Blogs from Philippines, Asia - page 335

April 23-25, 2004 Need a break from a strenous work week? Then, Galera is the place for you to spend a relaxing weekend. Just three hours away from Manila, you can break away with the busy streets of the Metro and smell the morning sea-breeze, laze in the powdery fine sands, and party off all night. Activities - Snorkling - Island Hopping - Night Clubbing Tips - Scout for cheap accomodations; there are houses along the area who offers transient accomodations. - Try to haggle. (w/ the island tour ride, massage, pasalubong items) More pics: Puerto Galera Getting There: In Pasay, ride a Tritran/any bus going to Batangas Pier. From Batangas pier, there are ferry boats going to the island. I recommend MV Brian, as this is the largest boat. ... read more

When a fellow mountaineer asked me that we climb Mt. Pulag this holy week, I wasn’t able to say “yes” immediately. What? The highest mountain in Luzon and just the two of us? He must be kidding when he said that. Honestly, I consider Mt. Pulag as my dream climb but I planned to climb it with some experienced climber. It is just my second year as a “mountaineer” (as I called myself) but I never had any experience on camping. So far, I have climbed about 6 mountains but all climbs were completed before that day ends. In short we are just day trekkers since most of the members of our group are afraid to answer “ the call of nature” when they are away from civilization. Considering that the minimum days required to reach ... read more

Everytime you searched the web and look for info about this mountain, they all say one thing ... "the place is muddy". We have already experience how it was to trek a muddy mercky trail and its isnt really funny at all. Knowing that Mt. Famy is supposed to be an easy fun climb. Because of this, I told myself that we will only be climbing this mountain on summer. I guess those mud are signs that we shouldnt be there in the first place and the rainy days are supposed to be the time that the mountain should rejuvinate from all the stress that people are giving them. but some people doesnt seem to understand it. So summer is here again and so are we!!! This is actually our first climb for the year 2004. ... read more

Feb 15-19,2004 This is my second visit to the Queen City of the South, Cebu. The first is totally forgettable, since it was work-related and i was so pressured that time that i didn't have much time to go-around the city. This trip is still work-related but i stayed longer, and toured the city with Jeric, so we had the luxury to travel around. Plus, we had a free hotel-accomodation in Day's hotel(won thru a raffle, when we watched LOTR's ROTK premiere in SM Megamall, sometime in Dec 2003.) Wow, we were really lucky. Next time, we'll try to visit Cebu again, we never had the chance to go to their beaches (Malapascua & Bantayan Islands).. been hearing nice things bout them. What to see/do - Plantation Bay - Basilica de Sto. Nino - Magellan's Cross ... read more

we had a brief meeting with a client at gapan city, nueva ecija. since we still had plenty of time, we decided to drop by at the provincial office of my former office. the head of office was so accomodating that he offered to tour us to pantabangan, nueva ecija which housed the famous pantabangan dam. we also went around the city of palayan. ... read more