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Published: February 20th 2008
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Pimped up jeepneys
Filipino budget transport Beautiful white, palm fringed beaches....... Quaint traditional villages............... Clean cities..........................Was how we envisaged the 7106 islands of the Philippines to be, HOWEVER would could not have been further from the truth. In a few words the place can be descibed as Dirty, Politically Unstable, Polluted and a proper dog eat dog culture.!!!!! And with us being the extreme minority (white westerners) we stud out like a sore thumb and got hassled every where we went.
Before leaving for the Philippines we carefully picked out our first hotel in Luzon, Close to the airport with a pool, bar etc etc sounded great!!!! On landing we very soon realised that our hotel was slap bang in the centre of one of the biggest red light districts in the world, Angeles City!!!!! This place was enough to make Bangkok Blush!! It was the quietest taxi drive I (Dan) have ever had as we drove through the cities offerings - Jen was astounded her face was a picture as she looked around.........but the hotel was a 4 star so we would be fine, we thought!!!!
On entering the hotel it was like being somewhere in the 1960's and probably has not been cleaned
since then either. We were very quick to realise that it was in fact some kind of brothel....... They even had 4 types of Viagra on the hotel menu!!! (shows the age group of clients there). On the plus side the beer was only 30p a bottle and Dan only got accosted twice!!! Needless to say we did not extend our stay.
We did managed to hunt out some of the countries gems but had to use several boats, trains, planes and automobiles and a lot of man hours. They have got some wicked forms of transport though, jeepneys left from the world war which the locals have pimped them up with chrome spoilers and fancy art work and tricycles again all pimped.
We headed north in Luzon to a place called Sagada via Baguio it was a beautiful village 1500 metres above sea level in the Cordillera Mountain range. It took us 12 hours to travel 100 miles, and 3 changes of tyres from the oh so smooth roads!!
It was well worth it though, we started to think Philippines wasn't that bad after all. We did caving which was ace, not sure it would have
Big Watefall sagada
Check out the imaginative name passed the british safety standards though, Did a few treks to some lovely waterfalls past loads of rice terraces, which this area is well known for. At one of the waterfalls we met a group of local lads spending the day there swimming etc, they invited us to join in their party with food, gin and weed! We had a pleasant afternoon ha ha.
Sagada had an unofficial 9pm curfew where everything closed but luckily we met an english 'couple' Mark and Eleni, With whom we bought Brandy and Gin and jammed with mark's guitar until the wee small hours of the morning.
On arriving to Manila (Capital) our nightmares returned once again, It was a mad bonkers place with everyone trying to have a bit of you, where nothing seemed to make sense and yes means yes but also means No!!!! There was a horrible edge to the place and we didn't feel at all safe.
We headed to Bohol an island in the Visayas, It took along time to get there via Cebu and by the time we arrived we had just had enough of the Philippines so we found a beach resort of Panglao
Manila City
Thriller in Manila (alona beach) which was a popular diving, snokling destination with gorgeous hotel complexes, very expensive, Dan was having kittens, so he took off for 1 hour in the pouring rain and managed to find the cheapest smallest, smelliest hole in the whole resort, He was so proud of himself. I stayed 1 night it was worse than prison, it smelt of p*ss and had bed bugs...... Alona Beach was lovely though and after moving hotel we had a fab time, Got our first moped out and searched the islands saw the smallest primate in the world the The Tarsier (so cute) and got waved at by the locals all the time, it was like we were royalty ha ha...
Oh well it can't all be a bed of roses, But it was definately an unforgettable experience. We are now back in Malaysia sight seeing in Kuala Lumpur and planning of going to the Cameron Highlands, Langkawi and Penang over the next few weeks. Hope everyone is ok, keep us in touch with what your all up too, we can email you off hotmail but not this blog as we originally thought if any of you were thinking we were
ignoring you. TTFN......................
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butler
non-member comment
looks like your having a great time