Blogs from Laguna, Philippines, Asia - page 4

The ghost tales from last night caused quite a stir. Meli woke me up in the middle of the night…well, more like I woke her up with my floundering and grunting. The dream: I dreamt that there were two indistinct shadows in our room. It was one of those dreams where you can’t separate dream from reality. Melissa asked me who was in the room, but I ignored her at first, and then told her to keep quiet and maybe the shadows would leave. We talked about how weird that was and fell back to sleep. Moments later, the shadows came back. This time, I got out of bed and looked around, the bedside table where I left my laptop had moved from the foot of the bed to my side of the bed. The crimson ... read more

This one is not yet in the tourism list of the Philippines. But I had a nice travel and some good stories shared by the locals The lake is of volcanic origin and the diameter is only about 20 hectares. There used to be some fish cages in the lake until fish kills happened many years ago. Now, its about ten years since the lake was cleared of the fish cages and the sight has gone back to the natural ambience. What made the trip to the lake more interesting is that a hill that was quarried in past has now become a major nesting site of thousands of blue tailed bee eaters! Then had a talk with the locals and asked them why it was called Enchanted Lake and Crocodile Lake in the past. ... read more

My ultimate jungle and wild river ride experience would be the trip to Pagsanjan falls. It’s the Philippines little amazon where the river flows through magnificent canyons sheltered by lush vegetation. The wild river ride tour started slow from the dock where we hired the canoes. The canoes are manhandled by two boatmen. I couldn’t understand at first why our canoes have to be stringed and towed by a motorised boat at the entrance of the canyons. Then I realized that the boatmen were merely conserving their strength for the rapids we’re about to battle as we enter the mouth of the magnificent gorge. The calm river turned into cascading rapids. With extreme agility and strength, our boatmen hop on and off the canoes skilfully manoeuvring the canoes upstream against the rapids. I can’t help but ... read more

Road trip to Pagsanjan is a fascinating journey. We enjoyed the different towns of Laguna in two days. This really created variety of experiences in food, people, and scenery in our trip. Truly worth it journey. What a delight!!! After spending the holidays in the city, my wanderlust started acting up again. In the morning of Jan.16,2007, a monday, after Val's 24-hour duty in the hospital, I literally dragged her to the car and buckled her up & off we went to this quick getaway. Pagsanjan falls, technically known as Magdapo falls, is a 4-hour car ride from Manila. We left from Quezon City late to give some time for Val to rest. We left at around 10:00 AM and arrived at the Pagsanjan area at 2:00 PM. I made two reservations, one at Pagsanjan Garden ... read more

Part of the Pahiyas Festival tour is a side-trip to some churches in Laguna. We visited two old churches - the St Mary Magdalene Church in Magdalena, Laguna and the Majayjay Church in Majayjay, Laguna. Both churches were built during the Spanish Era, using "Polo" or forced labor. The churches' architectural design is every photographer's haven. Too bad, my digicam run out of batteries, so i just managed to take some snapshots thru my phone. Sigh, the digicam should have given justice to the beauty of the churches and should have complimented the deep blue skies. I should buy a spare bat, hmm, maybe, i should buy my own cam, since i'm into this "travelling cum photography" thing. First stop was the Magdalena Church. I missed it! Since my digicam is off, i didn't bother to ... read more