I gotta get rid of my current friends and find new ones who travel (just kidding!!!!). Seriously though, it's easier said than done but I need to travel more, see new worlds. Certainly will make you put your life in perspective in a global scale. I had the best time in the Philippines, it's my best vacation so far, and longest. I'm at a free yahoo,　internet cafe here in Narita Airport, Tokyo Japan, finishing up the first leg of my journey back. I spent some time time with family yesterday, did some local, low key stuff thankfully. After Puerto Galera I [View Full Entry]

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I spent the whole day in Tarlac today. I got up at 6:30am, took the light rail to EDSA station and from there took a Victory Line bus to Tarlac to see some relatives. The trip was shorter than I thought, 3 hours as opposed to 4. I had lunch there at a great restaurant owned by my cousins. From there we spent some time hanging out with more family members, then for a couple of hours hung out at this monastery on this mountaintop. Great scenery. There was a giant statue of Jesus overlooking the mountain like the one in [View Full Entry]

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I'm back in Manila. I've been too tired to blog lately but I have so many things I'd like to write about. The thing is, I can write them all down and sort them out when I get back, but usually, when I get back, I don't feel like re-writing anything. So I'll write about some initial impressions, I guess. I'm back in Manila now, in Malate, across the street where I originally stayed. I highly recommend Malate Pensionne. It's in between an outdoor bar and a Starbucks. A room with twin beds, a/c, TV and decent bathroom is $42. Not [View Full Entry]

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My friend and I are spending one more night here at White Beach/Puerto Galera. Tomorrow, I'm heading back to Batangas, possibly all the way to Manila. Not sure what he's doing. It's great here at the beach, during the day and night. So far we've been having good weather. Warm and breezy. We might head into the interior today, do some hiking. What am I saying? I'm going to end up just lounging out at the beach and reading. I've gotten so lazy since I got here. I even stopped working on my screenplay. It's so laid back here. I know [View Full Entry]

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It's 10:23am, we're at White Beach. It's really nice here. The water is blue. It's deep however, so deep boats moor here, so swimming is not for the timid. I remember going in a few feet and finding myself up to my neck already. My friend and I took a tricycle to here from the port. It was 100 Pesos, haggled from 250. The trip took about 20 minutes and it was scenic. We had the ocean and palm trees to our right the whole time. I think we could have done things better. As soon as we got to town [View Full Entry]

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My friend and I took a trek to Calapan today. The city itself was ok. It was grungy, polluted, crowded. But what made it worthwhile was the trip back. It's about an hour and a half each way by jeep. Going there sucked because I almost got car sick sitting in the back of the jeep, not being able to see anything. We got off at Tamaraw Falls to take pictures then walked along the road to Villaflor, a hamlet about 2 miles down the road. We hung out there to take a break. From there we took another jeep to [View Full Entry]

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Supposedly there's a Ponderosa here in Puerto Galera, like a restaurant or the TV show? It's 11:42am, New Year's Day. I spent the night in Sabang, and came back here as soon as I woke up. No big plans for today, just the way I like. This is exactly what I was looking for. I'm starting to get into the local groove here, living and speaking like the locals, it's great. Stefan and I hung out last night. For dinner we ate pizza at this fast food joint (still apprehensive about the local food). Afterwards we got some beer and watched [View Full Entry]

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Puerto Galera is in Mindoro, which is a contraction of Mina De Oro or "Gold Mine" in Spanish. As per the guide book, after 500 years they still haven't found any here. Had a restful night. I went out to eat around 6pm. It was already dark. My hostel was quiet. I went to another restaurant down the road, it was too dark and not festive looking, just some tourists eating. I went to the town center again. The whole way down there people on bikes kept asking me if I wanted a ride somewhere. I ended up at Bahay Pilipino, [View Full Entry]

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It's 4:02pm. I'm here at Sabang "beach" hanging out with Stefan, someone I ran into at Puerto Galera. He's an Englishman, traveling around South East Asia. He just graduated from college and is traveling before settling down. Nice guy. It's great to have someone to talk to sometimes, and compare notes with. I'm sitting here at this bar all sweaty. I was going to go back to Puerto Galera (a 15 minute jeep ride away) but decided to stay here instead. I was going to go back to my hostel room there and put on something different. We are planning on [View Full Entry]

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It's official. I'm addicted to the internet. Wherever I go it's alway in the back of my mind: I hope they have an internet cafe there. Here in Puerto Galera they have several. This morning. from my hostel, I took a tram to Gil Puyat Street and from there I took a bus to Batangas (3 hours, with two movie onboard entertainment). The first movie, a Filipino movie was a mix of chick flick (a guy finds out his daughter is not really his) and action. In the end, there was a shootout, like in Scarface, involving nuns, no kidding! The [View Full Entry]

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