Country: Philippines.
City: Manila.
Currency: 1Euro = 57.9 Philippines Pesos
Arrival Date: Wednesday March 19th.


Date: Thursday the 20th, 10.30pm

I arrived here in Manila yesterday after a nice 2 hours flight from Hong Kong. It was such an amazing contrast for a country thats so close to all that luxury and technology and wealth to be so dirty and poor and way behind!! It's weird! You can see the difference straight away as soon as you step off the plane!! Literally!!! the gangway that you walk on to get off the plane was old and rusted and the phone at the first desk I saw was old and held together with tape!! Anyway i picked up my bags and got some information about the city from a very nice tourist info guy before avoiding all the taxi men ready to rip me off and instead I hopped on the local bus to the bus terminal. Luckily I met a nice lady who helped me get off the bus in time to find the metro line I wanted and even walked with me to the platform!!!

It is SOOOOOOO hot here!! oh my god!! I've been sweating constantly since i got out off the plane!! But I braved the bag check and the squashed metro and made it to Pedro Gil street where I had an interesting walk to the hostal that I had picked out to stay at. Again EVERYONE stares at me and makes comments!! I feel like I'm back in South America again!! Anyway I got to the hostal and the dorms were booked out so I stayed in a nice room with a double bed all to myself for 10Euro and had a nice nights sleep before checking out this morning!! I made it to another hostal on my list which has more people staying there and has dorm rooms for 4Euro!! Excellent!! They were much more friendly and helpful there whcih was nice!

I organised myself today and am going to head off to a town called Batangas tomorrow and catch a boat to Puerto Galera where hopfully i can find a cheap little abode by a nice white sandy beach and just relax for a few days and sunbathe! Unfortunately the boats aren't known for their reliable crossings (thats making it across to Puerto Galera without sinking!) but I'm gonna give it a go anyway cos I'm not hanging out in Manila for another day. Pretty crappy here!! Then at the airport i was handed this notice saying if i get sick over the next 6 weeks to hand it to the doctor and explain that I've been in the Philippines!! Fantastic!

Anyway I dont care if I'm missing anything else in the Philippines i just want to do nothing for a few days after sightseeing in Tokyo and Hong Kong for the last two weeks and going mental in the States for 7 weeks before that!! I've been told to stay away from the south Islands where there was trouble before with foreign tourists being kidnapped and killed and watch my belongings and that... pretty much everywhere. but there ya go...I'm sure it'll be fine!! hehehee well that's it for now I'm off to bed and up early in the morning for my bus and boat!! wish me luck!! :-)

Date: Saturday the 22nd, 11am

OK I'm still alive!! woo hooo!! thats always good eh! So where do I start...Well I wrote down some stuff over the last few days cos I wasn't sure when I'd get to the internet again so here it is from Thursday night onwards!!

I got some dinner at the local shopping mall thursday night which was really nice! The mall that is..oh and the dinner too! But whats strange to me is that there is this lovely shopping mall and other shops on the streets too that sell nice clothes, food and other stuff and the people in the mall seem...well...not rich..but like they're doing fine, I guess. Then you walk outside the shop or the mall and there are kids and adults just lying on the streets with no homes or food and barely any clothes!! There are people begging as well and on some street corners an aweful stink...well I won't go into that in detail. But it just seems like such a huge contrast in living conditions so close together!! It's not like it's another part of town...it's right there!! right outside the shop or the mall!! Then there is security at the door of every shop, mall and building with guns too!! I don't know whether to feel safer or more worried when I see that!

So anyways I walked back to the hostal so that I could organise my stuff for my trip on Friday and went to bed. I left my pack with almost all of my stuff in the hostal for 10pesos a day (20cent) and was on a mission to find myself a nice beach to sit on for a few days!! I got up Friday morning early at 7.30am on the advice of the nice woman at reception cos she said that the traffic would be bad otherwise!! I had some breakfast and hopped in a taxi to the bus station. Now I dont know what this womans idea of 'bad' was but this traffic was aweful even at that "early" hour!!! hehehee So then the taxi driver asked if I was going to Batangas Pier?? which I was...so I said yes...and he said "oh be careful maam" ...everyone calls you Maam here...no matter what age of a woman you are?! anyways that comment had me a little on edge!! So I asked why "is there trouble there or something?" and he just shrugged his shoulders and kept driving!! Nice!! ..way to make me feel better!!

Then I noticed the streets that we were driving through and I wont lie, I was stressed a bit about being in Manila, in this taxi, on my own, in these poor back streets!! But kept my cool and we then came back out onto the main road I was happier! I think all the warnings I've had about Manila and the country put me on edge when there was nothing to worry about. But I guess it's cos of the poverty, the extreme lack of tourists, the staring that I get constantly from everyone, the comments and the fact of being in a big city on my own!! It does make you feel slightly vulnerable but then we got to the bus station and somehow I feel happier once I'm on a bus with locals cos at least you're not alone at the merci of one taxi driver and so long as you dont fall asleep it's highly unlikely that anyone will bother you or rob you. So the bus journey was fine for the three hours to Batangas Pier!! even with all the staring...I'm well used to that at this stage! heheeee

It's stressful getting around when you're travelling and after being on edge in Manila I got flustered when I got to the ferry terminal...which wasn't much of a terminal at that...But anyway I was pointed in the direction of a ticket booth for a boat that was going to Sabang in 5mins. Sabang was just beside the beach I was looking to get to so I went for it and bought a ticket instead of taking my time and checking out the other ticket booths!!! Bad idea!! Normally I'm quite good at that I just take my time, wander about and find the one I want but that day I was just being stupid. Always take your time!!!! that's the golden rule for travelling ...even if you miss one bus or boat, there'll be another one soon after it no doubt! Anyway I got on this crappy boat which I would have preferred not to be on after reading all the warnings about below level boats sinking on their way to the other islands!! hehehee

So what do I do!! get on the crappy boat!! ahh dear...of course they dont show you the boat until you're bought the ticket and just as I was about to get off it started the engine and left. Well I allow myself a few mistakes as I travel..hehehee...you live and learn and you cant do everything perfect.. Anyway I got to Sabang in just over an hour for about 1.80euro with no problems at all!! So all's well that ends well!! this time! heheee I hopped off the boat and I had figured that I would stay at a place called "Small La Laguna Beach" which was in between Sabang and Big La Laguna Beach. So I walked briefly through Sabang to get to the next beach. Thank god I hadn't decided to stay in Sabang cos it was just aweful there!! It's full of bars with sleezy, old, fat, ugly Western men with these beautiful, young, slim Philippino girls!! uurrgghh!! it was horrible!! I left there as quick as possible and headed for the next beach.

All I wanted was a nice quiet place to stay nad a little beach to ly out and sunbathe on!! Not much to ask but it appeared to be harder then I thought! So Small La Laguna was better then Sabang but not much so I kept going to the next and last beach Big La Laguna. hmmmm still not what I was imagining with not much of a beach and boats covering most of what was there. Plus the few places that I checked out were ok to stay in but still not fantastic for the price they were charging. I decided to try elsewhere in 'White Beach' in a last attempt to find somewhere less sleezy and loud and that actually had beach to relax on. I would have had to walk back to Sabang to get a cheap jeepney to White beach and I didn't really want to go back there so I took a short boat ride to Puerto Galera instead. From there I caught a jeepney to White Beach for 10pesos and again avoided all the guys trying to rip me off by charging me up to 200pesos in their tricycles!!! I've been travelling too long to fall for that one!! well almost!! heheee

It's funny how you adapt to your surrounding currency though and it's value! Cos I was refusing to pay 4 Euro for a trip to another part of the island and instead paid 20cents! But in actual fact if I was in the States and had to get a bus and they said it was 4 dollars I've had no problem paying it! But I'm definitely not gonna pay it here just cos I can!! So I'll bargain and haggle and get a cheap price the same as everyone else here if it kills me!! hehehee (hopefully it wont!!) Anyway I made it to White Beach and thank God it was so much nicer then Sabang! It actaully had a beach there that you could sunbathe on!! woo hooo!! There were still a few boats that just stopped in front of the resorts but the majority of the beach was empty and was clean and didn't stink of urine!! yeayyy!!! hehehee Now I just needed somewhere to stay!

I checked out a few places and had lots of people asking me to stay in their place ..etc..etc..as soon as they see you're a tourist they latch onto you until you look at their place! I finally decided to stay at the White Beach Resort where I kinda made a deal with the lady that showed me the place but I'm sure she hiked up the price to start with. But I didn't mind cos I got a nice big clean room with a single bed, a double bed, a fan, a TV, a little wardrobe and a bathroom up on the second floor for just 11 Euro a night!! about 650pesos! So I decided to splash out for the week and was happy with that!
In total I paid E1.40 for the taxi that morning,
The three hour bus trip was 2 Euro,
Then the two boats to get to Puerto Galera were about 3 Euro,
Lastly the jeepney to White Beach was 20cents!
A total of about 6.60 Euro to get here isn't bad if you ask me!! hehehee

I organised myself in my nice room and headed down to the "restaurant" for dinner cos I was pretty hungry after all that! It wasn't much of a restaurant more a little BBQ grill thingy and a little kitchen. But that was fine with me cos I ordered a nice piece of fresh fish with fried rice and vegetables for about 1.40 and then had a delicious banana and pineapple shake for about 50cents!! After that nice cheap dinner and desert I was pretty tired from the day trekking about The Philippines so I went up to my room and chilled for a while before going to bed!! I watched some tv from the Philippines first and it's really strange!! Due to the invasion of the Spanish years ago they speak a few words of Spanish in their language which I can understand a bit! But then I read that the Americans also took over years ago after the Spanish left and so in the middle of this Spanish Philippino mish-mash they also speak perfect English bits and pieces with an American accent!! Huh!! hmmm

So this is all mixed up together and doesn't seem to make any sense when they choose to speak which language?!?!!? hmmm So I figure I can understand the English and Spanish bits to get the drift of whats happening!! hehehe... how bizarre!! Then the ads are even more funny!! There are some ads for cigarettes with these guys waterskiing and then they hop out of the water and light up a cigarette after giving each other a high five of course!! hehehee maybe for being soooo sporty and cool by smoking at the same time or something!??!? hmmmm I dunno!! bizarre!! lastly I found the ads for washing powder the most interesting cos the women in both ads are washing their clothes with this powder in a huge basin!!! Anyway I had a great sleep that night (with the mosquitos) and got up late this morning befor echecking my mail and updating a bit!! hehehe

Date: Monday the 24th, 6pm

Well Saturday was great!! I had breakfast, in a fit of madness I stretched a bit (I'm so unfit!) then had a nice shower before relaxing and heading to the beach to sunbathe for while. I had a nice cooling swim in the sea and then headed back for a ymmu fruit shake again!! I like them! I went back to the beach and had a proper swim for about 20mins before heading out for dinner! I found a nice place that cooked me a fresh fish on the BBQ and some rice which was yummy. I chatted to two Philippino guys and the cook before heading back to the hotel for the another yummy smoothie and heading to bed! ahh it's a hard life eh!! hehehe what a nice day it was and I got a nice bit of sun too so now I'm happy! correction happier!! hehehee

Sunday was pretty much relaxing too, I had breakfast, chilled by the beach, hopped on a tricycle into Puerto Galera to check my mail, headed back to the hotel, had lunch, chilled out, then in the evening I was going to find myself some dinner when a guy at a bar said hello to me in Spanish! He thought I was someone else apparently! But I answered him in Spanish!! hehee But anyway we got talking and his name is Fred and he's from Sweden but living and working here now as a diving instructor!! cool!! I ended up staying at the bar and having dinner there with a guy from the Island called Gary and a Korean guy who lived there also. They were nice and we chatted and eventually Fred mentioned that they were doing a dive in the morning and I could come along and he would sort out a deal for me on the price and that. I said I'd think about it and headed off to bed.

This morning I got up early and decided to head out on the dive with Fred, Gary and Jenna from Germany. It was a nice dive but kinda disappointing cos the visibility wasn't great and Jenna had a bit of a problem when she found it hard to breathe after swimming against the current for too long. But it was all experience and I'll probably go again tomorrow as Fred said he'd give me another dive half price seing as that one was kinda short and not great vis! Later I had a rest before coming back to Puerto Galera to update the website! So that's about it for now...I'm just relaxing in the sun, eating a bit, sleeping a bit and just chilling out completely!! hehehee well I think I needed it! So that's it for me for now! I'm still alive and putting up with the haggling and staring that you still get here on the Island of Mindoro, but the sun and the beach more than make up for that! later!!

Date: Thursday the 27th, 10.30pm

Well I'm bak in Manila but let me tell you that Monday night was definitely an experience!!! Mindoro was one of the most relaxing places and one of the most unbelieveably scary places that I've been to! It was literally one extreme to the next!! hehehee But not in the sense of fearing people or being robbed!! well let me explain...During the day on Monday I went diving with Pacific divers which was great, except the Vis wasn't the best! Later I relaxed on the beach in the afternoon. Then you get in one of the jeepneys or tricycles and oh my god!! It's like taking your life and putting it completely in the hands of one of these mad drivers!! Basically the tricycles are these motorbikes that have a sidecar welded onto then somehow!! The only way to get to Puerto Galera and to the shops and internet is by one of these or the jeepneys (which dont leave White Beach very often)!! So you take a ticycle after haggling for the price first of course! Then you sit in this battered old cage type sidecar that feels like it's about to fall to pieces any second and they just fly around these hilltop roads managing to hit every pothole along the way!! ehhehee So I thought they were scary during the day!!!

Then I took a tricycle at night!!! oh my god!!! I was in the internet cafe until about 7pm and of course all the jeepnesy stop running at 5pm!! hmmm no-one told me that! ah well, no big deal! But the guys are all trying to rip me off, as usual, charging 150pesos to get back to White Beach! when it's 10 or 20p during the day normally!! So I eventually get a guy down to 50p and decide to just take it seeing as it was dark and not much other choice really!! Lucky I did really cos there was no other way in hell I'd have made it back the 15min drive otherwise!! hehehee So we start off driving and I cant see a thing at all and I'm just hoping that he can or at least knows the road well enough to judge where the hell we're going!! There's nothing I could do about it anyway so I may as well just sit back and chill!! hehehee easier said then done! So I'm hanging on to the sidecar and we're flying along and just about avoiding cars coming in the opposite direction!! So things were ok seeing as there were a few street lights and that about until the street lights ran out!!! Holy Sh*t!!! Excuse my language, but this was more scary then any rollercoaster you can go on in the Pitch Black!!! You know those ones!!

At least you have some sort of guarantee you'll live to see the end of it!! Here you have no guarantee the car isn't going to fall apart or the bike wont crash into oncoming traffic or even better that it wont fly off the road and off over the cliff!!! hmmm comforting eh!! So anyway we're flying down the pitch black road on the edge of a cliff in a battered old cart that's welded to this bike when we start slowing and then halfway up one side of a hill we cut out and the crappy light on the front of the bike goes out too!! hmmm great!!! So we rolled back a bit before Giorgio jams on the brake!! then says "oh it's ok, it's ok" before starting up again and continuing on up the hill slowly!! He then looked in at me in the sidecar and laughs!! After which he proceeded to introduce himself to me, shake my hand and ask me if I was single all while flying along in the dark!!! Just watch the road man!!! jeeze!!! Madness!!But it did make me laugh at the same time!! hehee

I did make it back to the hotel in one piece thank god!! and Giorgio was very happy with his 50pesos that I gave him! Well he deserved it after driving that road in the dark I'll tell you!! So I got myself organised and ended up at the little BBQ place that made me that nice fish two nights ago before and I met up with the cook 'Ben' again and William, before bumping into Fred again! What a yummy dinner though! I had some BBQ fish and pork and rice tonight and it was delicious!! it's so fresh and it's cooked for you right there in front of you and it's just great! hehehee I love it here!! Anyway after dinner I headed about 20steps to the bar where Fred, Randy, Alex and a few others were having a drink!! I was well not forced... but coerced and persuaded to have about 6 shots of this green concoction ...and I still dont know what was in it!! hehehee

After that I refused to have any more as I was diving on Tuesday ...actaully I refused after the first one but they just wouldn't let up and so six or something like six shots later I left for my bed!! I did however have a realyl nice chat with a few of Fred's friends and one guy who just sat beside me so that he could talk to me. I realyl learned alot about the people and their lives and how tough life can be in other cultures. One guy I was chatting with was studying here in accountancy and would have graduated (he seems like a very intelligent guy, perfect English and quite worldly!) but in his last year studying his father died. There was his younger sister and mother to support so he gave up studying and started working to look after them instead. Well there was no-one else to look after them was there!

So now he still works but cannot finish his course as he is supporting his sister through college as she's studying Psychology. There is still his mother along with his wife and daughter to look after! It's unlikely that he'll ever get the chance to finish his course and as a result wont be able to have the better jobs and life he might of had. But this guy was proud of his decision, proud of his sister doing so well in college and proud of his wife and daughter that he looks after. I just thought that it was a sad story in that things didn't work out perfect but also and very happy one as he was making the best of life and was still happy to be where he was in life. I just thought WOW!!! what a difficult decision to make and a hard situation to be put in and I just thought what a fantastic guy!! He is a real inspiration!! And if you ever complain about bills or cars or jobs ...just think! At least you have them!!

I got myself to bed before midnight Monday and got up Tuesday mornign bright and early to meet Jenna from Germany, Gary from Korea and Fred (the instructor) and off we went to 'Shark Cave!!' This was another dive site where we were looking for ...yip you guessed it ...Sharks!! So it was a nice boat trip out to the site and off we went! The Vis was better that day and it was a really nice dive! We dropped down through the Canyons and along the coral wall and saw lots of cool fish along the way to the cave where we eventually saw two White Tip Sharks!! WOW!!! they were amazing!! about 5 feet away from me just swimming around under this little overhang!! They were about 1-2 meters long and I just couldn't help but sit there for as long as possible and watch them. So then we headed off up for our safety stop which was kinda funny cos Fred, who was my buddy, had a leak in his gauge and ended up having no air and using my octopus to breathe for the last fivvvve minutes fo the dive!!

Kinda funny!!! I hear you say! that's not funny!!! well you see ...no-one was paniced! He just checked his gauge, had no air, told me and then took my second air supply...all within a few seconds and it was fine! All good experience!! and as I seem to use up very little air when I dive I had loads to spare!! heheeeso no problems and it was funny!! hehehehe so then for the second dive I just had a rest on the boat as I could only afford two dives!! That was fine with me cos I was pretty tired by midday anyway and we had a nice trip onthe boat back to White Beach after. I had lunch with the guys and hung out for a while chatting, relaxing and having a swim in the sea before heading back to my room for a shower and a rest and then finding somewhere to eat dinner! On my way I saw Jenna and Matius and another German guy they were having dinner with called Fred aswell! So I joined them for dinner and drinks after at one of the bars! That was a funny night! I ended up chatting to Fred and we had the same rough plans to head to Manila and see the Taal Volcano along the way and then fly to Hong Kong on the 28th!! So we arranged to meet for breakfast on Wednesday morning and plan to go together!! Well why not eh!!

Wednesday morning I met Fred for breakfast and we decided to head towards Manila on the boat. Easier said then done! We got a jeepney to Puerto Galera at 11am only to find out that there was a boat leaving from another port at 11.30am. So we got another jeepney there only to find out that it was cancelled and we had to get the 1.30pm boat from Puerto Galera. Soooo.. back to Puerto Galera on another Jeepney and as we had time to kill I checked mail and had a last banana shake with Fred before we hopped on the boat to Batangas. It was about an hour to the main land and by the time we got there it was pretty late in the afternoon and was cloudy so we decided to head for Manila, check in there, leave our packs and make a day trip of it to the Volcano on Thursday instead!

It was just as well really as it was about 5pm by teh time we were passing the town we would have had to get to to see the volcano which was too late anyways. So we checked back into the Pensione Navidad hostal and after I had a shower we went to the local mall for dinner! After a bit of window shopping Fred had an idea to check out the cinema!! Cool cos I hadn't been in ages! In the end we went to see 'Dreamcatchers' at 9.30pm which was a really good, funny, scary science fiction film so I liked it! hehehee Fred did too...I was pretty exhausted after a long day travelling and so we headed back to the hostal to the nice cheap dorms! It's a really nice hostal for 4Euro a night you get a nice bed in a ladies dorm with fans and a bathroom in the dorm as well! You can't complain eh! I slept very well!!

Then Thursday, today, I got up and met Fred for breakfast before we headed off on our trip to the Taal volcano. We got a few buses and jeepneys and after a few hours we made it to the volcano viewing point in the Picnic Grove. It is one of the smallest but most deadly volcano on the island so we declined to take a boat ride on the lake to the volcano itself!! After a while we headed back to one of the markets and had some delicious fresh fruit (they have the nicest fruit every in these places I'll tell you!) then we got back to Manila late in the afternoon and headed to the hostal. I needed a shower as Manila is very sweaty and dirty and after I organised myself we headed out on another jeepney to Chinatown to see what it was like out there! It's really nice and very interesting in the markets and shops and Fred even bought himself a shirt with all sorts of security badges and stuff on it before we had dinner in a nice Chinese restaurant and later headed back to Malate to the hostal. So that's it for now...I had to check my mail tonight and organise my stuff and in the morning I fly out of The Philippines to Singapore!! woo hooo heheee so now I'm off to bed! I'm knackered! hehee

Have left the Philippines now ...nothing major to report the morning i left, got the train and then a jeepney to the airport and hopped on the plane via Hong Kong to Singapore!

Here will be the photos!!

(Back to my Itinerary.)