Panglao Island, The Philippines

After Boracay we caught a ferry to Iloilo where we spent a night in a Pensionne. It was owned by Carmen, a Filipina widow. Her husband had been a General in the army and had died 3 years ago of Alzheimer's disease. As his pension was not enough to live on she rented out the 8 bedrooms in her house and usually had backpackers and travelling salesmen stay in them.

Her daughter was a scrabble fanatic and travelled Asia attending competitions and all her awards were displayed in the room.

From Iloilo we caught a ferry to Cebu City. The journey should have taken 12 hours but actually took 14 hours. We booked an economy class bunk which was on an open deck. It did have a plastic cover for the sides if it rained but it didn't. We managed to get a reasonable night's sleep and were woken by roosters crowing at about 4am. Some of the passengers were had their fighting cocks in cardboard boxes beside their beds!

When we arrived in Cebu City we were met by hordes of people in bamboo outrigger boats begging for money. They had large sacks attached to poles so they could catch the money as it was thrown from the decks above.

Cebu City is not dissimilar to Manila City so we were not interested in staying any longer than we needed, so booked into a quiet pensionne in the sleazy uptown part of the city. There were a lot more people on the streets begging here than we had seen in Manila.

From Cebu we caught a fast ferry to Bohol Island and then a rusty old bus without windows to the small island of Panglao which is joined to Bohol by a bridge.

Christmas dinner

Panglao has a small white sandy beach area called Alona Beach with lots of resort style hotels lining the beach. There are also the usual outdoor restaurants and bamboo bars. We are staying just off the beach in a quiet (Swiss-Filipino run) resort in a self- catering cottage with air-con and TV. We have managed to get some groceries and cooked for the first time since leaving NZ!!

Swiss and Filipino friends!

For Christmas day we ate a Filipino style buffet on the beach. The buffet included a whole pig that had been cooked on a spit (Lil had seen it earlier being dehaired in the yard across the street), whole fish in sweet and sour sauce, fried chicken and lemon, beef stew, grilled oysters and some desserts made from rice, coconut and corn.

The restaurant also put on a show of traditional dances from several of the islands and invited the guests to try to dance between the bamboo sticks without catching their legs as the dancers banged them together. It was too dark to get any decent photos which was a shame. It had rained earlier in the day and on the night the moon came out and the sky filled with stars!

A typical Sari sari store where you can buy one of anything.

Boracay Island, The Philippines

Boracay is a popular tourist destination in The Philippines so it is crowded with tourists from all over the world. With the recent 'coup' in Manila there are not as many tourist about as the locals would like so we were able to negotiate a discount on our accommodation. We are staying in a 'resort' which is on the beach and set in a beautiful garden with all classes of accommodation options. It is an older place and we are in a rustic chalet made with bamboo and a thatched roof. It is not too hot at this time of the year so we just have a fan and a cold water shower. It is also a wee stroll away from the 'action' part of town!

A lizard in a cage at our hotel.

Boracay Beach is a beautiful white beach resort area with tourquoise water and palm trees. It is what you think of as an exotic place for a vacation. There are all kinds of restaurants and hotels lining the beach; some made of thatch with sand floors and others polished marble with beautiful furnishings so you can take your pick to match your taste and wallet. The food varies from lechon- suckling pig to Korean, Japanese, French, Swiss, Austrian, German, Spanish, Mexican, Cuban and even Greek.

During the day there are the usual scuba trips as well as parapenting, banana boat rides, sailing on outriggers, sunset sails, kite surfing, wind surfing and island hopping trips. At night there are buffets beachside and outdoor live bands thumping their music from sunset to late as well as karaoke bars and laser light shows with some places open 24 hours.

All day people are trying to sell pearls, Rolex watches, shell jewellery, sunglasses, fruit and they also tout for all the restaurants and adventure tourism shops. You can't move without someone touting something!

Many of the places are covered with Christmas lights and Christmas music plays incessantly. There was a parade of what looked like Christmas decorations: mostly made from natural materials or recycled garbage.

These sandcastles decorate the beach and for a fee you can have them personalise the scene and you can photograph it! They are very creative about making money here.

There are a noticeable number of Muslims in this area and it is common to find shrines like these that Catholics have erected.

Panay Island, The Philippines

We managed to get a comfortable bus from San Juan to Clark on the outskirts of Manila. We did not want to spend any more time than necessary in Manila and Clark is where we will need to go to fly to Sabbah in Malaysia to our next destination.

Clark was an American base and is just another crowded Filipino city full of westerners with bars and restaurants: another place we didn't want to spend too much time at either.

Bancas that take you from bay to bay with their bamboo outriggers.

After one night in Clark we headed south to catch a ferry to Panay Island. The ferry landed at Puerto Galera and we caught a jeepney to Sabang which is a popular place for divers to visit the many ship wrecks off the coast. Sabang is jammed onto a small stretch of beach with hotels, bars and dive shops all crammed along the water's edge. We decided to walk about 20 minutes further along the coast to a bay called Little Laguna because it did not have the noisy bars with live bands or 24 hour go-go dancers. Many people of all ages do tours that include a companion and so the place is full of old, fat, ugly men with pretty young Filipino girls. John and I felt out of place!

John celebrated his 60th birthday here in Little Laguna at a small bar restaurant next door to our accommodation. It was very strange not being able to do this with friends and family so we will have to have a belated party when we return home in 2009!

We both had head colds and were happy to lounge around in Little Laguna and do day trips to some of the other beaches as we do not scuba dive. The beach at Little Laguna was not clean and it was too rocky for swimming with lots of broken coral littering the beach from the recent 3 typhoons.
Lechon or suckling pig sold on the streets ready to take away.

San Juan, The Philippines

San Juan is a small surfing and fishing village and it was a lovely quiet spot away from jeepneys, tricycles, and peddlars! We stayed at a guesthouse/restaurant run by Jan from Bremen, Germany and his Filopina wife. The menu had mostly German dishes and we enjoyed homemade bread and sausages.

The very small seaside village has many Germans and we noticed that streets had signs and it looked quite orderly compared with other nearby places.

We are trying very hard not to spend any more time in Manila as it is such a chaotic city.

Laoag, The Philippines

Laoag's sinking bell tower.
The tower was built so that a man on a horse could enter the gateway under the tower but it has sunk so far that you need to stoop to go through the doorway.

Laoag's city hall building.

Laoag was a tobacco town and we had to go there to extend our visa at the immigration office.

Vigan, The Philippines

Vigan at night

Vigan was a Spanish trading town and many of the old buildings are still in tact having survived earthquakes and bombs. The town has been recognised as a World Heritage Site and so there is money to help preserve the old town. It was pretty quiet while we were there and there were hardly any tourists about.

By day!

We stayed in a renovated Spanish style hotel with beautiful highly polished floor tiled floors, archways, and elaborate plaster ceilings. The windows were wooden sliders with shells inside the trellis work to let the light in. They also let in the mosquitoes and the rain!

The Philippines is not a popular tourist destination like other parts of Asia but there are thousands of men who visit the place looking for sex or to find a young wife. There are many restaurants or guesthouses that are run by ex-pats and their wives.

While in Vigan we were able to watch TV and see the 'coup' taking place at the Manila Peninsula Hotel. These things keep the tourists away as well.

We visited the old home of one of Vigan's senators (Crisologo) who was assassinated in the local cathedral. They even had the police photos of him sprawled between the pews covered in blood and had the clothes he was wearing at the time on display. The killer was never found and the family has a message in the house stating that they do not want to avenge the killing!
You can ride around the old city by kalesa/calesa: horse and cart.
The cathedral is built with a wide base to prevent it collapsing during earthquakes and the bell tower has been built a few metres away so that it cannot fall onto the cathedral.

The proud owner of a brand new tricycle joins the queue waiting for customers. The chickens are cooked and still in the shell!

Baguio, The Philippines

Caught a bus from Manila to Luzon province and Baguio. There was not much here to see and do but it was a stepping stone to the World Heritage Site of the ancient rice terraces in Banaue. The city is always coverered in mist and so it was quite cold in the evenings. We didn't need an air-conditioned hotel room!

Unfortunately we got stuck in Baguio because there were two typhoons in the province. We had a nice enough room in a clean hotel with cable TV so were able to stay put and watch the typhoons progress through the province. They even had piped Christmas music in the corridors. We also managed to get some postcards written and John got hooked into his Sudoku book again. Banaue is a small place in the mountains at the end of dirt roads so it was not a good idea to go there after the typhoons because of the slips and fallen trees etc.

In Baguio we felt comfortable walking about the place at night and found a huge shopping mall called SM where there were many restaurants, a foodcourt, supermarket and internet shops to keep us busy.

We thought it would be nice and peaceful in the mountains and away from Manila but the jeepneys and tricycles cause as much congestion, noise and pollution as they do in Manila.

There was also a 6.1 earthquake near Baguio but we seemed to have missed it but some other travellers we have met felt it.

One of the favourite dishes here is pork intestines and a favourite snack is fried pig skin which they eat with a hot spicy sauce.

Baguio is a university town so it is full of younguns canoodling in the parks and chatting in the internet shops.

(Photos to come as soon as we find a place that has the equipment to load them!)

Manila, The Philippines

Manila-what a culture shock after Japan and Taiwan! We enjoyed the order and cleanliness of Japan.

Manila is a mix of Mega shopping malls and shanty towns, wealthy government officials and begging children, Catholic nuns and head-scarfed Muslim women, uniformed street sweepers and uniformed school kids, armed security guards and armed police. Even McDonald's has armed guards. At the shopping malls guards search your bags and feel your waist for hidden guns (well I think that is what they are feeling you for).

Manila has a population of 10 million people with 14 cities included and 3 municipalities.

Tricycles using motorbikes.

The transport system is organised chaos and there is lots of it! There are not many public buses but thousands of jeepneys. These were originally jeeps left by the Americans and converted to hold passengers at the back. They advertise their route on a card at the front and cruise the streets until they are full and then head off on their route. You don"t have to wait long for one to come along and they hold about 10 passengers in the back and two in front with the driver. Some are air brushed and others are hand-painted and some are polished stainless steel. Some have statues of stallions on their bonnets and these are supposed to be for the mistresses the driver has! Competing with these are tricycles: a motorbike with a sidecar that seats 2 people facing forward and 2 more facing backwards. Competing with theses are the FXs: Toyota and Isuzu vans which seat two in front with the driver and a bench seat behind seats 4 and then two short seats that are accessed through the back door seat another 4. Competing with these are the taxi and private cars as well as some local buses. I had better not forget the motorbikes and the bicycles and the cycles with sidecars.

The diesel fumes are thick and I had trouble breathing. The buildings are covered with black soot and combined with the heat and humidity it is very tiring sightseeing in Manila.

The water on the street is black!

We stayed in a new hostel near the airport that we found online. They opened in March and we were the first guests they had that arrived by jeepney. Online we were given instructions on how to get to the hostel by taxi and jeepney. The airport taxis charge 35 times the rate of the jeepney and will often tell you they don't know the address where you want to go so that they can take you to a place they know that will give them commission. They also say they don't have change so they keep whatever you give them regardless of the price. We found the jeepney drivers helpful and honest although the ride is not as comfortable as a taxi.

Beside our hostel was an empty yard with a shack and a tarpaulin set up for an outdoor cooking area. They had 6 roosters in bamboo cages and they crowed all the time, night and day. Filipinos love cock fighting.

Everyday vendors came to the hostel gates selling vegetables, plasticware, and fresh fish. Here the fish vendor is preparing the fish street side for the hostel owners a Filipina lady and her Japanese husband.

We visited a fort from the days when the Spanish ruled here and the Catholic Cathedral of San Augustin and learnt about the Filipino hero Dr Jose Rizal.

The museum had a great display of local tribal life and relics from some of the many shipwrecks discovered in waters around the islands.

On the left: apartments, on the right apartments.

On the left these are for the dead. On the right these are for the living!

The Chinese cemetery was built because the Spanish wouldn't allow the Chinese to be buried in a Spanish cemetery. It has mausoleums which have air conditioning, chandeliers, flush toilets and kitchens as well as offerings of food to accompany the dead to the afterlife. There are also tombs called apartments which are leased for 25 years. One even has a swimming pool!

Final farewell in Taipei, Taiwan

We were able to use up the last day of our Japan Rail Pass to get to Kansai Airport to catch a flight back to Taipei for the last time. Taipei was a place to get cheap flights to Japan with the national airline EVA air. We had 2 nights here before heading for Manila, The Philippines.



We reunited with George Su and his daughter Karen and her husband Rong Fu. We were hopeful of seeing Karen and Rong Fu's baby but it was not to be. Karen was finding the last few days of the pregnancy tiring but we managed a day of sightseeing together.





George loves food so we were treated to a farewell feast. We are both suffering the effects of overeating in Taiwan and Japan and are looking forward to dieting in The Philippines! We have loved both the Taiwanese and Japanese food very much.

It was another sad time to leave George and his family and we look forward to the day when Karen and Rong Fu visit New Zealand with their son to see her sister Clare and brother-in-law Graham. We hope they will also bring George, Uncle Su, and Jenny and Jack and their 3 children too.

Final farewell in Ako City, Japan

It was very sad to say goodbye to Fidel, Noriko and Anna Montoya for the last time. We had a really great time reminiscing and sharing plans our for the future.

We were able to give Fidel some tips on homebrewing beer and had a great time tasting his brews which were made from a New Zealand Homebrew Kit called "Black Rock". We had fun watching the videos he had made especially "The Terminator" starring Anna and Noriko and were very impressed with the video of Noriko singing in a recital.

Anna was a delight and is a very talented artist at just 6. We look forward to the Mandai and Montoya families visiting us in NZ one day.

Akita, Japan

While I was teaching at Te Puke High School in 2005 I met Saki Mikami a Japanese exchange student with NZIIU. (NZIIU was an organisation that I worked for co-ordinating homestay groups in 1989.) Saki is now in her first year at Akita International University in Akita.

We had 3 days left on our Japan Rail Pass ticket that we had bought in Taiwan so used it to head north to Akita.
Saki looked great and her English was greatly improved as she has all her lectures in English. A condition of her university is that she has to go to an overseas university for her 4th year of study and has to score high on a English language test as well. We visited her uni about 20 minutes from Akita city and it had some great facilities. There were about 100 overseas students of the 600 at the uni.

Akita is well-known for its 'onsens', hot water mineral baths, so Saki took us to a rustic place near the ski resorts in the mountains.

We also visited an ancient Samurai town where many of the Samurai houses have been renovated and are open to the public. We also ate the local dish of noodles at a restaurant overlooking the street with its autumn leaves. The area has revived the tradition of making wooden articles from the bark of the cherry tree.

The streets were lined with gingko bilbao trees like we have at our place. These had fruit that they use in a baked egg dish.

It was wonderful to see Saki as an independent, confident, young lady and we wish her luck in her English studies.

More Tokyo sights

Today we arrived at the local station to catch a train to Asakusa but there were huge crowds because someone had attempted suicide on the train line. We took a different trainline and had to change trains as the line was closed due to another suicide attempt.

We visited a restaurant to try the local dish called 'kamameshi'. It was like a rice risotto.

This doll is displayed for prosperity in business.

After lunch we headed off to Senso Ji Temple which dates back to 628AD. Today was a special celebration at the temple and there were many 3,5 and 7 year olds all dressed up and visiting the temple with their families to ensure them good fortune.

There were many stalls on the way to the temple selling amulets and all kinds of foods-rice crackers, sweet potatoes and moochi (a sticky rice cake filled with sweet red beans).

At the 'Thunder gate' leading to the temple.

There was a circus atmosphere with a lady and her monkey doing tricks for the crowds.

Tokyo

Nightlights A huge computer store

We have spent about a week around the greater Tokyo area catching up with a few friends and seeing the sights. Have had a couple of expeditions into the city centre and so far have managed to avoid the large crowds. There are 28 million people living in the mteropolitan area and of course it`s the largest city in the world.


Yesterday was cold and wet so we decided to go to the science museum - we needed to take a commuter train, then the subway and then another urban transport system to reach the museum in the Tokyo port area. with our previous experiences of large metro systems it didn`t take long to figure out the Tokyo transportation system even though there are many maps written in Kanji and the station staff do not always speak English.

Spent a couple of days with Tara Carr (Te Puke) and Daniel Hight (New Plymouth), a couple of ex Nova English language teachers from NZ. Nova was the largest English language teaching organisation here in Japan and it went bust a couple of weeks ago. It had over 400,00 students on its books and thousands of teachers. This photo of Tara, Daniel and Lil was taken in the Yokohama port area. They were great tour guides and helped us navigate around the city. They are off to sunny Thailand for a short holiday before returning to NZ.

We also stayed with Yoshi, Chihiro and daughter Akiho about 40 minutes from the city centre. Chihiro came to NZ in 1989 with Seishin Junior High and was a student on a homestay programme I ran. She also came to NZ in 2005 on a working holiday and I found her a job at a kiwifruit packhouse (Satara-Washer Rd) in Te Puke.

We made an expedition to see Mount Fuji but unfortunately the mountain was in cloud but we did get up above the treeline near station seven with views of the snowfield near the summit. Yoshi couldn`t come with us so we brought him back a Mount Fuji cake instead.



We ate the traditional 'hotoh' in Fuji. It is a vegetable soup with a miso-based broth served with white wheat noodles in a huge cast iron bowl. Perfect for autunm weather.

The leaves have begun to change to various shades of red and the locals are out and about to visit the lakes and parks.

The crowds on the streets are a sea of black. The business men wear black suits and the fashion bunnies love to wear black as well. When a man wears a white tie with a black suit he is going to a wedding and he wears a black tie to go to a funeral.

Even on a Saturday or Sunday we can see the secondary school kids wearing their uniforms as they go to their various sport and music clubs.