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Published: March 4th 2012
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Hello all,
Hope this finds you well... Over the past couple of weeks we've done a fair bit of travelling since leaving Dumaguette. First destination was Bohol which involved us taking a 3 hour boat which was absolutley fine this time round, no episodes of us being sick hand in hand in the toilet!
In Bohol we visited the famous Chocolate Hills via buses and Jeepneys.
There are at least 1,260 hills but there may be as much as 1,776 hills spread over an area of more than 50 square kilometres (20 sq mi). They are covered in green grass that turns brown during the dry season, hence the name.
Thanks Wikipedia...
Sarah and I really enjoyed viewing the hills although it probably would have been a lot prettier had the sun been shining. The best picture we managed to take had the third person in our relationship that week in the background. Great...
That same day we visited the critically endagered Tarsiers at a sanuctary.They are listed among the world's 25 endagered species. Not suprising really from the stories our guide was telling us. Deforestation, being hunted for food, kept as pets, list goes on.. It's a real shame as they've been around for 45 million years, but the guy who runs the santuary is doing a great job. We were told a story of someone trying to smuggle
a Tarsier from the sanctuary inside of a coconut shell, they're that small!
Moving on from Bohol, we took another 3 hour boat to Cebu. Straight off the boat we took a 5 hour bus ride to the northern part of Cebu, to Maya. Then a short banka ride to Malapascua. Malapascua is a small island, made up of 3 fishing villages, diving sites, beach coves and resorts. This was the start of Sarah and I detox week which was short lived, well we only failed on the first night. Two for one cocktails and being stuck in the bar because of a rain storm kept us busy till the early hours.
The place we stayed in was a basic beach hut, it was lovely although we were back to flushing the toilet with a bucket. We spent a couple of days on the beach, having massages and relaxing. It rained on and off but it was lovely just to sit and chill after having travelled so much.
Cockrels and pigs played a big part on this island. Back to being woken up at 4-5am by steriod pumped cockrels and the odd slaughter of a pig. No
joke we woke at 7am one morning to the sounds of a pig shrieking and then saw it chopped into pieces as we walked past its pen.
Every Sunday, no matter where you are in the Phillipines you will find a Cockrel fight taking place. Malapascua, being a small island, doesn't have a massive arena as such but instead a boxing style ring at floor level made up of chicken wire and bamboo. The ring was directly behind our hut and as there was a fiesta on the island that week, cockrel fights were taking place all week. One afternoon we went along and before I knew it I was betting with the locals. Before any betting takes place though, there is a fair amount of prep work done, the cockrels are constantly cradled and stroked by their owners, like it was their baby! To top it off there was the smallest amount of rain on the day we went down and the owners hid the cockrels under their vests to keep them dry., bless! They then attach a 4 inch razor sharp blade to one of their feet, with a sheath over it until later, not so loving.
The wrapping of the blade onto the foot is similar to that of boxing where an independant person fits and wraps the gloves. The style of betting is like no other, there's the parade and showing of the cockrels, the owners then get them pecking at each others to get them geared up for the fight. They then go to ground and whilst the trainers holds onto their tails the cockrels face each other and try to attack one another, more winding up. This is followed by lots of shouting, hand signals, more shouting then the bets close.
The sheath is removed, everyone goes quiet and the cockrels go at it. It doesn't take a great deal of time before one is cut badly. Hopefully the video loads and you can see the referre (if that's what he is called) then picks up both the cockrels, bounces then up and down to shake a bit of life maybe into the dying one! Then they are dropped and go again, if they can... Sarah was more interested in cooing over the babies and small children picking up feathers and poking the dead cockrels with sticks than watching any of it!
The cheers and screams after are loud and the paying out of bets then happen and I got paid!! (won 2 lost one) The owner of the dead cockrel then picks it up, carries it outside and flings it on the floor, if it has particulary nice feathers, local fishermen rip its feathers out and use them for fishing, often with the cockrel still fighting for life. It is then given to a woman who plucks the remaining feathers out, guts it, boils it in a big pot for a few minutes and then it is given to the winner of the fight. Don't know whether you'd fancy eating it though, as like I said earlier, the cockrels are pumped full of steriods (so we were told) which is why they cockadoodledoo throughout the day and night rather than just at sunrise.
One night we went to a local disco, which was held on a commnuity basketball court, a couple of rums later and we were heading for the dancefloor. I don't know how it happened but it escalated into me transforming into Louis from Pinnapple dance studios, mincing about with 8 or so children copying my dance moves.
It was a great night which ended in me carying Sarah home over my shoulder. We also met someone with uncanny resemblance of Matt Lucaas from Little Britain. See pic, what do you think?
Our last day on the island, we put on our matching hiking shoes (no joke, sad we know) and went exploring, complete with compass and map. Considering the island was only 2 km across and 8km from top to bottom we perhaps were overestimated 'the trek!' The walk took us all through fishing villages, with fish being dried out, people repiring nets, boats etc and at the end of the day, watched the sun go down on top of a cliff. Lovely.
Time had come to say goodbye to the Phillipines, and we started our 2 day travel to Hanoi in Vietnam. The journey included, an hour boat ride, 4 hours on the bus, 3 flights; Cebu to Manila, Manila to Kaula Lumper, Kaula Lumper to Hanoi. The low cost airline in the Phillipines similar to that of Easyjet, play games with prizes during the flight. We had already decided that having seen the games on a previous flight we were going to have
a go. I was pretty tired and must have fell asleep because I woke to Sarah, arm stretched up and shouting the name to a song which the air stewardess was singing over the microphone! Sarah was chuffed to bits with her pencilcase. haha!!
We had 12hours to kill when we landed in Kaula Lumper before our next flight and decided to take a bus and train into the city and we were so happy that we made the effort to go. Kaula Lumper is big and busy. Skyscrapers everywhere and a seriously impressive glass tower. We ate some good food from one of the street cafes, done some exploring and then it was time to head back. Once back at the airport, we got our head down for a few hours sleeping on the terminal floor.
Then we arrived in Vietnam, woohoo!!
Hope you're all well, speak soon.
xxx
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Brenda Britnell
non-member comment
Class!!! Well if Beckham can do it :)