Mabuhay Gardens It is now Sunday morning in Southeast Asia, The Philippines, at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Centennial II, strictly for Philippine Airlines. The flight from Frisco to Manila took about twelve hours, direct, without any stoppage in Guam. Now I am sitting here at the Mabuhay Lounge in NAIA Centennial II, waiting for the last leg of my flight from Manila to Singapore to depart. I will be in Singapore for a couple of days to see some friends and just to rest before I fly again to Siem Reap, Cambodia. I plan to just hang out in Cambodia [View Full Entry]

---

---

The Red Eye from Frisco International Right now I am reading the San Francisco Chronicle - The Chron. This is the first leg of a triple stop flight from Frisco to Siem Reap, Cambodia, via Manila and Singapore. I try to fly first class or business class whenever possible or affordable on a flight that is more than four hours long. This is because I’ve had my share of agony in coach or economy class in overseas flights. The seats are wide, there’s plenty of leg room, there’s complementary champagne, the food is better, and the service is terrific. I’m not [View Full Entry]

---

---

Another whack job in the orient On my umpteenth time of eating at Kinamot Restaurant I began to notice that there was a Westerner who frequented the place, an old guy with gray hair, about sixty years old or so, or at least he looked like it, sitting alone in a table for two on the far end of the veranda. What the hell he's doing here I'll never know. He could be American, he could be European, Australian, whatever the hell he is, I don't care but you don't normally see white people walking around alone in the Philippines. They [View Full Entry]

---

---

Maasin is a bustling little town - or city, as the inhabitants of Maasin will insist - with quite a bit of sophistication, or at least more than I had expected from a place that on the map seemed a million miles remote from civilization. Although the major modes of transportation are your usual jeepneys and motorcabs, there are also plenty of privately owned vehicles. There are two local colleges in town. One is St. Joseph College which is associated with the Catholic Church and the other is the College of Maasin which is associated with the United Church of Christ [View Full Entry]

---

---

Christmas Day in the Philippines. It's hot, humid, and busy. People are running around singing Chritsmas carrolls in every corner of every street in every town of every province in the Philippines. I have never seen such a joyous celebration of Christmas anywhere in the world. In the United States and other Western countries Christmas has been diluted by other factions and interests such that you really can't celebrate Christmas without having to acknowledge Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Sodom and Gommorah (joke people), and other psuedo-holidays so that everybody's happy. But it's really nothing more than a big shopping bonanza and a boon [View Full Entry]

---

---

The Pool Bar It's five o'clock in the afternoon in Cebu and I've been sleeping, on and off, for the last eight hours. My body tells me it's after midnight back in the Bay Area and so I struggle to get up and take a shower. I drag myself to the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and felt discouraged by what I see. The effect of jet lag is evident in that ugly look in my face and I can't do anything about it. So I brush, shave, and take a shower. I felt a little better after the [View Full Entry]

---

---

As the sun rises above the horizon, the sun’s rays are filtered through a yellow haze from the smog. I have never seen such pollution in my life. I find it hard to believe that people could endure such filth. I could only imagine people walking around with a surgical mask over their mouths and noses as they walk around the streets of Manila to filter out the harmful particulates from entering their lungs. Why people would want to live here, I’ll never understand. It is now six thirty in the morning, still a few hours away from boarding. I see [View Full Entry]

---

---

I feel a little sense of trepidation as we approach the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). This was a fourteen-hour flight with a one-hour stopover in Guam, for refueling. I slept for no more than one hour, at most, throughout the whole flight. It’s difficult to get any kind of sleep in an airplane, even in Business or First Class, at least for me. Not with the continuous drone of the engine which keeps buzzing in my ears, not when the temperature is never comfortably warm, and not with these seats which are nothing more than miniature Lazy Boys. It’s not [View Full Entry]

---

---

Friday, Frisco International Airport It's 2:30 pm and I am sitting, waiting, at the International Terminal, waiting for the Philippine Airlines check-in counter to open. Meanwhile I am watching a herd of people being checked-in by KLM, a Dutch Airliner, for a flight to Amsterdam, Europe's City of Sin. I heard from fellow travelers that the Amsterdam flight is cheaper than a flight to London's Heathrow International because of some ridiculous tax levied for that destination. In any case I don't care since I have no plans to visit either cities anytime in the near future. I just want to check [View Full Entry]

---

---

I always find it impossible to sleep well on the first day of travel, especially if I'm in an unfamiliar surrounding, like a hotel or a stranger's house. I have to get used to the bed regardless of how comfortable it is. The pillow too, needs a little wear and tear before I can be comfortable with it, not to mention the blankets, the comforters, the hum of the air conditioners, the background noise and the ambient temperature. I probably got no more than three hours of sleep that first night in my hotel in Castle Rock, Colorado. I was lying [View Full Entry]

---

---