to side along with the waves. I've since moved my laptop from up there in the master bedroom to downstairs on the glass round table.

Here's an alternate view of our master beedroom, and now you can see the door in the corner which opens out onto the aforementioned indoor balcony. There's plenty of natural sunlight in this house, making most interior lights unneeded except of course at night. There's a window aircon in this bedroom, and I like using it while we sleep at night although sometimes on rainy nights the outside air is cool enough for just fan use.

Here's the hallway flanking our master bedroom with an outdoor balcony overlooking our courtyard, patio, the little dirt road outside our gate and the big Catholic church which is directly across that little road.

Here's an exterior shot showcasing our little patio/courtyard area with my lovely girlfriend Windy in the background. We use the smaller gate for coming and going, although when I someday get a motorbike and/or scooter we can begin using the bigger gate for keeping them inside our covered carport area.

Windy posing for my camera in front of our gate. Notice the church in the background. My favorite in the foreground and my least favorite in the background.

With the big gate open, this gives a better view from the roadside. Notice the big bottles of water lined up on the right side along the wall. These are delivered for p30 per bottle. We go through approximately one per week, primarily using this clean mineral water for hot instant coffee and also for mixing powdered juices and powdered milk.

A better view of the little road that runs between our house and the church. We like hanging out and relaxing in the chairs on our patio, although I'd much prefer if they were soft cushions instead of hard metal. But hard seating surfaces is one of the first things I became accustomed to during my travels throughout the Philippines.

Here's Windy posing next to the fish tank that resides between our two exterior doors. These fish are really cool, I like having fish. They belong to the owner, but I like watching their antics sometimes when I need to de-stress.

I hope you've enjoyed my little tour of our house here in Bungtod, Bogo, Cebu, Philippines. My plan is to keep the house during the two months I'll be visiting friends and family back in America from November to January. I rent it for p10,000 per month or just a bit over $200US. The owner was cool with only a single month worth of up-front security deposit, which is nice because it's common to have to pay that plus also your last month's rent here and also back in America. Not bad for 200 bucks, right? I'll be getting our first water and electric bills soon, and I'll report on them upon receiving them. I just got our first bill for Globe DSL internet which I've speed tested at 1,700k down and 500k up. It's p1,999/month plus an annoying VAT of about p275. If they didn't have awful DNS issues, the speed of thaty connection would be worth the high cost. But it's a bit of a rip-off with the wild unreliability. Ask all the questions you want and I'll do my best to answer them.

Lost Blogs: Panglao

2010-08-20T01:56:00.000-07:00

My two lady friends came to visit me while I was in Tagbilaran, Bohol back in late April of this year (2010). They actually were visiting me under a shroud of secrecy due to the fact that neither of them wanted their online boyfriend types to know about them seeing me. So as promised, I'm holding back any photos in which either C or M appear. It looks like the face of a sleeping girl can be seen in one photo, but I'm not really worried about it.

The day after their arrival in Tagbilaran via ferryboat, we all climbed onto a tricycle and the driver lugged us and our stuff from Tagbilaran to the sweet island of Panglao, about a 30+ minute drive. There's a causeway that you cross to get from Bohol to Panglao, and the ride usually costs about 200-300 pesos.

We chose the Dumaluan Beach Resort to spend a couple of days and nights. They have a multitude of luxurious aircon-equipped accomodations from which to choose, but in my cheap style I rented a kubo with nothing more than an overhead light fixture and a fan.

No bathroom (comfort room or "c.r." as they're referred to here in the Philippines), no fridge and certainly no TV. No beds, either. It was like a single-room cabin, with a couple of thin mats to lay on.

This was a very cozy little place, and being at a successful beach resort with what I consider to be a world-class beach (at high tide ;), it was relatively expensive at p1000 or about $22US. This same kubo (basically just another word for nipa hut) would cost a small fraction of that in many other places. Expect to pay around p200 for this accomodation in various areas of the Philippines.

But something that made Dumaluan special and debatably worth the price premium is the atmosphere of white sand beach and sweet seabreezes. The above photo is of the scene directly off of our kubo's doorstep. I'd trade aircon for this anyday.

It's really a very relaxing place. The majority of people who visit Dumaluan are vacationing Koreans and Filipinos, as I saw only a handful of white tourists during my stay. I briefly hung my hammock between a couple of the palm trees just steps from our kubo and right near the water's edge. But of course some jackass came along and told me it's not permitted to hang a hammock on their property. I guess some things are the same regardless of which country you are in: Businesses always scared of frivolous lawsuits. I used the high-quality tree-friendly straps made specifically for safely supporting up to 350 pounds in my hammock, but that doesn't matter to these nervous-ninnies.

In this above photo, you can see me looking happy, well-adjusted and not yet burned out. This is what I look like any time I'm caught up on my blog and such.

Here's a snapshot I took from out in the surf at dusk. This is my best attempt to showcase the Dumaluan Beach Resort from afar using a digital camera that doesn't play nice with nightime shots. If you compare the $22US per night for the kubo we rented here, you'll probably notice that a similar thing would run you around $500US/night in Hawaii or French Polynesia. Funny how I whine about p1000 being relatively expensive compared to some other parts of the Philippines, right?

This platter of delicious local foods was touted on a chalkboard that claimed it to be the "Choose any 3 of 5". This gave me the impression that one would select their 3 favorite foods from the possible 5, but when I tried specifying my choices to the cashier she informed me that there was no decision-making required. It turned out that you simply got a sampling from each of the 5 choices. Good luck figuring out what exactly is on this platter in the above photo, since this was 4 months ago and I can't recall what all of them were from this overhead camera angle. The platter fed 3 of us and cost p600, and again there are two schools of thought as to the relativity of prices for such things when compared to other parts of the Philippines and then when compared to other places in the world.

And yes, I'm officially back to blogging. I got very strung out for a while, as my laptop continued to overflow with photos and my head continued to swirl with uncertainties and thoughts of possibly tossing my laptop and camera into the nearest dumpster. But now I'm feeling about 6% better, so I feel like again going on another blogging rampage. With my fantasy football drafts looming in the very near future, I'm about to begin juggling even more distractions, so it should see fun to see how long it takes for me to go completely nuts. But that should make for an interesting read, right?

Happy Anniversary WanderingBlindly.com

2010-08-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

Its WanderingBlindly.com's first anniversary and Joe will be coming back with a vengeance.

Look for many more Pictures, Videos and Posts.

We appreciate you and all of your thoughts and questions, so please keep them coming!

Walking in Barangay Lorega, Cebu, Philippines

2010-07-18T13:23:00.000-07:00

Recently, my new pinay girlfriend Windy, our beloved Aussie friend David and I rode together in a taxi from downtown Cebu to the neighborhood (barangay) known as Barangay Lorega (also known as San Miguel Lorega). We visited a family that David is close to here, and after introducing them to Windy, the three of us and our friend Carlo walked from Carlo's family home into the heart of this particular barangay. As David and I commonly say in our ongoing banter, we were trekking right into the center of the "nest" or "hive".

I didn't know until then that the locals were getting all wound up for their fiesta, and I began trying to nonchalantly begin shooting video as we walked. I tried to not hold the cam up in front of my face but the video suffered because of it. After maybe a minute or two of holding it lower near gut level, I gave up and began holding the cam up higher in the more normal position.

In the large, open "town square" as some might refer to it, we noticed that many locals were preparing for their cockfights. Neither David nor I had experienced one before, so we decided to go see what all the hype is about. It was around this time that I stopped recording video, because I would rather not put that type of thing on my blog.

As soon as we began approaching their little poultry primetime setting, the guys operating it and taking bets of course insisted that we place some bets. David and I agreed to make a combined wager of p200 on the rooster with the yellow tag. He looked like he wanted it more. Black tag looked out-of-shape and lazy, like he'd just come out of retirement to show up for guaranteed money. The sleazy-looking fellow with the mirror sunglasses kept prodding us to make it p500 instead, and I felt good about our yellow-tag scrapper so I upped it, if for no other reason than to shut the guy up so they could finally start the damned event already.

Because for some unexplicable reason the operators allow about 17 guys to crowd right around the roosters inside the giant cage, obscuring the views of those standing where you're supposed to (outside of the cage and looking in), it was hard to see how the "fight" transpired. But we saw flashes of greatness from our yellow-tag rooster, and it looked like he was clearly the victor of that one. But of course, after about 4 seconds of "action", the guys working it informed us that we'd lost.

I told the guy that we'd bet on yellow and that he knew that, but Mr. Sunglasses just kept insisting that we lost and had to pay p500. It was nothing more than a petty scam, and David and I were curious about why the black-tag rooster was brought out of the arena upside down, bleeding and not moving much while our yellow-tag one was still bobbing and weaving, looking for more action. I just told those scammers that the whole thing was bullshit, nothing but a cheating set-up, and we walked to the nearby snack stand where we had another cold Coke. I also had a hot siopao (meat-filled puff pastry), which I enjoyed while waiting to see how the scammers would react to my allegations.

Finally Mr. Sunglasses walked over, flanked by his entourage, and asked me to pay our losing wager of p500, looking straight down at the ground and never looking me in the eyes, either. I responded by angrily grabbing the money from my pocket, telling him the whole thing stinks, finally handing it to him and telling him "Here, I hope you choke on it."

I'm not sure why anybody would actually enjoy going to cockfights. Personally, I think they're just plain retarded. I had to experience it that one time, and that's enough for me. Now in the future, any time a pinoy friend somewhere asks me if I've ever seen the cockfights, I can simply reply that indeed I have, and it really sucked. For the record, the whole time that bum was trying to talk me into upping my wager, Windy stood by me, quietly pleaing with me to not do it because it's probably just some kind of scam. That's wonen's intuition for you. She was exactly right, but I'm glad I got the shaft on that day so now I already know to not bother with it again.

Cebu Visa Extension

2010-06-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday (June 17^th), my girlfriend Windy and I rode a taxi from the Cebuview hotel here in downtown Cebu to the Immigration office in the Mandaue area of Cebu. The taxi ride took maybe 20 minutes and cost p92.50.

I was due for my next tourist visa extension, and I was nervous about how the Bureau of Immigration (BI) might react upon hearing that I had lost my new Alien Certificate of Registration (ACR) i-Card. At the BI office in Bohol back in April, the BI officials had told me that the p2800 i-Card is now mandatory if a tourist wishes to get a 59-day visa extension. Because of this, I assumed that they would soak me for another p2800 ($60-65US).

I waited for them to ask me for my i-Card as I told the kind BI lady that I needed an extension, but they never did. Back in Bohol two months ago, the BI officials had told me that I would need to always have my i-Card ready anytime I needed anything from Immigration. But here at the Cebu BI office, that didn’t appear to be the case.

The tourist visa extension process went the same way that it always has gone for me in the past, with me first having to fill out the application form (with a nice BI official filling in the fields for me due to my crappy eyesight), waiting a few minutes to get my passport back (now with an invoice), handing it to the cashier along with my cash payment of p2830, then waiting for about 20-30 minutes until they call my name and I get my passport back with the new stamp good until August 19^th.

So what’s the deal with this much-hyped ACR i-Card? Is it really mandatory, or does BI just tell you such in order to get a tourist to pay for one, thus pumping p2800 into the system? A fellow American from California living here in Cebu told me that he was informed that it’s not possible to exit the Philippines without an i-Card. I’m not sure about that, although BI’s website was not particularly clear regarding how “mandatory” the i_card is the last time I checked

I suppose I’ll just get a replacement i-Card another time, perhaps in August. It expires after 12 months, so my new one should last for a few months longer, especially if I wait until perhaps September or October for it Apparently, having the ACR i-Card makes it easy for a foreigner like me to open a Filipino bank account or to do various other similar things. I do plan to open a local bank account here someday, which would make it possible to buy things like plane tickets online using a local Philippines-issued debit card. But for now, I’d prefer to save my p2800 and just worry about it later on in the trip.

More Observations

2010-06-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

It's true that many Cebu taxi drivers insist, or at least try to insist, on not using their meters. Other tricks that one of these guys may attempt include such things as taking the long way to your destination or stopping at a gas station to fill up while leaving the meter running (in the unlikely event that the guy actually was using his meter to begin with). In this above photo, I demonstrate that they're not all so bad. With Jesus riding shotgun, your ride from downtown to uptown should only cost you about 45-50 pesos.

A great thing about the Philippines is that a fairly long taxi ride can cost you much less than it would in a place like New York, etc. When I rode for about 40 minutes to get from Cubao Manila to Intramuros Manila, the ride was p200. The following ride back, with a different car and driver going in the opposite direction from Intramuros to Cubao, cost me the same p200 according to the taxi's meter. That ride took longer due to heavier traffic, closer to an hour in duration. That's the equivalent of a little over $4US. Not bad compared to what that kind of ride may cost in a place like Los Angeles. I'd love to hear comments and even taxi horror stories from readers all around the world regarding good and bad places for riding in a taxi. How much does a 5km ride cost in Perth? How about in Bangkok? I'm looking forward to your input.

I recently grabbed this bottle of "fortified milk" along with this bottle of fruit juice at the local metro Gaisano here in downtown Cebu. I wanted to quickly get lots of vitamins and such into my body by drinking the liter of fortified milk within about an hour. I'm not sure about how many vitamins got into my body, but that milk shot right out of me faster than it had gone in. I was nearly crippled by my sudden case of "the runs", and thus I was completely out of commission for the rest of that day and night. I'm not sure if I'll ever tangle with that type of milk again. But on the bright side, that orange-mango juice is great.

I don't think I've ever seen American-style plastic milk bottles here in the Philippines. I've seen imported New Zealand milk in supermarkets in bottles of maybe 500ml, but I've yet to see a good old fashioned gallon jug of milk. A kiwi I met back in August 2009 told me that their cows are all free range and never fed steroids or anything like that. I tried a bottle of their milk, and it was indeed the best I ever tasted. Most of the milk options in supermarkets here are distributed/sold in box cartons, which works fine for me. But next time I'll go for the real-deal instead of that one I chose in my vitamin experiment.

Here is an example of what one can do at midnight if he and his girlfriend are watching TV and begin to feel hungry. This mountain of barbecue with hanging rice (puso, pronounced pue-SOH) cost me about p200-250. the puso, in my twin travel bowls on the right, costs p3 per bundle from the place I bought from on that occasion. A chicken breast cost p45, a chicken skin cost p15, a cherizo (like a sweet sausage) cost p15, a pork belly cost p12 and a stick with a few smaller pieces of pork on it cost p5. The family from which I prefer to buy my bbq always sees me coming and gets my personal favorite, the chicken breast, ready so nobody else buys it before I reach their grill. The pork belly stick is fast becoming another favorite of mine.

It's time for me to begin explaining these odd-looking bowls and such to you. Before I came on my first trip, I decided to get some quality camp bowls/plates/utensils at a local REI store in Pittsburgh, PA USA. I wanted something that could stand up to the rigors of my style of travel, so I chose the Sea To Summit X-Bowl ($15US, pictured on the right containing rice); the Sea To Summit X-Plate ($19US, pictured in the center containing all the bbq); Guyot Designs Squishy Bowl & Cup ($15US, pictured on the left with the bigger version having soy sauce and a spork in it); Guyot Designs Microbites Utensils ($5US per color-matched pair, each pair containing a spork and what I consider to be a combination of a knife and spatula).

I've used these handy dining items countless times on my Philippines trips, and it amazes me how these companies focus all of the marketing/advertising efforts to promote them as camping products, because I've discovered that they're in fact ideal travel products. The way the silicone side of an X-Bowl collapses down flat, for example, makes it a handy little thing to have stowed in a bag. Pairing one of those with a Microbites utensils set would give you a way to eat just about any type of solid or liquid food anywhere, while taking up only marginal volume in your laptop bag. I think these companies would double their revenues by at least trying to market those products to travellers, not just campers.

"Don't trust anybody."

2010-06-11T03:09:00.000-07:00

During my travels around the Philippines, I've noticed several things that seem to be constant, never failing, consistent situational rules which I've grown accustomed to and even amused by.

One of these consistent things is the situation in which I meet some new local guy and the first thing he tells me is to not trust anybody I meet in that particular area. I find this ironic in that he's unknowingly telling me that this pool of people to not trust includes him as well. I've had countless conversations with shady characters advising me to not trust anybody, basically telling me so because they simply want to have all the scamming of me to themselves.

For example, here in downtown Cebu I met a character I'll now assign a fake name to for the sake of protecting his identity. Let's call him Scott. He's a nice enough pinoy, with a wife and kids in the same manner as many other people of this variety. Scott immediately began to buddy up to me upon meeting me, advising me to not trust anybody else in this fairly seedy downtown part of metro Cebu. Of course, as soon as he told me this, I immediately proceeded with my unique hybrid of wreckless caution.

He works in some capacity of management at a local bikini bar, where I went to have a couple cups of coffee the night he began "working" me. When I asked him how much is a cup of coffee there, he replied "It's cheap here, only 60 pesos."

This told me that he was assuming this was my first day in the Philippines, giving me wealths of information about his thought process. Instant coffee rules here, and most bars, restaurants and other places prefer to sell you the 3-in-1 version of instant coffee. Bought in bulk at any big store or supermarket, a single-serving Nescafe 3-in-1 packet costs about p4. A normal restaurant or bar makes a handy profit by selling you your cup of coffee for anywhere from p15-30. Bikini bars simply price all of the drinks available to a customer at the same artificially inflated price of anywhere from p60-p160, regardless of whether or not it's a bottle of beer, an 8-ounce Coke, a water or a 3-in-1.

Scott is the kind of person who always wants more, never satisfied if you hand his bar p240 for four cups of instant coffee. He'd rather see you buying "lady drinks" for the dancers as well, something that I don't do because it's just a shot of fruit juice for a whopping p250, of which the lady gets a commission of p75 and the bar keeps the rest.

During the course of a month downtown, I began running into Scott practically every day, and his tactic has been to always come up to me on the street with useless and basically fake advice about the other local players here. Of course, each time he walks over and tells me something, he always asks for anywhere between p20-50 for whatever reasons, such as to buy ice cream for his kid. If he tells me some worthless crap and then just stands there, I might hand him p20 just so he'll go away. He'll quickly take it but then simply ask for p20 more.

Yesterday he offered to show me a house and apartment that I can possibly rent sometime in the near future, and I decided to go along with it to see what the places looked like. Two nights ago, my girlfriend Windy went with her cousins and friends to hang out at a local disco as I stayed in our room to do some tasks on my laptop. After about an hour, Scott began texting me. He first asked if I was still awake, and I replied that I was awake but busy. Then he said that he needed to see me down in front of his bar, near our hotel. I asked why, and he merely said that it was very important. I asked again why, and he said it had to do with my girl. I asked what happened and he again insisted that I must go see him outside his bar. I was getting very annoyed, so I headed down to see what his fuss was about.

When I saw him a minute later, I asked what yet again, and he asked me if I know where my "wife" is. I replied to him that she went to the disco to hang out with her cousins and friends. The look on his face was priceless. He looked deflated upon hearing that Windy and I don't keep secrets from one another and don't sneak around behind one anothers' backs. I guess Scott was expecting me to be surprised and shocked that my girlfriend had gone out to some disco, and of course he would expect me to tip/reward him handsomely for such monumental information. But unfortunately for him, I just looked annoyed and unhappy about the fact that I was interrupted for such nonsense.

Changing his tip-seeking plans in a hurry, he asked if I would like to go see an apartment that I could rent for p3,500/month. I decided that it would be good to go check it out, and he said he'd meet me outside the hotel at 9am the following day (now yesterday). He said he would need some money up front to first go alone early in the morning to see the apartment's owner, so I handed him a p100. He looked disappointed and asked for more, saying that the apartment was far enough to warrant taxi rides. I gave him a second p100.

That night I was very busy up late doing research and such on my laptop in the hotel lobby, and I didn't get to sleep until about 5am. At 7:40am my hotel room phone began ringing, and as I staggered over in the dark to answer it, I smacked my head on a cabinet, already agitated by the fact that my girlfriend and I were being woken up at such an unGodly time. Of course it was Scott, saying for me to go with him to see the apartment. I asked why he didn't wait until 9am as planned and promised, and he said something about how he'd already gone to talk to the owner of the apartment at 6am. It was at this time that I knew that Scott was completely incapable of even the most basic types of logical thought. Why didn't he just go hang out somewhere until 9am and then come to get me as planned?

I met him outside and we jumped into a taxi, with the driver saying something in their bisaya dialect about "private ride", but I was too out of it to feel like shouting expletives at him for not using his meter. The ride was pretty short, worth about p40, and of course when we arrived, the driver said the ride cost p55. Of course Scott just looked at me, saying that I needed to pay p55 for the ride. As soon as he said this, I blew up on him. I shouted out, asking why doesn't he pay with the p200 I'd just given him the night before. He whined that due to the heavy rains of the early morning, he already had to pay for 2 rides and that his money was now all gone. I angrily began reaching in my pocket and the taxi driver said to forget the 5, that a simple 50 would do. I gave it to him and he drove away.

We first looked at a big house that had been vacant for p9,000/month but had just been rented, then we looked at what appeared to be a townhouse with a large open downstairs room and a couple of bedrooms upstairs, one with a balcony outside. I said that I wanted to come back to see the owner, and we walked back to downtown (yes, we walked, it wasn't far enough to demand taxi rides after all). When we walked past a few clothing shops, I commented to Scott that I wanted to get a few new things for Windy. He insisted that I follow him into the Gaisano South mall, where he led me to the top level where there is a food court. He insisted that I wait there with soft drinks while he goes downstairs to ask the manager for a good discount on ladies clothing. It seemed strange to me, since Gaisano stores always seem to be very normal in that they stick to their sticker prices on everything. It's not some hick outfit, it's a big place with a barcode-scan system and all that.

But just to see what would happen, I hung out and relaxed with some Sprite while I waited for him to return. He told me that they had some things with colors that would look good on her, and asked me to give him money so he could go downstairs and buy them for me on his "discount" price. I said no, that I don't buy a pig in a poke, and I went downstairs to see what they had. It was similar to the items I'd already seen in the Metro Gaisano mall, and I selected a few things. There was no discount, of course, and the sticker prices on the items were actually lower than what Scott had quoted me upon returning.

Upon leaving the mall and returning to the sidewalk, Scott said he needed to go, and that his wife had been angry with him for spending time helping me the past few days. I knew he was just making up more crap to fish for more money, but I decided to give him p200 just to see what he would do. Upon pulling p200 from my pocket to hand it to him, he saw the amount and said that he needed p500. This was very amusing to me, because he had told me before that his nightly salary at the bar is p80. Since he had told me he'd take me at 3pm to meet the apartment manager, I just gave him my last p500. Then he left, and I continued back to the hotel, getting some food for Windy and I on the way.

At 3pm, Windy and I went downstairs to Pete's Kitchen, where Scott had said he would meet me. Our Aussie friend David joined us for coffee and Mountain Dew, and we waited until 4:20pm for Scott. I texted him a few times while we waited, but he never replied. Eventually, Windy, David and I just went off to visit his local friends in another Barangay. Later that night, Scott called me on the hotel's room phone to say he'd been waiting for us at another place. I told him I knew we'd agreed on Pete's Kitchen, and he just mumbled that his wife was angry with him. He said we'd just do it tomorrow instead, and I said no, that I was very busy for the next few days (very true).

Windy returned from hanging out with her cousin, telling me that she was approached by Scott on her way home. He asked her if he could "borrow" p20, and she gave it to him, asking him if Joe had given him any money earlier that day. Scott of course answered no, that I had not given him anything, even though I'd of course given him over p500 around noon. He then had the nerve to ask her for another p20 right after she'd just handed him one. When I ran downstairs to grab a chocolate milk from the nearby convenience store, Scott walked over with a big bottle of Red Horse beer and a glass. He offeredd the glass to me, saying "No hard feelings" and other nonsense. I told him that already knew that I don't drink anymore, that I quit over 3 years ago. He said sorry, then I looked in another direction as I had a quick smoke with the hotel's door guard.

The point of this story is to give an example of how many people here in the Philippines will simply keep trying and working on you in a non-stop effort to drain your money away. The most insulting thing about it is how the person is always all-smiles, extra friendly, etc. When Windy informed me about what Scott said to her, and how he begged her for money, I was so disgusted with him that I told her we wouldn't move into that apartment even if it was indeed perfect for us. Perfect or not, I would not move into any place where the downtown lowlifes already know I'll be. If we eventually rent a place somewhere in Cebu, it will only be somewhere in which none of those dirtballs know about. If we had taken that apartment, it would have just been a prepaid living experience in which downtown dirtballs like Scott show up knocking at the door of our new home every day, always asking for money, always with some silly trash story.

We're scheduled not to check out of our hotel in less than a week, and one option for our next place would be to go to Camotes Island to meet her family and friends. That idea sounds better and better to me with each passing day, and it sounds like this trip might even feel like some sort of "vacation" for a few days. I've already learned alot in my thus-far short time with my new girlfriend, including the fact that it doesn't matter so much what kind of place you're living in together, as long as you're together. I'm able to lean on her a lot, to express my frustrations and disdain from a long and fairly crappy day. That's something I didn't get to do before I met her. Before, when I was alone in a hotel room late at night, nobody was there to listen or offer advice. This is much better now.

Lost and Found

2010-06-08T13:11:00.000-07:00

I've definately been pretty vigilant about my things, especially those least-expendable ones. Losing that Princeton Tec headlamp will always sting, though. I wish it was much later in the trip when I lose such a handy toy. Those things are GREAT, and I really mean it when I say that anybody who goes on any trip of longer than 1 day is a fool for not packing one. Even a cheaper version such as the Energizer-branded variety you can get for about $10 in the USA will do, as long sd you're not banging it off of rocks and trees and such the way I always do when I'm bounding around in the cloak of night.

I've come VERY close to losing my wallet with all of my cards and IDs a couple of times in this trip. A few weeks ago I left it sitting on the pharmacy counter at the Metro Gaisano here in downtown Cebu, and when I walked back out onto the sidewalk I instinctively felt in my pocket for my wallet (I do that all the time, every few minutes while walking around in the city here). It wasn't there, so I immediately went back inside Gaisano to the pharmacy counter and one of the sales ladies called out to me, saying they had quickly put my wallet behind the counter as soon as they realized that I'd left it there. I guess the carelessness of ever setting my wallet down on a counter in a store was evened out by my ever-present compulsion to always be feeling that zipper pocket wherein my wallet is always contained.

I need to get another ACR i-Card from Immigration, this time here in Cebu. I think I dropped it while at a coffee shop in the Terraces section of the Ayala mall a few weeks ago. That really sucks, because it was already a bit of a pain getting that i-Card earlier in Bohol, and now it looks like I'll have to do it all over again, for another p2800, too. For the record, I've been hemorraging lately, and that extra p2800 is gonna really hurt. But on the bright side, having a lovely girlfriend now is helping me to save money. Before I met her, I was much more prone to go out roaming around late at night in the areas my Aussie friend David so eloquently refers to as the termites' nests. Spending a couple of hours walking around and talking to all the colorful characters here always ended up costing me extra money that I didn't need to be spending. Smokes and Cokes, snacks, jeep and taxi rides, etc. But now I've got a beautiful and sweet pinay girlfriend and even with an extra mouth to feed, I'm probably saving p300+/day compared to what i was spending before I met her.

Lost gear, gone but not forgetten

2010-06-02T21:43:00.000-07:00

Over three months into this epic nine-month long Philippines trip, I'm now wondering how I lost a few of my favorite toys. Right before I left to come here in February, my friend Aaron got a Motorola EQ5 Bluetooth Speaker for me. It's a great little toy that you can pair with a mobile phone such as my Blackberry Bold for music playback at a louder, more full and rich volume. The last time I recall having it was during my stay at my lovely friend Janice's family home in Penaranda, Luzon. Since she later told me that she hasn't seen it since, I'm assuming that it disappered in some hotel along the way, along with its wall-charger.

My Blackberry's original mini-USB cable for connecting it to a PC or laptop has since vanished, too. I probably lost it at some internet cafe, historically distracting places with all the screaming children. Luckily a cable such as that, while costing about $15-25US back in the USA, costs all of about p70-80 here in the Philippines at a local cell phone store. That's about $1.50US, so when I bought my replacement at a local store in Tagbilaran Bohol, I bought two cables. This way if I lose one, I might still have the second available for immediate use. I like to periodically back up my phone's contacts/address book onto my laptop, as I'm constantly gaining new numbers everywhere I go and constantly updating it with new and changed numbers.

I'd been carrying the same tiny little Princeton Tec keychain light in my front right pocket with me since before my first Philippines trip, and I believe that the handy little mini-light is with my friend Roxette now. She, her cousin Jedah and I had spent an evening in a Tagbilaran videoke place, and the lighting inside was basically nonexistant. That little keychain light was used the whole time for numerous song selections from the giant book of song choices. Roxette really liked that little light, so I'm just happy in assuming that it can be used and enjoyed by a friend instead od being in a dumpster somewhere.

During those nighttime motorbike rides, my pair of Princeton Tec Quad LED headlamps were used as very effective road illumination devices. They put out better light than the headlamp on your average motorbike here, no joke. On such a valuable piece of equipment, I always try to double up. That's why I had two instead of just one. After our daytime motorbike crash, both of the lights were used while a tricycle driver and his wife gave us a ride back to Tagbilaran from around Maribojoc in a tricycle with no working lights (common here). Roxetter held one and the Filipino man's wife held the other, but when we got to where we were going, I forgot to get the one light back from that man's wife. Of course she was probably in no hurry to give it back, either, seeing as how it was such a great little light for safely navigating those roads in/on a trike with no other functioning light source at night. I lost a great toy, but I got some comfort knowing that it would hopefully forever be put to good use in helping that nice pinoy couple get around safely until they get their headlamp fixed. I'm convinced that during that trike ride, we may have very well had an accident if I didn't happen to have those handy lights with me in my little backpack.

I've been very overprotective of both wallets, my passport, my beloved Blackberry Bold, and my equally beloved Luminox 3001 watch (very high quality yet it looks like a regular old cheap watch with a black rubber strap and no fancy/shiny gold or stainless steel). So far I've been sticking to my plan of keeping a watchful eye over my least expendable items, but I do miss those items that I've lost. Never drinking alcohol (ever) is another good way to make sure I'm always at my most cautious when it comes to not setting my phone or wallet down on a table in some smoky videoke bar late at night. Being all jacked up on Coke or coffee gives me the opposite effect, making me extra alert.

Waka Kele and the Golden Buddha

2010-05-31T11:34:00.000-07:00

About a week or two ago, I was introduced by an Aussie friend here to a kiwi named Waka Kele. He's a very interesting man, with passions in life including but not at all limited to treasure hunting, among other things. We got together a few days ago to shoot a brief introduction to what's going to be a documentary about his quest in search of the legendary Golden Buddha and the legendary treasure that goes along with it. I recorded this at a patio table at Pacific Pensionne here in Cebu City, where our Aussie friend is currently staying and also where I stayed for the first week or so earlier in May. Please turn your speaker volume up all the way to ensure that you hear this summary of his fascinating tale, and I do hope that you enjoy. There's much more to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDKmE1u9IEo

I filmed this video using my Flip Video UltraHD pocket camcorder, at 720p (1280 x 720) resolution. I recommend first pausing the video to allow some time for it to cache/buffer before playing it. I recommend doing so for any online video of a length of longer than a minute.

Coffee here in Cebu, Philippines

2010-05-30T06:20:00.000-07:00

Here in the Philippines, there are usually plenty of options for a hot cup of coffee. Normally those options are fairly limited to different varieties of instant coffee, something that I have grown quite accustomed to during my times here. This post is to showcase some options for where to go if you are in search of instant or even real bean coffee here in downtown or uptown Cebu City.

Behold, Pete's Kitchen. This is on the same street as the Cebu Century Hotel here in downtown Cebu. You can duck into here any time during the day (up until about 10pm) for a quick cup of instant coffee for a very reasonable p15 (about 33 American cents at the recent exchange rate of p45-1USD). Sometimes I'll just sit inside Pete's drinking coffee for a couple of hours as I become (Continued...)

lost in my own thoughts about where I've been and where I'm going. My Aussie friend David sometimes meets me at Pete's to hang out and talk about all the downtown and uptown happenings. Pete's also has a variety of Filipino dishes at relatively reasonable prices, as well as fruit juices and a variety of cold drinks. Ordering instant coffee here gets you a cup of hot water with a packet of instant coffee, a packet of creamer and a packet of sugar. You mix it yourself at your table.

Here is the Jamoke Coffee Shop franchise in the E-Mall in downtown Cebu. Coffee here is the real deal, and a freshly brewed cup cost me p50. I asked for cream and sugar, so the employee gave me the obligatory packets upon serving me with my coffee. I chose the pictured pastry from their display window for p25. It was a worthy complement to the coffee, which had a nutty undertone and a mildly sweet overtone. I had the first slice of this pastry dry, then quickly began dipping the remaining slices directly into the cup.

Here is Starbuck's on Osmena Boulevard in the Fuente area of Cebu City, a bref walk from Pacific Pensionne, where I spent the first five days of this Cebu time.

In typical Starbuck's fashion, there are plenty of highly marked up items available for sale along with your usual selection of traditional and specialty coffees.

Here are some bags of coffee beans available in this Filipino Starbucks. A bag costs p450 or about $10US. Of course they'll grind your beans for you to your exacting preference. If I buy their beans, I will have them ground medium-coarse for use with my handy little GSI Java Press, which requires a medium size ground to ensure that grounds won't get through its filter into your coffee.

This is my GSI Java Press. I bought it for about $20US at a local REI store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania before embarking on this long Philippines trip. I've thus far only used it once, during my homestay in Penaranda. This is the 30-oz model, and it makes a few great cups of coffee after you dump fresh grounds into the bottom followed by hot water. I wait four minutes before then very slowly pressing the plunger all the way down from top to botom.

The neoprene sleeve with its fabric handle keeps your hands protected from the heat within. This coffee press is completely frivolous in that it's not anything that I would ever consider to be essential. I just though it would be a nice way to make a perfect cup of coffee at certain times, like when I eventually start camping. I also brought a GSI compact tea kettle for heating up water over flame, and I intend to do a video review sometime of both of them in action.

Following are some photos I took inside a local Filipino supermarket of their entire coffe-related aisle. I set my Olympus Tough 8000 camera to the maximum 12-megapixel setting, then I began at one end of the aisle and worked my way to the other end. Because of the giant size of these following photos, you should be able to click on one to fully open it and then scroll around over the photo to see details on the packaging of the products as well as their prices.

This net photo is a close-up shot I took immediately following my large-scale photos from above. This one should give you an exxample of some instant coffee options from a closer-up perspective.

The above shots are from the local Robinson Mall supermarket here in the Fuente area of Cebu City. The following two are from the SM Mall supermarket in the Mobolo part of Cebu City, where I spent time during my first Philippines trip back in August 2009.

These two above photos are of real coffee beans available in the local SM Mall supermarket. Real beans are indeed available in some grocery stores and supermarkets here, but sometimes you must really dig to find them.

Behold, the mighty 3-in-1 instant coffee so commonly found here in the Philippines. This above photo was snapped at a downtown Cebu bikini bar, in my continuing effort to showcase all sorts of places. One thing that disturbs me about 3-in-1 served in a restaurant or bar is the fact that there's absolutely no reason for them to make you mix the packet's contents into your cup of hot water yourself. Think about it. In that above photo from Pete's Kitchen, you clearly saw that your instant coffee, cream and sugar are left for you to mix yourself. If for no other reason than plain laziness on the restaurant staff, at least one could argue that the customer has the option this way to have their coffee with no cream or with no sugar. Ok, that's a fairly plausible argument.

But why do most places in this country force the customer to mix his/her own 3-in-1 packet into their cup of hot water? Is the restaurant or bar reasoning that perhaps the customer only wants cream and no sugar, so the customer can somehow separate the tiny individual molecules of sugar out of the factory-mixed contents of that little packet? No, I'm going to chalk this one up to pure laziness on the behalf of the serving staff, and I find it somewhat absurd that I've never heard anybody else whine about this ever-so-minor annoyance.

But regardless of my twisted theories about a possible 3-in-1 instant coffee conspiracy, I'd like to close this post by admitting that I've somehow become even more hooked on coffe then I had already been before this trip. Instant coffee is a big deal here in the Philippines, and if I really want to mix it up with the locals, then I'd better keep on sipping their coffe of choice. And to be honest, the stuff tastes pretty darned good, too.

Cebu Pension Houses, WiFi and Coffee

2010-05-20T10:08:00.000-07:00

I'm now staying in the Cebu Century Hotel in the downtown area (Colon), paying p700/night. I have the Double Standard (aka Double Matrimonial) room, which is p700/night. That's about $17/night, and this hotel has wifi in the rooms. In my particular room, which is pretty far from their nearest ceiling-mounted router, my internet connection is rated by Windows as "Poor" but it's still quite fast for me. I was able to get this video uploaded quickly on my first try, in a third of the time my failed upload attmpt took at Pacific Pension. I've considered SmartBro and also Globe Tattoo, and I think I'll try one of those USB-stick internet methods sometime soon. That way even if it's kinda slow, I'll still be able to do basic online stuff like check email and yahoo messenger, as well as type word-heavy blog posts. I wouldn't even consider trying to upload anything bigger than a photo using that method, though ;)

As for real coffee, I don't think I've tasted it yet during the 3 months I've now been here. I've seen real coffee beans and grounds in grocery stores several times, and sometime I'll buy some grounds and sweetened creamer for use with my personal coffee press. I got the GSI Java Pres from a local REI store before leaving the states, and it makes a great cup of coffee. It's capacity is 30oz and it has a nice neoprene sleeve to protect your hands. I also have a small GSI tea kettle for heating water, although unless I'm near a flame, it's easier to just get hot water from a vendor or from one of those neat little electric water heaters. That GSI Java Pres makes perhaps the best cup of coffeee I've ever had, though. I think it cost me $20, something like that. I plan to do a write-up about it, so stay tuned.

That area where those 2 pension houses are located feels perfectly safe to me. Sometimes little kids and old ladies will hassle me for handouts while I'm walking to or from the place, but nobody ever did anything worse than that. There are several guards stationed in that area, in the typical Filipino fashion of there being lots of uniformed guards everywhere you go. One of the guards who is always sitting in front of Pacific Pension is a really cool guy who is very friendly and smiles a lot. A guy from California calls him Obama, because he really does bear some resemblance to the current American president. I've noticed that most uniformed guards around the Philippines seem to be very nice and pleasant. gonna go out today shooting pictures of coffee options here in Cebu City. To everybody who has been following my blog, I hope you'll be patient as I'm currently working on all sorts of things right now. I've still got hundreds of photos on my camera and laptop that I need to run through my Picasa program, clean up, rotate, etc. I've been pretty ambitious lately, and right now it helps to have a quality internet connection inside my room here at the Cebu Century Hotel in downtown Cebu. I'm gonna go pound the pavement now for some photos of various coffee options.

Septic Suction at a Cebu Pension House

2010-05-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

I checked out of Pacific Pensionne here in the Fuente area of Cebu City today. I spent 6 days here, but now it's time to find a place that actually has wifi internet IN the rooms. I got a cup of coffee for p18 at Arbel's Pension House right around the corner (coffee is p25 at Pacific Pensionne and served in a smaller tea-style cup, too).

About halfway through my coffee, the staff at Arbel's informed me that there was some sort of septic emergency and that things would get really stinky really fast. As I saw workers show up and begin digging and pumping right in the middle of Arbel's lobby floor, I grabbed my little Flip Video pocket camcorder and began filming the scene.

You will notice that during the video I began walking around on a mini-tour of Jones Avenue right off of Osmena Boulevard. Basically I just thought that the septic work might be a unique if not mildly amusing scene to showcase on my blog, but it turned into more of an informational tour video.

Incidentally, at one point when I walk over to a little eatery with a big Coca Cola sign, I mention that you can have a couple pieces of bbq with rice and a drink for the equivalent of about $1.50US. While that's true of the street vendor I bought my bbq from last night, the little places on the corner with that big Coke sign actually give you some tasty meat, rice and a bottle of Coke for p39, the equivalent of about 80 American cents. Either way, there are lots of little places where you can have a decent meal for around a buck, whether it be a little more or a little less.

Bohol Motorcycle Crash

2010-05-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

Ok, first I want to say that my camera battery was completely drained on that fateful Wednesday, and I have no pictures of video for this post. After my 2 pinay friends and I were in our motorbike wreck, when I was tending to their wounds in my Tagbilaran hotel room, my camera was charged but it wasn't the time to be taking photos or videos.

I'm gonna give my account to the best of my recollection, which is usually pretty good. I met a pair of local pinay girls on the pier in Tagbilaran, Bohol on the evening of Monday, May 3rd. We hung out and talked on the pier and then we went back to the hotel I was staying at by the pier to hang out on the hotel's terrace overlooking the pier. After a while we went to sit in my room and the girls promptly fell asleep on the bed as it was late night. I used one of the twin Cocoon fleece light sleeping bags I have with me to sleep on the floor.

The girls were heavy sleepers, in a pattern of staying up late and then sleeping into the following afternoon in the same manner that I had ben doing for years back in the states before coming to the Philippines. Incidentally, when I met them, Roxette claimed to be turning 18 soon and Jedah claimed to be turning 19 soon. At no point during my time with these girls did I ever try any funny business with them. I never attempted to kiss them, etc.

After they finally woke up on Tuesday afternoon, we went to eat and then went to visit their uncle's house near Marcela Plaza. Their relatives are very welcoming and kind, in the usual Filipino tradition. I played a few games of billiards on one of the two tables they have there right off of the alley. Roxette (slightly taller but (continued...) claiming to be younger) drove me on her uncle's motorbike to get a 6-pack of Red Horse beer, which I bought for the guys hanging out there as a friendly pasabulong (gift). Then Roxette (taller at about 5'2-5'3) and her cousin Jedah (shorter at 4'11 and claiming to be almost 19) and I all hopped onto the bike to go for a ride.

Roxette drove us to a videoke bar where we hung out and the girls sang songs for a while. Then we went to the pier, where at this time the male relatives we'd been hanging out with earlier were now sitting around, drinking and hanging out in an area with lots of tables where live bands sometimes play. Roxette talked to them and then walked over to talk to me, in obvious distress. She was worried because she said that the guys claimed to be out of money and wanted me to drink with them and of course buy all the beers. In my typical fashion, I had explained when I first met the girls that I'm on a tight budget and extraordinarily kuripot (cheap). The girls and I had been planning on riding the bike out to the May 5th fiesta in Maribojoc Bohol the following day, and she now suggested that we skip town early to avoid any possible conflicts regarding beer and my money. Since it was already going on 2AM, I considered this idea to be quite insane. But I also looked at it as potential blogging gold, so I begrudginly packed up and checked out of my room early as Jedah rested on the bed and Roxette lagged behind at the pier talking with the others.

I'm pretty sure the motorbike is a 125cc model, not very big but with enough room on the seat for the two ladies and I. I'll add now that I never drove the motorbike at any point. Roxette did most of the driving, and she did it admirably, too. We finally jumped onto the bike at about 3:30AM Wednesday morning, and I pulled my two Princeton Tec Quad LED headlamps out of my little High Sierra carry-on size backpack for Roxette and I to wear on our heads. The bike's headlight hadn't been working well lately, turning on and off on its own in a random manner. The Princeton Tec lights provided better illumination than the headlights on many of these bikes, anyhow. With Roxette driving and Jedah behind her, I sat at the very rear. I had my little backpack slung over my right shoulder and Jedah had a little blue backpack slung over hers. The ride would have been quite pleasant if it weren't for the absence of a footpeg on the bike's right side. I didn't have too much fun keeping my right leg held up suspended over the ground. It was a challenge holding my foot up constantly like that, and occasionally my Crocs footwear would graze the pavement.

We arrived perfectly safe at the Sunset View resort near the Filipino family home at which I'd previously spent 16 days. Located in Lagtangon Maribojoc Bohol, the Sunset View has several cottage style rooms starting at p500/night. It's peaceful and right at the water's edge, but unfortunately if you just show up at 4:20AM you won't have much luck getting anybody to assist you. There's no front desk there. The gate at the roadside was locked, and even if we'd been able to walk down into the open areas amidst the cottages, everybody there was asleep, including the owner/operators. After standing at the locked gate yelling and banging on the metal to try to wake somebody up, we finally called it quits and hopped back onto the bike. At this point we were all very tired and weary, and we basically just drove up and down the highway through different towns that were all asleep. We did find something claiming to be some kind of small motel on the roadside at the edge of the Maribojoc town called Loon, but as usual there was nobody there to help us get a room.

Finally we just stopped the bike at a beach where there were some people beginning to stir about as they began firing up a wood-stove for cooking, etc. The girls asked them in the local Bisaya dialect if they knew of any kind of place where we could lay down and rest for a few hours. A helpful young man walked us out into the sea to a bamboo nipa hut (kubo) that was constructed right over the water. As we climbed up into it, we noticed that the center of the floor was open, probably so one could just relax in the shade and fish all day. Benches were built into two of the four "walls", and we promptly laid down on them. Each of the girls had been wearing one of my light fleece half-zip pul-over jackets I keep in my big bag (now safely secured behind the front desk of the Everglory Hotel back in Tagbilaran). The late-night ride had been cool and very windy, and I was glad I over-packed so the girls wouldn't have to freeze on the bike.

Since the sun had just risen in the sky and it was now warming up again, the girls shed the fleece jackets and they now became pillows. We slept from about 6AM until perhaps 8:30AM, and then we carefully waded through the seawater back to the bike. We rode through a few Maribojoc towns, asking locals if they knew of any hotels or inns at which we could stay. We stopped for breakfast at a little place in a town that's still unknown to me, then we rode out to the Punta Bay resort near the Bohol attraction known as Punta Cruz. I'd asked there weeks earlier about rates, and the lady there had told me their cheapest room is a whopping p2500/night. But we decided to take a shot to see if we could get any kind of a discount, and alas we didn't. I've noticed that most lodging options I've been to during my travels around the Philippines don't seem to care one bit about ever issuing any kind of discount in order to get a paying customer into their room. But more on that at some later time.

I was now in full appreciation of the irony, paying p500 cash up front for Wednesday night's stay at the Everglory back in Tagbilaran, not even using that perfectly comfortable room, and now suffering out in the middle of nowhere. This was turning into a particularly nasty day. It was long, miserable, draining and just not very fun. This is one of those days I will forever wish I could have back, to do all over again by simply telling Roxette that I'm just gonna go get some sleep in my hotel room that I'd already paid for; that I could care less what any of those drunk guys think about me not showering them with money so they can drink all night; that if the girls felt scared of the wrath of the beerless, then they know where the damn door is, etc.

But upon once again hopping onto the bike to go aimlessly roaming around at about 12 noon, soon thereafter the girls had yet another of their genius moments. They decided that Jedah (all of 4'11 and perhaps 40kg at the most) should now be driving the bike, since Roxette was understandably exhausted. About 4 minutes later, we for some reason decided to make a u-turn and reverse our direction. Brilliant. By the way, I think now would be a good tiime to mention that the bike had practically non-existant brakes. As Jedah was slowing down on the velvet-smooth pavement, I believe the truck far behind us spooked her. This is because she suddenly veered off of the paved roadway onto the loose stones and gravel of the roadside before she had sufficiently slowed the overloaded bike. I saw it coming, as suddenly the biked began to wobble. The wheel jerked left and the bike rolled over onto its right side.

Of course the front wheel first jerking itself back onto the hard roadway didn't help us at all. Picture in your mind a smoothly paved rural 2-lane highway, with loose gravel and stones for about a foot or two directly off of the edge of the pavement. Now picture a patch of soft grass that would be totally decnet to land on as you are pitched off of a flipping/rolling motorcycle. But alas, twas the jerking of the front wheel had prevented any of us from landing on the soft grass. Call it ninja-like reflexes, or just call it divine intervention. But for some reason, all I got out of the tumble was a little scrape on my right calf. I bang my legs, arms and head on things so often during my travels that these cuts, scrapes and bruises don't faze me at all anymore. But the girls didn't get so lucky that day.

Part of me wished I could get pictures of the horrific simultaneous burns/scrapes on each of their right legs, while the other part of me knew that it was better to not have any charge in my camera's battery. I'd never seen roadrash that nasty before, even in encyclopedia pictures. Beautiful, smooth, tanned feminine legs tortured by wounds that were so heinous that there wasn't even any blood. Large, deep bright white burns interlocked with deep purple spots. Roxette had hers covering about half of her right shin, and Jedah had hers directly behind her right knee. I would have probably cried and screamed just as much as poor Jedah if I'd been hurt in a similar way. Luckily for us, the people in the house we'd wrecked directly in front of heard the commotion and the awful screaming. They promptly came out to help, and the man of the house helped me get Jedah onto their front porch bench.

I had tossed my little Adventure Medical first-aid kit my loving sister had bought me before my first Philippines trip back at the REI store on the southside of Pittsburgh, PA back in July. It included such things as triple-antibiotic ointment, Cuts/Scrapes wipes, gauze, a few large bandage pads, several other handy items, and even a few baby pins for securing the wrapped gauze. As the poor girls screamed in pain, we wiped their wounds clean and then covered them in the ointment in an attempt to stave off infection. We did have enough gauze for both girls, but unfortunately we ran out of proper non-adhesive bandage pads taking care of Roxette. When it was Jedah's turn, all that I had left were some surgical sponges. These do look similar in size and shape to the non-adhesive bandage pads, but unfortunately a sponge by any other name is still a sponge. So the first time back in Tagbilaran when we tried removing them to clean her wound and re-wrap it, the sponges were sticking and didn't want to let go. This caused much extra pain and distress for her.

Eventually the kind family moved us from the porch into the living room ,where they had laid a paid down on the floor. Roxette laid down on a wooden couch and Jedah and I laid down on the floor with a couple of pillows given to us. The family had been giving us glasses of water as well as eventually serving us a plate of various locally baked sweet rolls and bread. Little mufins and such never tasted quite so masarap (very delicious) to me before. As the day wore on, the girls teted with friends, and they formulated a plan for us to ride in a tricycle at night from that site of the wreck and the family's house (leaving the bike there at the house) to the home of their supposed best friend. p300 got us all the way from there to some other part of Maribojoc, in a tricycle which of course had a malfunctioning headlight. Again I whipped out the two Princeton Tec headlamps, which made it easier for the driver to see where we were going.

After a ride of maybe 45 minutes to an hour, we finally got to a remote house way out in the sticks. Surronded by green trees, it felt like I was back in southwestern PA again. At this crowded house, the lady of the house served us some pork adobo with rice and Coke, then soon after she informed me in private that she wouldn't be able to help us beyond that. I could tell from the look in her eyes that the notion of two filipinas cruising around with some foreign white guy and not somehow being involved in some twisted and torrid love affair with him was simply too alien of a concenpt to her. Basically, we weren't welcome there because of some God-fearing assumption that we were living in sin. Of course in reality, I had not gotten so much as even a high-five from either girl during the whole time I spent with them. Thanks alot, organized religion. In an emergency scenario, people need to take all that traditional/conservative/God-fearing crap and throw it right out the window. Enough is enough.

Their friends, a few guys of about 20 years old, very nice and cool to talk to, gave us a ride on the backs of their respective motorbikes to the main rural highway where we eventually caught another tricycle ride back to Tagbilaran and the Everglory Hotel. It was now about 10PM Wednesday night, we'd seen no fiesta, and I was now getting a room that cost p800 instead of the p500 I'd had earlier. This is because my first room had just a little bed and a fan, and this larger room had a larger bed and a window aircon unit. The girls were leary of hurrying back to their uncle's house, understandably afraid of getting scolded for getting all dinged up and also having to leave his bike way out in the sticks. So my new hotel room became a field hospital for a couple of days, where the girls could rest and we could at least try to clean their wounds and change their bandages.

On Thursday I got some bbq chicken with rice for the girls, served it on my camping plates I keep in one of my bags, and hurried over to the Marcela grocery store/pharmacy to buy new medical supplies. I got three rolls of gauze, at 4 inches by 30 feet each at p17 each. I also got ten large non-adhesive bandages at p6 each and ten medium non-adhesive bandages at about p5.50 each. I got some Tylenol and Ibuprofin tablets at abou p5 each, and I also got some Betadyne for cleaning out the wounds. The Betadyne was perhaps a 100ML bottle and cost about p126. The biggest rip-off was the tiniest tube of 1st-aid cream I've even seen. It was a joke at p146, but I needed some more because I was running low. I also got each of them a carton of chocolate Moo milk on my way out of the store. Roxette really loves the stuff.

I already had a couple of small travel toothbrushes in my laptop bag as spares, which I gave to the girls. I bought a small bottle of Sunsilk shampoo and another of Creamsilk conditioner so they wouldn't have to use my Clear menthol man shampoo. This whole debacle ended up costing me way more money than I could really afford to blow, but luckily it's all still fairly low in terms relative to how much it would all have been in the USA, including a big hotel room, long rides, gauze and stuf like that. After paying p190 each to bring Roxette and I from Tagbilaran Bohol to Cebu City on the late Friday night ferry boat (she is now staying at her mom's house here in Cebu), I'll estimate that the whole mess of a week cost me about p4,000 more than I normally would have spent that week. For the record, I wanted the girls to both go to a hospital to be cared for by qualified professionals, but they didn't want to.

Jedah texted me yesterday, said she's starting to feel better. I'm still worried though, because she was never too enthusiastic about the process of removing her old bandage, cleaning and then applying fresh bandages on a regular basis. I've tried to explain to her several times about the very real risk and possibility of gangrene, but now all I can do is wish her luck. I'm not so worried about Roxette, because she had always heded my words and been great about taking the pain in order to kep hers clean.

I'm sure this is my longest blog post yet, and I do apologize for not having any pictures or video. But I also feel that it's most appropriate for this one to be all text, with me just giving you the best narrative I possibly can, and no distractions. I'm sure there are multiple typos, because Blogger's autosave system is complete and total garbage. It messes me up any time I type any kind of blog post, but hopefully it will be cleaned up sometime soon.

Comments Revisited: Cash, Bathrooms and Electronics

2010-05-07T11:16:00.000-07:00

Cash is definately king around here. They say that one is supposed to declare any large amount on their customs declaration form upon entering the country. I guess it's no big deal though. When I entered, I was promptly waved through still hold my documents I had just pain-stakingly filled out. I recommend having at least a few hundred bucks on you when you arrive in Manila. It's just nice being able to roam around not worrying about bank machines for your first few weeks. Also, there are numerous places around the country where you absolutely must carry plenty of cash. Case in point is Batanes, all the way at the northernmost point of Luzon island, actually only about 100 miles from Taiwan. From what some guys in Cubao told me a while ago, there are no bank machines in Batanes, and also no luck using your credit or debit card to buy things there. The crime rate there is currently 0, though. Since it's unavoidable to carry more cash than usual in some places, I offer this advice: Never EVER carry anything in your back pockets, especially anything like a wallet, passport or phone. Always leave them empty, although I like wadding up some toilet tissue and slipping it into my back pocket on my cargo shorts or jeans because public restrooms here are famous for having no toilet tissue. Wear cargo shorts with zippered pockets, and it would be ideal to have velcro and also a zipper on the same pocket, because the loud noise of velcro is a good theft-deterrent. If you're running around with a girl who is cool and a good friend or girlfriend, it's probably ok to entrust her with some of your money. I don't have much cash on me right now, only about 1000p. But if I had lots, like 50,000p for example, I'd absolutely trust my lovely friend to carry the majority of it for me. There are several other friends of mine who I have a similar level of trust with. In the unlikely event some dude tries to mug me, he won't get much because usually I either don't have much cash while just running around town. Also he would expect me to be the one carrying lots of money, not my local pinoy or pinay friends. In a place like Paris, maybe it's best to carry just a little cash and keep everything else safely in the bank. But there are lots of places in the Philippines where bank machines are few and far between. And for the record, I've never owned and iPod, iPhone, any other kind of mp3 player, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, etc. True story, most of my toys and gadgets are just pieces of plastic and rubber. I've gotten to the point where I get more satisfaction and value out of a spork than I ever would from a Gameboy or whatever.

Comments Revisited

2010-05-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all the good comments and for reading this post, everybody. To elaborate on a few things:

1. When the 4 of us landed at the airport, we were already pretty tired from a long day. I had personally been sitting out by the Airmes Lodge hotel pool all day waiting to go to the airport because the hotel wouldn't let me stay in my room later than the usual early afternoon checkout time. It was about 41C that day (104F, I think), so I was fairly drained by the time we had gone through the Clark airport and then landed at Cebu Mactan. After we landed and retrieved our checked bags, the girls had just sat down in the aircon and I went out to the taxi curb to have a smoke. That's when that taxi driver offered me a ride to see the local pension houses/hotels, because I was tempted to get a room for us to sleep and rest in while we waited for our morning boat ride. As the night wore on, I got more and more weary, and wow, that was a long night. It's ironic how none of those hotels even had available rooms for us anyhow, but I admire how well my pinay friends did as we "rested" on the hard steps inside the airport.

2. The driver who did give my friend Yhen and I a truly free ride to McDonald's and back was great. He was definitely bored, for sure. As we were riding on our way to McDonald's, I was trying to decide if he was hammered or sleepy or just really laid back. Possibly all three, but he got us there safely, as slowly as a turtle too.

3. I should also add that the less-scrupulous taxi driver offer was a spontaneous thing that just popped up, because my pinay friends didn't even know I had gone anywhere farther than just outside for a smoke. Of safety note, it was that airport taxi curbside deal where they have a big taxi stand and the supervisors there knew that I was going in his car with him. So it wasn't one of those deals where I jump into a strange car in a dark alley and pray for the best. And after he begged me for money afterward, I didn't complain to his supervisors. I just shook my head and looked pissed off as I walked back into the airport. I didn't want the guy to lose his job, but at the same time I feel like I may have been acting irresponsibly by not reporting him, because reporting it might help prevent him from doing the same thing to other people later on.

4. My pair of fleece sleeping bags and my travel pillow all came in quite handy. Ironically, I had assumed that they would first be used for camping here, not to make friends more comfortable in an airport. But I'm really glad I had them with me. The sleeping bags were simply used as pillows, in a folded square to keep my friends from having to sit directly on the hard concrete steps. I thought to do this after noticing that none of the dudes occupying all of the chairs were going to be chivalrous.

The ACR i-Card from Immigration

2010-05-03T04:37:00.000-07:00

On Monday April 19th, 2010 (about 2 weeks ago), my friend Yhen and I went from her Aunt's home in Lagtangon Maribojoc Bohol into the main Bohol city of Tagbilaran. Our mission was to get my tourist visa extension stamp for my passport. My first extenion, which is for 38-days, was on March 1st, so this was my final day of that first extension. You can skip your extension or just wait if it's at an inconvenient time for you, but you will have to pay fees for however many days you had gone past your date the next time you do go to immigration, etc.

The main Philippines Bureau of Immigration (BI) office is in Manila, of course. But they do have satellite offices all around the country. Basically, as long as you are in a reasonably sized city in the Philippine, there's probably an Immigration office there. I checked their official website from an internet cafe in Loon Maribojoc to see what the address is of the Tagbilaran Bohol BI office. My point is that, wherever you may be within the Philippines, you shouldn't have too much of a problem finding a place to get your tourist visa extension stamps.

Upon entering the Philippines, an American citizen automatically gets an initial 21-day tourist visa stamp. If you need or want to stay longer, you should swing by a BI office sometime before your 21st day to get an extension, which is for 38-days. This adds up to an initial period totalling 59 days. After that 38-day stamp, if you need more time here (like me, for example), you get extensions of 59 days each. The first stamp (38 days) should cost about p3030, and after that things get a little more expensive. My first 59-day extemsion here in Bohol cost me a whopping p7500. This cost included about p4700 for the extension fees plus about p2800 for the now-required Alien Certificate of Registration (ACR) photo ID i-Card. Curiously, BI always lists the price of the i-Card as being $50US,ver Philippine pesos (PHP or simply P). On BI's website, it just says that the i-Card is $50US or the PHP equivalent of that (about p2300 these days).

I just took a quick snapshot of my awful photo from my new i-Card. I think this is the worst photo taken of me in recent memory. I look like a cross between Charlie Brown and that creepy backwoods fiddle player from the movie Deliverance. I would just show what my i-Card looks like in whole, but of course there are people out there who would surely use all that sensitive information for fruad and whatnot.

When the BI lady said my total was about p7500+, I practically crapped my pants. I asked her why it was so inflated, and she said that the price included p500 for express processing of my i-Card (which is issued in Manila and then must be picked up at the satellite BI office from which you applied for it). Oddly she had never offered this as an option, but rather simply tacked it on. I felt better when she explained that each future 59-day stamp will cost p2800, not too bad in my opinion. The i-Card lasts for 12 months, after which you need to have it renewed. She said that the -Card is now mandatory for any foreign tourist wishing to stay for long enough to need a 59-day stamp. When I was on BI's website investigating after my friend Christine suggested it to me months ago, it seemed like the i-Card was an optional thing. Perhaps it was and now they've changed it to where it's become mandatory.

This was a fairly costly day for me, and it really jacked my April spending. But since it's all something that I had been expecting all along, I feel somewhat comforted. For your information, the ACR i-Card is the same size as a USA driver's license or credit card. It should fit in any wallet, no problem. I had been wanting one even if it wasn't mandatory, because apparently it speeds up processes of visa extensions, country entry and exit, etc. It has an embedon ded computer chip which can be quickly scanned by Immigration authorities to see information about you, including your visa stamp dates. Passports can be forged, and apparently the i-Card cannot because of that chip. So at least in theory, handing an official your i-Card in certain situations to prove your identity will make his verification task quicker, since he doesn't have to run authenticity checks on it like he might with your paper passport.

Even with the p500 "express" fee, the BI lady said it woul take 2-3 weeks before I could come back to Bohol BI to pick it up. This distressed me because I had been planning on heading to Cebu soon. Instead, I just pushed the Cebu plans back and stayed in Bohol longer. I just went to Bohol BI on Friday April 30th to see if it might already be there, and it was. So it had taken about 10 days, not 2-3 weeks. Now I'm just relaxing for a while longer in Bohol before heading off to Cebu. It's nice to know that I don't have to worry about going back to BI for my next stamp for a while. I think my next one is due around June 16th if my memory serves me right.

Getting fresh coconuts in Maribojoc, Bohol Philippines

2010-05-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE830E0fY50

During my recent 16-day stay at a lovely home in Lagtangon Maribojoc, Bohol Philippines, I got to enjoy fresh coconuts every day. A local Filipino would climb up high into a tree next to the house, knock down a few coconuts and then head elsewhere. This would occur early in the morning, around 6-6:30am. I'm admittedly not a morning person, so the camera had a better view of the action than my own eyes did. We drank glasses of coconut milk with slices of coconut in them, and the lady of the house would also have tuba (pronounced too-BAH) made fresh , too. Tuba is coconut wine. Here in the Philippines, I've heard the word buko (pronounced BOO-koh) used as the word for both coconut and baby coconut.

I'm definately planning on doing another one of these videos, since I feel that I didn't capture all of the action in quite the way that I would have liked to. I still think it turned out pretty well, but stay tuned for another video featuring locals cutting into coconuts and doing various other things with them.

A Flying Lemur in Bohol, Philippines

2010-04-30T08:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozbOsrARsKk

While spending a day touring with my friends in Bohol, Philippines, I got the chance to get up close and personal with a few interesting animals. In this video, I recorded a Flying Lemur as it was enjoying its lunch at a local roadside wildlife sanctuary/zoo. It was cool being able to be so close to the little critter without it getting too scared and running away. Apparently, this lemur is accustomed to being visited by people on a daily basis, which gave me a great opportunity to get my Flip Video UltraHD pocket camcorder so close. I also got some video of the legendary Tarsier (the world's smallest primate), and that will also be posted soon.

A Tarsier in Bohol, Philippines

2010-04-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izJYdGju0Mk

The Tarsier (pronounced tarr-SHEER) is the world's smallest primate. These things are really tiny, and they could easily sit in the palm of your hand. I got the rare opportunity to see a tarsier up close at a local roadside wildlife sanctuary/zoon here in Bohol, Philippines. The Philippines is home of the Tarsier, and it's nice to be in Bohol where I can have the chance to meet a few of them here in their hometown. If you are thinking about visiting Bohol and the Tarsier, please remember to leave some peso money in the donation box to help the caretakers buy food to keep the little guys well-fed. Expect some more videos like this as I find more interesting little guys to record for you to view.

From Angeles City to Cebu City to Bohol

2010-04-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

My three Filipina friends and I left on April 9th to travel from Angeles City, where they had been living, to Bohol, where their Aunt lives. We flew from the Clark airport (originally the old Clark airbase of the USA military) to Cebu City, then we caught a ferry boat from there to Bohol. The plane tickets cost a total of p11,300 for the four of us, and the airport terminal fees added up to p600. On my first trip to the Philippines, I learned that you always pay an airport terminal fee of p200 per person, and I assume that it only applies to adults. This is because my friend's daughter is 14 years old, so maybe the fee is for those 18 and over.

Our flight was the only one of the day going from Clark to Cebu Mactan Airport, and unfortunately it wasn't until 8:30pm. By the time we landed in Cebu, it was already 10pm, and the last boat of the day had just departed already. We sat (without chairs) in the Cebu departures area (the arrivals area was closing for the night) until 4am the next morning, and it felt like an eternity. We had been given the impression earlier that there were boats running late at night, but it turned out that the next boat wouldn't leave until about 5:45am Saturday morning.

I had a couple of Even Steven moments during this little trip, and it was generally pretty strange. For example, soon after arriving at the airport and walking outside for a smoke, one of the airport taxi drivers offered to drive me for free to a couple of nearby hotels to check prices and availability in case I wanted to get a room for us to take a nap in while we waited. After taking me to a few places, upon returning to the airport curb the guy said I had to pay him p265 even though he had told me before that he would do it jst because he was bored. I begrudgingly gave him p200 and told him that he'd just blown his chance of being able to give us a ride to the ferry pier early in the morning for more money than that.

A few hours later, I mentioned to my friend Yhen that I'd seen a McDonalds not too far away while riding with the first guy to hotels. We were all pretty hungry, and as Yhen and I walked outside the departures area she began talking wit a local Filipino who was hanging out in his van by the curb. He said he'd drive us to McDonalds back for free because he wasn't allowed to continue sitting there. I was skeptical because of the way my first "free" ride turned out, but we just went for it. The dude turned out to be great, very laid back and didn't want any money for driving us. He just took us there, waited for us to get our food (cheeseburgers, fried chicken, french fries and Coke) and then drove us back to the airport departures area. Coming out the door of McDonalds, I fumbled a box of french fries onto the ground, which upset me at such a late hour. But when I offered the driver a burger I had bought thinking he might be hungry, he said he was full so I ended up with an ecxtra burger for myself. This burger basically evened out the fries I had lost to the dirty ground below.

We got a meter taxi around 4am to drive us to Pier 1 where we waited for our ferry ride. The fare was about p150 for a ride of about 20 minutes. We were the first people to show up and wait for the boat, and a porter working there offered to take my money to buy my tickets early for us, if I trusted him. The fare was p200 per person, and I gave him p1000. I watched him riding off on a pedal bike into the ether, wondering if I should have done that. But after about 40 minutes, he returned with our 4 tickets and change. I tipped him p100 for taking care of us. This was all done so we wouldn't have to wait in a long line when the time got closer for everybody to start buying their tickets. The OceanJet fast boat ride took an hour, and soon after the noisy and swift boat ride, we were at the pier disembarking in Tobigon, Bohol. We rode a trike for about p30 to get to where they have small vans and buses. Riding in an overcrowded van that stopped constantly for about about an hour cost p80/person. My big 32" bag needed its own seat in the van due to it already being full of luggage, so that cost me another p80, which was understandable and fair. We finally arrived atour destination, a house in Lagtangon Maribojoc Bohol, at about 8am.

Of course a lot of the expense of bringing three others with me on this little trip was offset by being able to stay at a nice and comfortable home for 16 days instead of hving to pay to stay in hotels. I bought some food and drinks a couple of times during my stay at the house, and I think the whole thing evened out fairly well.

Staying in Lagtangon Maribojoc Bohol, Philippines

2010-04-21T01:34:00.000-07:00

I've been staying a a friend's family home in Lagtangon Maribojok Bohol Philippines for almost 2 weeks now. For the first ten days, I had a really nasty cold but I'm finally feeling better now. The house is located along a lonely stretch of shoreline, so it's very quiet and peaceful.

The house sits right off of the water's edge, with high tide reaching the steps that come down from the patio area. As is usual with many Filipino beaches, it's wise to wear some kind of footwear while you walk around in the water. There are plenty of sharp rocks and such, as well as sea urchins with their pointy spines beckoning.

Personally I wear my rubber Crocs on my feet while playing in the water. The thick rubber offers decent protection and cushioning, so you can walk over all sorts of stuff on the seafloor without even noticing it. It's an added bonus that Crocs float, too. If one slips off of your foot, it just floats right to the surface instead of sinking.

Down the stairs from the house's back porch is the kubo, or bamboo hut, as well as a large patio area. I found a nice spot inside the kubo to hang my hammock, and it's a nice place to relax at just about any time.

You can't get much closer to the water without actually being in it. This place has been great for me, although it would be nice if there was an internet cafe within walking distance. Very peaceful, though.

The back porch is perhaps my favorite place to hang out. I like to sip coffee on the porch and look out over the water. You can see the lights of Tagbilaran, the Bohol capital city, in the distance across the water at night.

It's a shame that I was ill during so much of my time here. It messed up all of my plans for touring around Bohol, camping, etc. I got photos and videos during my time Bohol, but the videos are now absolutely impossible to upload. Wasting several hours in a hot internet only to end up with none of my videos successfully uploaded has frustrated me quite a bit. I'm now trying to at least do some posts with photos, but things have been very, very difficult for me lately.