Shopping in the Big City

We got up super early to go into Cebu City. Jamie, this post is for you...being in the big city meant faster internet which = big photos! Katy’s dad teaches two classes at the college on Friday and we went along for the ride into the city. Here is a photo of an older Jeepney. You can see the front is a more classic Jeep look. And look at that paint job! Do you remember the episode of Seinfeld where Kramer is wearing Joseph’s Technicolor dream coat and gets mistaken for a pimp when e steps out of a caddy? I kind of think this is the vehicle to match a coat like that. We dropped Vance off at the college at 7:30 am and we went shopping at Ayala Mall. We got there a lot earlier than they open so we hung out at Bo’s coffee for a while and had some great coffee talk. After coffee, we strolled around the mall, and boy do I have some highlights for you! We found some very loud flip flops. These flip flops are for the margarita lover.

They also had some flip flops for the vino lover, and flip flops for the gothic girl...skulls. If you have an obsession with being clean, there are the bath themed flip flops, complete with soap bubbles, rubber duckies, and a bar of soap.

I walked by another store and this fine ensemble caught my eye. I went in so Katy could take my photo with the mannequin and the lady asked me “You like? Only one.” I told the lady, “I’ll think about it.” But lets be honest, I don't have anywhere I could wear this outfit...don't have any hot dates lined up here in the Philippines.


My favorite store name in Ayala Mall is photographed below.

Yes, “Folded and Hung” has clothes for both men and women. I showed this photo to Katy’s parents and they told us that at SM (abbreviation for Shoe Mart, which is another mall in Cebu,), they had a plus sizes clothing store named “Tubbies”. True story; I only wish I could have taken a photo.

The department stores in the mall here have grocery stores too…it’s a weird concept for me to do your grocery shopping in the mall, but here it seems to be commonplace. Here’s another funny thing…in the States, you go to the grocery store and see bottles of sunless tanning lotions. Here in the Philippines you go to the store and you see bottles of skin whitening lotions on the shelf. The grass is always greener on the other side, a?


It was time for lunch and I can tell you with confidence that Michael Scott would be ok in the Philippines because they have his favorite NYC pizzeria.

However, we didn’t go there for lunch. We went to a place called The Golden Calorie…or at least, that’s what I heard, but it was actually the Golden Cowrie. Then again, the way I ate at this restaurant, I really should just keep calling it the Golden Calorie.

We met some of the other missionaries that the Johnsons work with...in the photo above from left to right is Arlys, Jean, Katy’s mom Carol, Katy, and Heather. Carol is holding Heather’s 1 ½ month old baby, Simon. So cute!

I had a tasty green mango shake…

But that wasn't where most of the calories came from...in the photo below is all the food on my banana leaf covered plate. Jean told me that at some Golden Cowries, they just give you a banana leaf for a plate. Going clockwise from 12, here’s what’s on my dish: Raw fish pickled in coconut milk and vinegar, BBQ pork on a stick, pickled green papaya, deep fried ground tuna fingers, garlic rice (really big here in the Philippines), tankone (green leafy stuff…kind of like spinach), baked scallop, calamari, and some sort of soup. You're thinking, that doesn't look like too large a portion of food...but that was only my first plate.

This dish of chicken BBQ was so pretty that it deserved its own photo.

The lady kept coming around with a big barrel of rice and she would slap a big scoop of it down on your plate. You weren’t going hungry at this restaurant.

We had a little bit of time to relax at the mission home (the house the Johnsons stay at on Friday nights) before we went to dinner at the Guiles (some other missionaries). Check out the newspaper headlines on Cebu’s newspaper, the Sun Star.

That first article was talking about the Cebu City mayor and his big idea to buy 40 year old airplanes for search and rescue. The other plan he had for using the airplanes was to visit different Barangays (villiages) up in the mountains. Humn, where are these planes gonna land in the mountains? I also really enjoyed the article about the prisoner who broke out of jail, probably in garbage truck….WOW!

On our way to the Guiles, we made a stop on the K. Johnson reality tour. This is her first place of employment.

Here are all of us at dinner:

That was it for the night. The next morning we stopped at Starbucks before we left the city. Vance pointed out that the building across the street was a call center. If you’ve called customer service for anything…you probably talked to someone in this building. ;)

More deep thoughts on the city tomorrow.

Painting and Play-doh

Today, Katy and I went to the tutoring center. Those kids are just too cute! We worked with the younger kids today. We had a couple tables for watercolor paints, stamp painting for the younger kids, and some very gooey play-doh.


I was so impressed with their artistic abilities. This girl sitting next to me painted the most beautiful butterfly.
And this boy painted a very detailed fly and butterfly.

When I was walking by, I said to this boy, “Are you drawing a heart?” But he corrected me and said, “It’s a black heart.” I thought he was just being very dark, but a little later he was painting a red heart on another piece of paper.

This boy loved, loved, loved Greece. This is the second artwork he painted with a Greek flag. He probably agrees with the Grecian saying “There are two kinds of people in this world, those who are Greek and those who wish they were Greek.”

I’m saving the best for last…my two favorites were at this table. It’s true; I’ve found that almost all countries have them. Yes, that’s right, the mighty mullet has a presence here in Naga too. Some of you might be shocked to see such a young mullet, and I’d agree with you; however, I think the one I saw in South Korea back in ’03 was younger still.

But the mini-mullet wasn’t alone at the tutoring center. No, he was with his friend the little rat tail (tan shirt). The 80s are coming back to the Philippines too.

All and all, we had about 20-25 kids today at the tutoring center for an artistic afternoon. Next week we'll be doing some more crafty fun and conversational English.

Return to Naga

We arrived home in Naga late in the afternoon. We passed two different vehicles packed with pigs on the road home to Naga; it must have been butcher day. I wish I could have snapped a photo of the other truck because that one was packed!

When we arrived home, we had to gather up the rainwater that collected in the buckets all round the back yard. The Johnsons live in a neighborhood of approximately 1,000 people called Lote, which means lot. For some reason yet to be determined, the city water stopped running to this neighborhood 1 ½ years ago. No one from the water department is in any hurry to figure out what's happened to the neighborhood water pipe. Many people in Lote buy water from someone who has a well, but during the rainy season, the Johnson family and many others put out as many buckets and containers as possible to collect rainwater for use around the house. They use the collected water for washing dishes, doing laundry, use for the indoor plumbing, and watering the chickens and rabbits. This is a photo of where the rabbits and chickens live in the backyard.

It’s a good thing we came in the rainy season, or else we would have to follow the “If it’s yellow, let it mellow” rule. This is a photo of Vance siphoning the rainwater into their below ground water tank.


The boys have their chores feeding and watering the rabbits. Here’s Mark Mark feeding the rabbits.The Johnsons raise their own chickens and rabbits because it is a lot cleaner than the meat you get from the market. They have control over what their animals are fed in their own back yard. Two of the rabbits had bunnies recently. I’m holding one of the bunnies that is 10 or 12 days old…so cute! I’m not going to think about how this bunny is going to be dinner one day.


July 28 was Katy’s birthday and her dad rode his bicycle down the road to Orange Brutus (a fast food restaurant that resembles Orange Julius in the States) and Vicki’s grocery store for ice cream. Wish I could have gotten a photo of him riding a bike with cake and ice cream…that seems like a little challenge. :) For the record, Orange Brutus makes a pretty good chocolate cake!

The Market in Moalboal

Let me first start off by saying sorry for posting the smaller photos on the blog. Internet connection here is really slow and I used my nice SLR camera on most of these photos (meaning the file size is quite large). The download time on each photo is averaging about 15 minutes for the small size blog photos and I know you want to see lots of photos....the good news is if you double click on the photo you can see it at triple the size.

Beth, this first photo is for you…sorry it isn’t better, I couldn’t capture the creepy creeperton hotel in all its glory…this photo is looking down on it from the trail (hotel is the green roofed building on the right).


On our way home from Kawalsan Falls, we stopped at the market in Moalboal because David needed some new slippers (aka flip flops). David found his slippers for under a dollar at the first market stall, but they were nice enough to show me some of the other stalls.

In the photo above, you can see they have all sorts of things they sell, from slippers, to school uniforms. Vance pointed out how resourceful these people were. They make so many of their household materials from old cans, glass, scrap metal, etc. For example take a look at the kerosene lanterns someone had made.

This next photo is a very common stove for many of the poor people in the province (in the country). Vance explained to me that there were really just two classes, rich and poor in this country, and not much of a middle class (although it is starting to develop). This is one of many types of stoves you might find in the dirty kitchen, that’s a stove placed outside in the yard for use with wood fire (a BBQ of sorts). He said that many people would also have a small, one burner gas stove inside, much like you would use on a backpacking trip.


As you can see, you really can buy anything, and the kitchen sink in the market. The kitchen sinks in the bottom of this photo are pretty common place in most Filipino homes.

This next photo is a home near the market. Vance said this is an old Spanish style home and it would be owned by someone in the upper poor class, a person with a stable income that would be able to maintain payment for that house. He said a Filipino teacher would be able to afford living in that house, only if they inherited it from someone in the family because they wouldn’t be able to afford the price of a down payment on it. In case you were wondering, a Filipino teacher makes about $250 a month.

If you want to buy land, it cost about $12 - $20 a square meter in the province land and in the city is about $300 a square meter. Most people live on 5x7 meter lots. A larger majority of people can’t afford the price of land and home ownership so they rent. A teacher would need to save up 4 months of their salary ($1000) to buy the cheapest, beater car…this is why many people take the tricycles, buses, jeepneys and hable hables to get places. This is an upclose look at a hable hable. You can see how they modify with extra seats and foot stands.

This is the school grounds in Moalboal. Vance tells me that 50% of the population in the Philippines is under the age of 15. The schools are bursting at the seams, but very few new classes or teachers are added. It is not unusual for one teacher to have 60-70 kids in a single classroom, sitting three to a desk. The city Mandeaue, north of Naga (a city smaller than Vancouver, WA) added 5,000 new students with no new classrooms or new teachers! I can’t even imagine!

We also picked up some fruit while we were at the market. How could we resist?

After we returned from the market, we had dinner and had a quiet evening at the resort. The next morning, we had breakfast and went to the dive shop to rent some snorkel gear. It cost 150 pesos (a little over $3) for the mask, snorkel, and fins. Sorry, I don’t have any great photos for you of all the cool fish I saw out in the ocean. I don’t have an underwater camera. But I will tell you some of the highlights of what we saw. We saw some beautiful clown fish, angel fish, parrot fish, swordfish, a whole bunch of other fish I don’t know the names of, a black and white sea snake, and the best of all, a sea turtle!

We came in for meals (the above photo is from lunch at La Tegolla...who knew Italian food in the Philippines was so good?), but pretty much went snorkeling the remainder of our daylight hours in Moalboal. It was so beautiful….I guess that wasn’t always the case. Dynamite fishing was pretty common about 30 years ago and it just destroyed the coral, but much of that coral has come back now, making a great place for the fish to hang out.

For those of you who dive, pretty much every hotel along Moalboal offers diving excursions. Pescador Island is just across from our resort and many divers say that is some of the best diving they’ve done in the Philippines. Here’s a banka (boat) going out for a dive!

Excursion to Kawalsan Falls

We had a nice and leisurely morning in Moalboal. Quo Vidis was a pretty good little beach resort, not the most expensive in Moalboal, but it seemed to have better and more spacious grounds, and views than many of the other hotels. Katy and I stayed in a room with a fan and no view for a whole $20 a night. If you want a room with AC and a view, you’re looking at $40. It’s the off season (rainy season) here in the Philippines, so there aren’t too many people here at the resort with us. We had breakfast at the resort restaurant, and just look at the view from our table!

Gotta love that! Angie was right, the Philippines has spoiled me with their superior banana and mango. They have soooooooooo much more flavor here, it will be hard going back to them at home.

We (Vance, David, Mark, Katy and I) went down the road to Badian to hike Kawalsan Falls. Now, when they told me that we were going to hike a waterfall, I pictured something a little different than what we encountered on the trail. Maybe you are accustomed to hiking trails in the Columbia Gorge where it really is just a whole lot of nature, unobstructed…well, not so much here. Hopefully this series of photos will help you to see what I saw on the hike.

We parked at the trail head, which was a church parking lot. As we walked by the church, we came across this really great sign titled “12 Little Things Every Filipino Can Do to Help Our Country”. When I read through the list, I couldn’t help but wonder if these were in no particular order. I especially like number 4 and 6. In the States, we say Reduce, Reuse, Recycle…but here it is Segregate, Recycle, Conserve.

With Filipino tip number 6 in mind, I was quite impressed to see the garbage cans set up along the trail all ready for segregating. Way to be eco-friendly!

Another thing I didn’t expect to see along the trail was a “Magic on Wheels” ice cream tricycle…but no one was around to sell me some ice cream, so I kept on walking.

The next thing I saw was a group of people doing laundry. This made more sense later when I saw that people actually live along this trail. There were a number of houses along the path. Families had their "free range" chickens running around the woods.

But my favorite encounter along the way was a friendly little goat.

As we were walking, we came across a vine hanging down into the river…Katy decided to pull a Tarzan move but the vine was rotten and she went rolling down the river.

Another unexpected sight was a small little hydroelectric dam on the smallest river you ever saw.

There were cottages along the trail and a dive of a hotel built on the lower falls, but I wouldn’t ever recommend it as a great place to stay…looked like a place for some creepy creepertons. No thank you! The upper falls and lower falls had tons of people spending time cooling off in the misty waters. I love misty waters, I love waterfalls (that line’s dedicated to Dad).

What you didn’t see before this photo was the shot of liquid motivation the guy took up on the rocks before he jumped. Call me crazy, but boozing and cliff jumping doesn’t seem like a very good combo.

When we approached the upper falls, Katy could hear the locals talking about us. She said they were trying to figure out how we all fit together. They were asking each other, “Are they both married to him?” “No, maybe she’s married to him (Katy) and she’s (me) the helper.”

I’m not gonna lie, we were a big attraction at the falls. When Katy got in the water, she was met by a group of enamored followers who quickly joined in a synchronized swim to the falls. Later, Katy was taking some cheesy glamour shots (by Deb) of me sitting in the raft. As I got up, an extremely short Filipino man, who didn’t even come up to my shoulder, wanted to take a photo with me, while all his buddies were cheering…it could have been the guys from the large group of jeepneys with homemade signs labeled “guys without girlfriends” at the trailhead. All in all, hiking Kawalsan Falls was an interesting experience, not like hiking any other trail I’ve been down. More on the trip back to Moalboal and the Moalboal market tomorrow.