Being from the Leyte-Samar provinces, I am well aware of the annual url=http://www.tourisminthephilippines.com/city/Tacloban/leyte-landing-memorial/leyte-landing-memorial.phpLeyte Landing celebration which commemorates the return of Gen. Douglas McArthur to the Philippines. Who isn’t familiar with the line “I Shall Return”? He is probably one of the most loved expat in our history books, and our fascination to the American culture may as well be associated to him. Whilst the Spanish brought the Roman Catholic faith, Americans on the other hand brought chocolates, McDonalds, Pepsi, pizza, the American English language, and our fascination to ‘state side’. As it was a long weekend, we’ve decided to make a weekend trip to the Corregidor Island. I usually get seasick and the one hour ferry ride was the least of my favorite. Back on its glorious days, Corregidor was a... read more

"Do you remember passing through this trail?" I asked wondering why I don't remember walking through a wide rocky trail. 'I'm not sure' stare. We went on. "What are these cobwebs doing here? Are these mountain spiders really fast with making webs!?". I felt more cobwebs constantly on my face later on. "The soil feels unfamiliarly soft", Janet added. We went on. "This fallen tree doesn't look familiar, does this look familiar to you?" A shrug. We went on. "There are piled bamboo poles at the side of the trail ahead! I definitely don't remember those!", I exclaimed. That did it! We were lost. It was a long weekend so we decided to do a one-day climb up Mt. Pico de Loro and do camping at a beach somewhere the next day. We hired a taxi ... read more

The guide who was to drive us to Kinabatangan picked us up from our lodging house at around noon, it was another three hours drive from Sandakan to Kinabatangan River, the second longest river in Malaysia. We shared the car with an Irish couple who were also supposed to stay with Uncle Tan's and who are just as disappointed as we were. Oh well, we did share a different tour together just the same. The river was flooded indeed. There were fallen trees by the river bank and our guide have told us beforehand that the probability of sightings would be low since the water level is high. During our first 30 minutes, we only got to see several monitor lizards. I was very much more interested with seeing the proboscis monkeys because I've never actually ... read more

Three days ago I got an email that said "We are currently experiencing a flood at the the Camp and all visit for the near dates have been cancelled (up to 31 Jan presently)" ... that was for our 3D2N trip with Uncle Tan Wildlife Adventures in Sandakan which was half of our itinerary! Me and my little brother was so looking forward to it and more importantly, we don't have plan B! Oh well, we are still going to hope that evertyhing will turn out okay or maybe we'll just replace it with a series of picnics. We arrived last night at the Kota Kinabalu International Airport and immediately noticed that the lights are dim, everything is smaller (buildings, the road, the cars) and the place is unexpectedly quiet in general (compared to Manila, that ... read more

We were just having a great time singing Karaoke last Friday. A few of my colleagues and I were celebrating the third year since we all met at the programming boot camp, and I was also anticipating the arrival of my baby nephew from the province the next day. It was a rainy week but I was oblivious of any storm coming. My older brother w/ his family, an aunt w/ my little cousin, and another cousin w/ her family arrived on a plane on Saturday morning telling us about a pretty bad turbulence and swore that they felt their plane fall a few feet down when they were still on flight. One of my cousins even said that she thought she was gonna die that day. Since I stayed very late the previous night, I ... read more