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Published: April 24th 2010
I hardly slept last night. I’m sure it was because I didn’t eat enough. I have been on my two meals a day diet for about three months now. It works pretty good but sometimes if I eat too early I get caught out and get late night tummy grumbles. O yes, and I lost about one kilo. In three months.
Joey was up late also. I woke at 3am and he was still on the internet. Don’t know what he was up to. He does different stuff to me on the net. I am usually checking sports results while he is surfing for info, usually of a dubious nature. He likes to download political docs. I bashed him for 20 odd years for being a prol and now he is getting his own back on me through his new buddies Alex Jones and David Ike. They are two of the leading, ‘7/11 was an inside job’ advocates. Well it puts another slant on our meandering discussions/arguments. It’s not really possible to have discussions with Joey, he is one of those people who hear something they don’t like and they just close their ears. Well who can’t be described
like that actually? If someone does not agree with us it’s easy to say that they are closed or narrow minded.
Joeys still sleeping. He usually wakes up before me. It’s funny when you travel with different people how you have to adjust your habits to suit theirs. With John I was sleeping early and waking early and going all around the place being a good tourist. With Joey I am spending evenings in restaurants paying too much money for food I don’t even particularly like or want, I guess that’s being a good tourist also right. But there you are. We all need to compromise.
It’s almost all Asians in the hotel dining room this morning. That’s something I particularly like about this hotel in Bangkok. I am not surrounded by Western faces. I think there are quite a few Thais here also, funny, for a Monday morning.
We finished almost all the shit we had to do though Joey was told by his business partner to go and buy more plastic bags from Chinatown. I don’t fancy another trip there but what to do. Have to keep my old buddy company. His memory is pretty
bad these days. Even though I dislike his business partner I always help him.
That last bit was written ages ago when we were still in Bangkok. Joey and I are now on a bus on the main island of Philippines - called Luzon - traveling south. We spent a few days in North Luzon riding around on motor-bikes.
Everything is so expensive here. Well at least it is in relation to the rest of Asia. The food is not great by Asian standards. There seems to be almost no indigenous food culture here at all. And the first time I ordered something ‘local’ - Sisig or something it’s called - it turned out to be some kind of animal offal, minced. Yum! Not really a strong food culture here. New Guinea, Nepal and Tibet don’t have very strong food cultures either. I know it’s a giant generalization but to me it almost seems that developed culture and developed food culture go hand in hand. If I had to say what I thought were the most developed cultures in the West over the last thousand years then it would have to be France and Italy - I know
people would disagree with that but having no connection with Italy and very little with France I like to think I’m being impartial. They also have the most advanced food culture. Same seems to be for Asia with China and India. Well I know that’s a huge generalization but it makes sense. It’s like how I noticed that all the industrialized developed nations of the world seem to exist in a ‘cool’ belt around the world; From the south of Europe up north then across to Russia then across China and Japan and Korea. Perhaps the reason Mexico and South America are less developed than the US might have as much to do with weather as ethnicity. My meandering generalizations seem absurd sometimes even to me, but then some time down the road I come across some of them again, but then in a book or a documentary and through the mouth of some, ‘expert’ with a degree. Then I think wow, little old Jeremy thought of that also; independently. Anyway we are coming into Manila now so I will stop writing.
We are now waiting on the next bus. There are more sellers in the bus than passengers.
They are selling the usual stuff; hamburgers and fried chicken- the mainstay of Filipino eating - DVD’s, Mentos, oranges, nuts. The bus is starting to crawl along but still the sellers are on super-salesman mode. This bus will take us south. Our eventual stop will be Betangas. It’s the place where you get ferries to other parts of the Philippines. We are still not decided where we will go to but we want to try and make it to the island of Mindanao. It’s a more remote part of the Philippines. There and Palawan are the two main areas I missed when I was here 22 years ago with Paula-the-bitch.
Just to fill in between when I last wrote, we finally finished all our Thai business commitments. I didn’t buy much stuff, just two 20 kilo boxes sent by post to Amsterdam. Joey just finished off his shipment with an order of about ten thousand plastic bags. I guess the next day after that we flew with Kuwait Air to Manila.
We hated Manila. It stinks of piss and shit as badly as Delhi but instead of it being concentrated on certain streets it’s pretty much everywhere. The
kind of poverty we have seen there is as prevalent as anywhere, even India. No I guess India is worse, but not by much. And India has a billion people to deal with and a much lower GDP. You can definitely feel the influence of America here. The pre-European culture seems pretty basic. Sort of like Central and South America, where there is the little Indians then a weak kind of Spanish culture over the top except here it’s little Indians and Filipinos and Spanish and American culture over the top.
We are virtually eating exclusively in fast food restaurants. My favorite is a place called Jollibee. When you think it’s all pretty much the same old shit Jollibee is just a bit cheaper and a bit healthier than most.
Generally, for what you get, the Philippines is a very expensive South Asian country. It’s probably at least a half more expensive than Thailand for food and double or triple Thailand for accommodation costs. Actually I should say edible food. I can eat what to me is the greatest food on the planet anywhere in Thailand for about one or one and a half Euro. I won’t ever
consider eating in a fast food chain or an overpriced tourist restaurant when I am there. But here we are forced into eating exclusively in fast food places just because the local food is bland.
The local poor must have a really hard time of it compared with Thailand where I think most people are pretty ok. Actually you can see the local poor people here suffering. They are all over the place, in ragged clothing, begging, picking pockets, trying to sell stuff that nobody seems to want. The similarities with the US come to me fast. The ragged marginalized beggars, the piss - in the US it’s in the subways, or was when I was there 25 years ago - the bad eating habits, the ubiquitous chain stores that virtually run the entire economy - almost every banana you see has a ‘Dole’ stamp on it and most of the contact you will have with pineapple is out of a ‘Del Monte’ can. The Philippines is supposed to be the largest grower of coconuts in the world but go into a simple café and they will give you another can of it. What all this seems to mean
is that the small farmers and retailers are marginalized. The stuff probably goes from big plantations strait into the paws of the big companies. It’s sad in a way. It’s almost as if the Philippines never got a chance to get on its feet. It’s like a girl that was passed from one abuser to another; in this case Spain and then the US. But the concept of the good white man spreading civilization runs deep in our collective conscious so I don’t expect anyone who is white to sympathize what I am saying.
One thing we have found, apart from the numerous rip-off artists, is that the people are very friendly. They have lovely smiles also. I am actually starting to like them despite myself. But its early days still. Let’s see how things pan out in future.
Ok now we are in Starbucks. The beat goes on. Had a huge mug of coffee and the healthiest sandwich they offered. Joey is on his usual high cholesterol cake diet. He is funny, he is adiment that he has a great diet because he is a vegetarian which, in his case, allows him a licenc to eat anything
he wants and feel that he is eating healthy. I have to admit it does taste great. I’m watching him now as he downs another spoonful. I think I will have to beg a bite from him. Joey gave me a bite, god it’s good. The chain stores do good cakes here in the Philippines I must admit.
We are back in Manila. So far we have swum in the crater lake of an extinct volcano called Pinatubo and done a river trip to a small waterfall called Magdapio falls. The volcano was a disappointment. It involved a one hour 4-wheel drive trip then a 20 min hike. The scenery was interesting without being spectacular but the lake was not much. ‘Lonely Planet’ bills it as a ‘highlight’ of the Philippines. But who believes ‘Lonely Planet’ these days? When it comes to integrity and honesty they sold out to the gods of profit years ago.
The river trip was better. It was in a shitty little town called Pagsanjan that we stayed overnight in. The scenery was great. I think a part of ‘Apocalypse Now’ was filmed there so you can imagine it was very jungle-scene kind of
stuff.
We decided not to go island hoping and came back to Manila with the plan to either fly to Palawan - the ferries that go there are in dry dock, all of them from both companies, at the same time, er? -, or take a ferry to Mindanao. In the end we opted for Palawan when a couple of friendly Mindanao guys told us we can easily get kidnapped if we went to their island. So Palawan it is. We have booked tickets and will leave tomorrow afternoon. This is uninspired crap I can see. I’m really not in the mood for writing at all at the moment. Better leave it be for now.
We are now at the Puerto Princesa airport in Palawan. Departures! We are on the way out. We have been here for about nine days. I liked it a lot but I don’t think Joey did that much. He is weird these days. He is not like the Joey of old. He doesn’t seem to enjoy anything anymore when he is traveling except food and finding comfortable hotels. From the first day I started to travel overseas thirty two years ago I decided
I didn’t want to get into a kind of trap over things like that and, with the true feeling of traveling with the first ‘Lonely Planet’ guide and the ethos of Tony & Maureen Wheeler I liked to do everything hard. Of course it also came in handy for saving money and comfort and food has never been top of my priority list so it came east to me anyway. You stay in a nice hotel and then you leave. If the next one is worse than last night then you feel let down so you need to find another hotel of the same standard or better to feel content. You eat dinner and then it’s over. So what comes next? Dreaming about how tasty it was? Dreaming about how tasty the next meal will be? For me reading a great book or seeing beautiful nature or talking with good people is far more gratifying. But there you go. We just can’t get inside the heads of other people can we? He is a real hunter-gatherer and perhaps its thousands of years of genes speaking?
The mad rush for the plane has begun. We always wait till last. So
about Palawan. I liked it much more than Joey did. It was more my kind of place. The capital city, Puerto Princesa is quite a peaceful little town in comparison to Manila; and there is almost no smell of human excreatement here which is a novelty for anywhere in the Philippines. Actually they have a Mayor that they are very proud of here in Puerto Princesa. His name is Mayor Edward S Hagadorn. We call him Mayor Edward Scissor-hands for short. He seems to get a lot of political cudos from being a conservationist so you will almost not see a single piece of rubbish anywhere on the island. It’s fantastic really. I have never seen a place like this anywhere in South Asia. I’d like to take the Governor of Bali here and show him that it’s possible to live without mountains of garbage all over the place. ‘Scissor-hands’ has also introduced a recycle program with ‘plastic’, ‘paper’ etc compartments on peoples house fronts. It’s compulsory so every house has to have one. You see the most humble little shacks along the roads everyone of which has a small bamboo or wooden construction by the roadside with three compartments.
We are on the plane now, being read the last rites. They have pretty hostesses on Cebu Air. Actually women in the Philippines are gorgeous. I guess the men are pretty good looking also but I will leave those observations to someone more qualified than I am. But the women; wow! I would place them third in line behind Thai and Vietnamese in Jeremy’s league table of countries with the per capita most beautiful women. Don’t laugh, it’s a very intensely researched table. I don’t know how they got so beautiful, perhaps it’s all the racial mixing; that would do it.
We are flying over the north of Palawan now. I might get a view of El Nido soon. That is probably the most popular place in Palawan. It’s a beach town right up in the north of the island. It’s a lovely beach but it’s also the starting point for boat trips to the Bacuit archipelago. The chain of islands that make up the Bacuit archipelago are incredibly beautiful. We did not know what to expect because the ‘Lonely Planet’ writers hype everything out of proportion but the ‘Bacuit’ was every bit as spectacular as it was
made out to be. We did a day trip through one part of it on a small outrigger with four other tourists. Even Joey was a little bit impressed.
They stopped on various small islands that had the typical coconut lined white sand beaches but they also took us to some incredible lagoons. One of them that was called ‘Big lagoon’ was quite large and, they said, sixty meters deep. We also went snorkeling. The water was not as clear as I remember Boracay to be but there was quite a lot of fish. Unfortunately almost all the coral has been destroyed by cyanide and dynamite.
The wealthy - and therefore influential and policy making - locals have finally realized how much money they can make through tourism so now the poor fisherman are forbidden to blow up the place. Quite right too.
They have this weird thing going on in the plane now. The hostesses are playing a game with the passengers. They sing three songs and we have to guess the name of the song. Inevitably it’s a love song. Only in the Philippines.
The view is spectacular out of the window. It almost
makes me forget about the foot that is being forced into the back of my seat by the passenger behind me.
Going back to our Palawan part of the trip, we spent a day in Puerto Princesa then rented bikes and headed north. We took all our bags with us. I actually had my small suitcase on the front of the bike. I am a big fan of suitcases now. I think I would/could never go back to having a back-pack again. I even preferred my suitcase when we did the Tibet trip last year. The only time it makes sense to use a backpack is if you are doing a lot of hiking and as so few backpackers actually do that these days then the whole backpack thing becomes a bit obsolete. I sort of feel young tourists just do it these days because it’s what you are supposed to do. Funny we humans are. Joey has a backpack that he hauls around on a trolley. It seems like a weird cumbersome set-up but I think it works out ok for him for some reason. I think he uses the trolley for carrying stuff that he buys in
various shops and markets but in actuality he has all his stuff sent to shippers these days so he probably just still takes it out of habit. He is always grappling with the thing like its a puppy-dog on a leash. joey goes one way and it goes the other.
So anyway I thought the bike trip was great. We took our time and spent four days to get to El Nido in the north. We stopped at towns called Sabang, Roxas and Tay Tay along the way, doing between sixty and one hundred kilometers in a day. That’s very easy riding with lots of brakes. Joey is incredibly slow but I think he is right. Better to go slow and safe and enjoy the trip. It’s no race. and in truth the fun thing about travelling has not much to do with super-afficiency and organisation and everything to do with what goes on around you while your trying to be organised.
At Sabang they have an underground river that is quite impressive. You take a small boat about two kilometers along it but it actually goes up much further.
Roxas was a complete shit hole and
the only highlight was an amateur singing competition that was going on in the local patch of community dirt. We actually became the highlights of the evening, or Joey did. He treated the entire town to free rides on the Ferris-wheel. It cost him 500 peso’s and even grandma got a ride. I like that side of Joey. He is a very considerate person. He is a really good guy.
Tay Tay was ok because we got to stay in a lovely ‘resort’ which had real ‘brewed’ coffee and overlooked the harbor. Actually three out of the four places we stayed in at the beginning of the trip were owned by foreigners. They make the kind of places that tourists want to stay in. And of course they have the funds. So we stayed in some basic but beautiful bamboo hut style places hidden away in coconut groves. I was impressed, especially with the place in Sabang. Joey wanted air-conditioning. He likes the objective concept of paradise but with comfort layed on. I still like to be part of the nature around me, even if that meant sharing our room with mosquiots and bush rats. Joey likes to see
a nice place then get the hell out. This reached a head in El Nido. I could have stayed a week and done a tour of all the small islands there but Joey was so desperate to go and not be on the bike anymore that he actually paid 60 Euros to have a minivan transport him back to Puerto. I rode back. I did it a lot faster and got a flat tire for my pains. And it was a pain being in the middle of nowhere on a dirt road with a flat. Luckily I met an old guy who, along with another recruit, pushed my bike three kilometers to the nearest bike repair shop. It cost me five Euros in labor fees and I think I got out lucky. There was no way I could have pushed it up and down hills in the heat of the day with a dragging flat back tire.
I stopped over in Roxas and Sabang on the way back. It was a bit lonley and dull by myself though so I was happy when I met up with Joey in Puerto where we booked a flight for the next day
and, here we are, eight thousand meters above tropical Philippines and headed back down into the fetid morass that is Manila. Soon we will be back in our grimy overpriced hotel and then off to Robinson department store for more mass produced food. Where to next is anyone’s idea. Perhaps south, perhaps back to Bangkok. I still want to get to China if we have time. We will see.
Something amazing just happened. We rented motor-bikes for another week and are now in a place called San Fabian. We wanted to get to Baguio tonight but because Joey is such a turtle we ended up here.
I was way ahead of him and in the end it got dark and we were both buzzing around the highway in the dark looking for what they call resorts but in reality are rotten old shacks on the beach. We eventually met up thanks to mobile phone communication and tried almost ten different ‘resorts’. They were all crazy priced shit-holes.
I wanted to drive on to the next town called Agoo but Joey thought it was better we ask a tricycle driver to take us to a place as “If
anybody knows the area they do”, so we ended up on another dark crappy dirt beach road that eventually ended up at another ‘resort’.
They showed us a dump room that would cost three hundred baht in Thailand and asked us 1,600 pesos for it. I wanted to walk away but Joey eventually got it down to 1,200 pesos though I would not pay half of that for this dump if we were in Thailand. Anyway where is this going you ask?
They had a small fetid stinking pool here and next to the pool was a pool rules sign board. I looked at it and it started with “Pool Regulations” and then “No spitting in the pool” then a whole lot of other silly rules that makes you want to take a photo of it just because it’s so funny and, then, something went ping in my head and I thought, “Shit Jeremy, you have taken a picture of that exact sign board”. And it was true. I was even carrying it on my computer.
This dump - ‘Lazy A Resort’ - was the same dump I stayed in 22 years ago with my cantankerous Dutch
girl friend Paula. Amazing.
Amazing double when you think I did not even remember where the place we went to 22 years ago was except it was somewhere north of Manila. Amazing triple that we did not even plan on ending up in this shit-hole part of the Philippines and amazing quadruple that of all the skuzzy resorts around this area we end up in the same putrid place. Amazing times amazing.
It must be some kind of place that tourists go to otherwise there would not be so many ‘resorts’ here and we would not have gone there 22 years ago if we had not heard it was a place worth going to, so I guess we got that info from ‘Lonely Planet’.
I have not even read about this place this time on ‘Lonely Planet’. I never figured we were going to stop off here. It’s also about a 20 kilometer strip of beach resorts. Incredible!
Joey is getting excited about his French Fries. He says it’s interesting that in the Philippines they have something called banana catsup. It’s banana with red coloring. Today we stopped in McDonalds. He was winging like hell. Now
he eats French Fries and says how tasty they can be. He is anti McDonalds though he is not anti-fast food or anti unhealthy food. I would bet that the lasagna garlic bread and cake he has at his wonderful Sbarro food chain has just as much crap in it as does a McDonalds meal but he still talks in terms of health. Joey, you dont make sense. You old scoundrel you.
Anyway I will have to remember to take a photo of my ‘next to the pool’ sign tomorrow. I did the same thing two summers ago with darling Dyah and Celeste. Somehow we ended up in a caravan park in Benidorm after a public bus dropped us off at the first one on their route. It turned out to be the same one I stayed in twelve years ago with Celeste - when she was just two years old - and her mother Tukta. The thing was I had no idea it was the same caravan park until we were booking in and the last time we had a car and drove into it.
Anyway all I want to do now is sleep as early as
possible. Joey is ordering his third beer. I just had one. Tomorrow we will do the drive up into the hills to Baguio then after that who knows. We have a week rental on the bikes.
We are now in a village called Sagada. It’s up in the Mountain Region of Northern Luzon. Joey is packing, I’m already finished. Nothing changes.
Last night I slept for 14 hours. I just felt exhausted, sort of like that feeling you get when flu is starting to set in. It’s happened to me a couple of times since being in the Philippines. Maybe it’s from not getting enough vitamins. Most local restaurants seem pretty disgusting and very meat dominated and we eat a lot in fast food places and of course, the food is crap. I want to eat as much fruit as possible but that, along with coffee and the occasional beer or Tanduay rum is affecting my stomach and I can feel I’m starting to get that acid stomach thing again. Anyway I feel good enough today to do a two hour guided walk - I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by calling it a trek - through some of
the local burial caves here. In one of them the tourist info guy told me we will have to wade waste deep through water. It should be fun.
After we left the town of San Fabian we drove north through Agoo then moved off the coast road and wound up through the hills to Baguio. It’s just like another horrid traffic clogged Filipino city except it’s in the mountains and surrounded by pine trees. We found a great place to stay. It was called Villa Cordillera and it was a large sprawling wooden building perched on the side of a hill overlooking a golf course. We didn’t appreciate it long though. Joey, as usual, was desperate to get back into the dirty stinking city so we headed back into the killer jeepeny dominated traffic and ended up at the SM (Super Malls) Mall. This was a typically Filipino affair. Huge end luxurious and chock-a-block full of fast food outlets. Joey was like a pig in shit. This time we ate at his latest favourite, ‘Max’s’ restaurant. They have a special desert that consists of four different deserts in one. One is green - ‘eye of newt’ we call it
- and one is white with a fluorescent purple powder on-top. The whole thing looked like something from the ‘Mad Hatters Tea Party’.
The next day we went shopping for trousers for Joey because he was cold in the mountains and of course because of that, in true Joey fashion, we didn’t get on the road again till after 12 midday again.
Today was pretty horrible. It was cold in the afternoon and the view was ruined by fires that were being burnt all over the mountainside.
There was nothing much going on by the side of the road also. Almost the whole day we only passed parked jeepeny, garages, broken cars and motor-bikes, engine oil and tire shops and chicken-shit fertilizer warehouses.
It’s now another week down the road. I’m sitting in a beer garden drinking my free Margarita and waiting for the Paquaiou v Cotto fight. Its only 10.30 am. I’m wondering what the hell I’m doing here, sacrificing half a day for a boxing match.
After that day that took us to Ablang, the one with crappy scenary, things got very good. The next morning we woke early and hit the road.
We could do that because there was nothing for Joey to eat or drink in Ablang. Like I said, Joey’s travelling world revolves around looking for food and comfort, just like a cave man did 100,000 years ago. It sounds boring but actually within that narrow peramiter we have a lot of fun. Joey is infinitly entertaining. He has to be for me to put up with him.
So anyway, this day was totally different. I took off and left him again as usual but today the scenary was incredible. We climbed up further and further into the mountains and all of the greezy grunge around Baguio city finally dropped away until we were in an almost clean roadside environment. The atmosphere became clearer also so we got a good view of the mountains.
That night we ended up in Sagada. It’s a peaceful little town with a terrific restaurant that makes home-made yogurt that tastes like heaven. We had a quiet night there after the hard riding then got a guide the next day and looked around the local caves. I had to cajole Joey to do that. Funny, I really have to push him to do
what to me is the only things worthwhile doing in this country. He dosnt get off at all on nature, caves, scenary, beaches, waterfalls, the whole lot. Dinner, and multi-coloured deserts is what gets him adreneline up. Ho ho. But we did the caves in Sagada and it was very worthwhile though more than a little slippery and dangerous. I did it in thongs, like always.
The next two days where the best in the Philippines outside of the day in the Bucuit archpeligo. We drove down the steep dirt road from Sagada onto the main road then followed some wild spectacular scenery all the way to Banaue. They are working like mad on this road and lots of it was dirt with shear drops over the side.
The next two nights we stayed over in Banaue spending a day driving out to the Batad rice fields. They are the world famous ones. They are pretty incredible but it’s not like they stick out or anything. The entire region is amazing. Probably one of the best scenic trips I have done anywhere. Joey never got all the way to Batad. In the end we were rushed for time
so I had to do the one and a half hour walk almost running.
From Banaue we picked up the pace and got back to Manila in two days. Joey has a cold that he insists is some kind of infection and has been consulting with every person who he has seen wearing a white coat over the past few days. Unfortunately nobody shares his diagnosis. They tell him it’s a cold. So undaunted he searches on for another white coat and another opinion.
So it’s almost time to leave the Philippines. It’s been an interesting six or seven odd weeks since we have been here. Generally my first impression is right about countries. I can usually work out if I will like or dislike a country in the first day. What all this stuff is about people needing months and months to understand a country is totally beyond me. Nobody really ever fully ‘understands’ a country, not even their own. So if people believe that crap I wonder why they simply don’t just stay at home and keep trying to ‘understand’ their own country. The whole thing just seems to be one of those cover-up concepts for
people who hate travelling and need an excuse to spend two months in one place sitting in restaurants and smoking dope but at the same time don’t want to think of themselves as lazy tourists.
So I stick with my first impression. Philippines is very over priced for what you get, especially the hotels that might get their overpricing from one hundred years of catering to rich Americans. I have no idea, but country wide hotel owners must be raking in huge amounts of pesos. the food is mostly american style fast-food, like I already said. There is a few local dished but they are poor cousins of dishes from other Asian countries. There is too much meat and not enough fruit and vegetables in the diet also. And they don’t use spices well. Perhaps it’s a place where there was no local spices growing? The general diet is unhealthy and as a result the place is full of people with rotten teeth - something unusual for Asia even with all the sugar people consume. I think there is quite a bit of diet related health problems and as a result there are drug stores on every corner. The drug companies must be raking in profits. i bet the laws on generic drugs are really hard also. Which would mean that the drugs would have to be produced through large international companies based in the west. It would take a substantually larger cut out of the wages of the people then in say, Thailand, or China.
The cities are probably the most horrid I can think I have seen anywhere in the world. Men piss freely on the street in a way I have never seen anywhere. Even in India there is a degree of shame about pissing on the street but it seems to be a totally normal thing to do here. What is worse is the smell of human fasces.
The people are very friendly. I can imagine the fact that people speak English and that they are so easy going and the huge amount of American chain stores might make this a place for very timid travelers to start off a trip. It’s a bit like Costa Rica in that it is very Americanized. If that’s what you like then you should fly directly here.
The best thing about the Philippines is the scenery. I would rate it right up there scenery-wise. So if culture, or food (which in a way is also culture of course) are not your thing and you get off on nature then you could think the Philippines as a kind of paradise. Boracay, I think, is a more beautiful tropical island than anything in Thailand or anywhere else I have seen in the world. The Bacuit archipelago is also up there as one of the best in the world though the reef has been totally destroyed. And the Mountain Province has some of the best mountain scenery (without snow) I have seen.
But all in all I can’t see any reason why I would return. But who knows hey? Running around looking for the tastiest fast food chain with Joey was fun. Actually it was, great fun.
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Heather
non-member comment
Wow, I loved your Philippines post! It's so interesting to hear that there isn't much indigenous food culture there. Thanks for taking the time to post such detailed information to share! My blog has a "Food Find" section and I'm always looking for reviews, food suggestions, travel photos, etc. If you have the time, check it out dirty-hippies.blogspot.com, or email me at dirtyhippiesblog@gmail.com. Continued fun on your travels, and enjoy that beautiful scenery! Heather :)