Blogs from Malate, Manila, Philippines, Asia - page 4

Almost 36 hours of being in transit is a crazy amount. I almost would have preferred if the reason was because of more stops but no, alas it was because of the 16 hour flight from New York to Hong Kong which took up a good majority of our time. I had met up with some of the girls going on the trip at the first flight from Washington DC to New York which was nice so we could figure out where we were going together. In the end we agreed that New York was the worst airport. When we had landed there they took us around this really long path, out to the baggage area and then we had to wait in an extremely long line at the ticket counter and go back through the ... read more

Three weeks in the Philippines provided me with only a brief glimpse of this very diverse, fascinating country of 7,107 islands (at low tide). Back in Canada now, reflecting on my Island hopping experiences, this is a country worth more than tertiary explorations. My journey began on February 17th, landing in Cebu City, spending a few days there sightseeing, trying to decide where to go next. I stayed downtown initially at the GV Tower Hotel, until moving on to the more pleasant uptown location at the Mayflower Inn. The use of English is prevalent in the Philippines, which makes travelling in this God fearing country of some 93,000,000, fairly easy and enjoyable. I also haven’t been called “Sir” so often since my time in the military years ago. Every sentence is punctuated with Sir. Yes Sir, ... read more

We almost missed our flight. Here's why: when we were waiting at the airport for about 5 hours, we were told when the check-in had opened and showed our passports only to have the lady tell us we couldn't check in without our itinerary to show. So we had to wait a few more minutes at a different counter but the woman wouldn't print it because we didn't have an outbound flight leaving the Philippines. Apparently we couldn't check in until we had proof that we were leaving too. They told us we had until 5:55 to check in, and it was 4:00, leaving us almost 2 hours to buy a ticket. So we went downstairs to ask the information ladies if this was a policy by the country or by the airline we were flying, ... read more

It's now Sunday Morning. Observations on yesterday. First on the pics. First two are of the panoramic views from the room of our suite and the electrical wiring that powers the buildings in our area. To put it all into perspective, just around the corner is the newest Grand Hyatt and just down the road is the US Embassy in Manila - so it's not like we're in a shabby part of town. The third pic is at one of the entries of the Mall of Asia, the largest shopping mall in the Philippines. This place is so big they even have a couple of car dealerships under the roof and dozens of Real Estate agencies trying to flog condominiums. Every entrance has the type of 'barrier' with a minimum of two security guards and everyone ... read more

Philippines 9 April - 28 May 2010 part 1: living la vida locale!! Isulan, Sultan Kudarat How can I ever summarize this part of my trip? I've thought about it so much... it's almost impossible! haha... since leaving Melbourne I knew that I had a lot of free time in April/May & my preference was to live somewhere with a small provincial community to experience a different lifestyle. The Philippines seemed a perfect choice, since I already knew the place on a basic level, already spoke a bit of the language and I have so many friends there that I would love to see & get to know better. I spoke to my friend Joyvie there who lives in the South of the Mindanao region (commonly associated with terrorism & violence)...hehe...the other appealing factor of going ... read more