magine this - it is 4am on our first night in Lanuza and there is a commotion, the dogs (all three of them - white dog, black dog and brown pregnant again dog) are barking and there are raised voices as the guards are woken. In the morning we discovered that our neighbour had a cockroach crawl into her ear and had gone off to the local hospital, apparently quite a common occurrence. The cockroach was drowned with oil and then removal attempted but they had no aurascope and only removed the body so the next day she had to travel to Surigao to see the ENT specialist with equipment. A four hour trip on unmade roads, to have the head of the cockroach removed. It took just minutes with an aurascope to remove the rest ... read more

Hello all, I celebrated my one year abroad anniversary at the end of March. It feels like a long time and at the same time has gone very quickly. To mark the occasion I made a pig of myself by eating a whole bar of Green and Blacks Maya Gold (possibly the best chocolate in the world). In 14 months time I will be packing my bags and heading back home, that seems to be coming even faster than the first year went. For the grim food award this month I came across Young’s Squid Flakes and felt that I just had to try them, the company being named after me and all that. I can report that they are every bit as bad as as some of you might be imagining. Squid flakes are now ... read more

Ok I said last time that rain would be a big deal here for a while …… well we just had 27cm in one 24 hour shot! To put it in perspective Edinburgh gets about 63cm in a year. I will never complain about Scottish rain again. That was the wettest day but it kept going for a whole week making the place super wet. My room stayed dry ish only because the rain that did come in drained out again through the gaps between the floorboards. Luckily we had no flooding or landslides (not near where people live anyway) but the rivers turned a deep red brown like liquid dairy milk. Not so tasty though. The plume of sediment washing out into the bay made the surfing a little less attractive for a while. Lots ... read more

Hello all, I have just experienced the one big party that is the annual Lanuza Surf Festival. For most of the year Lanuza is a small rural Philippines town, very quiet except for the incessant (and defiantly not timely) crowing of the fighting cocks. The exceptions are at Fiesta time and at the Surf Festival. This is the biggest week of the year with lots of visitors from foreign places (mostly Australia) and from other parts of the Philippines. As well as the surfing competitions there is karaoke, boxing, cock fighting, billiards, lots of drinking, gambling and the highlight - a Bikini contest. For food as well as any number of BBQ stalls there is a Jolibee catering truck. That’s similar to McDonalds but with lots more sugar. The surf contests include an International longboard comp ... read more

First things first - I am not Matt - for one blog only I , Hannah , sister of Matt will be stepping into his flip flops to bring you this months thrills and spills from Lanuza. Matt sends his apologies for his blogging absence, he has been very busy of late and has even been missing lots of good waves to try and keep the Philippines in trees. I arrived here in the Philippines with my friend Anna a month ago. We spent the best part of three weeks roaming the southern Philippines collecting marriage proposals and discovering what it is like to be famous, beautiful and yet have the nickname ‘long nose’. Our travels went something like the following…. Flew into southern Philippines (Davao City), went exploring , ‘Hey mam, where are you going’, ... read more