Jeanette and Katy Go to the Philippines
Monday, August 16, 2010
Domo Arigato Japan
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Miso Happy to Be in Tokyo!
Friday, August 13, 2010
Tokyo, Hello
Misty and her children, Evie and Davis, met me at the airport and we drove into the city. Let me just say, it was weird driving in Japan after being in the Philippines. No jeepneys trying to cut you off, no big trucks carrying 20 people standing in the back, no hable hables carrying 3-4 people. It was calm and peaceful on the road.
Misty is married to a man in the US Navy and we are staying in a really nice Navy hotel in central Tokyo. It's a pretty sweet place. Currently, Misty's husband, Dennis, is deployed and couldn't be here with us.
Unfortunately, I didn't see much of Tokyo for two reasons. First, it was rainy; I know you're thinking, come on sissy, you live in the Washington state! But the bigger reason for not seeing more sites today is that I'm a sicky girl. Ya, losing my cookies on the plane was the precursor to being sick on my first day in Tokyo. This is about all I saw of Tokyo for today; the view from my hotel room. :(
I had enough energy to make it down to the luau in the hotel banquet room. Here we are at dinner!
We even had some fun hula dancing entertainment while we ate dinner.
Evie really got into the dancing! She is an aspiring hula dancer, so cute!
While it was a pretty mellow day, it was still a lot of fun to catch up with Misty and her kids. I'm going to sleep early and hoping that I can be ready to take on a full day of excitement in Tokyo tomorrow!
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
So Long Philippines, Hello Tokyo!
Katy had to fly out last night and so we drove into Cebu City for dinner at her favorite restaurant, Lemongrass. On the way into town, we noticed that Naga is going to have a new "saloon" in town...for men and women. Whoops! That's supposed to read salon, because they don't serve drinks here, they cut hair.
I also wanted to give you a chance to see a small cross-section of driving in the Philippines because I've only shown you still photos. I got a great clip for you, but it isn't gonna download in time, so I'll try from Tokyo.
Lemongrass may have been the best Thai/Vietnamese restaurant I've ever been to in my life! Don't get me wrong, I love Arawan, but this was amazing! Here is a photo of my plate.
Here we have some sort of really good chicken, beef brisket red curry, pad thai, some sort of fruit salad that had grilled chicken and shrimp, and a nice, spicy tom yum soup.
This drink deserves a photo with Vance and Carol. It was a citrus herb lemonade. It was amazing! I could only drink one thing for the rest of my life, it would be this citrus herb lemonade. This was a great last supper in the Philippines!
I'm going to miss this place and the new friends I've made at the tutoring center, but I'm excited for new adventures in Tokyo.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Water Company
With two days left in the Philippines, I wanted every last day to be fruitful so we picked up some mangoes and lanzones at the fruit stand across the street from Orange Brutus. These are a few of my favorite fruits in the Philippines. I like mangosteens too, but I like lanzones more. In only took my four tries to eat lanzones right too. There's a secret to peeling the fruit so your hands don't get all sappy sticky.
The biggest commotion of the day was a private water company laying a waterline. If you recall, the neighborhood of Lote has been without water for the past 1 1/2 years and the city hasn't done anything about it. So yesterday a truck full of five people from a private water company showed up. Apparently they have a water source up in the hills that they are willing to bring down here for a price.
This private company is charging 4,500 pesos (about $100) for hookup and a monthly fee of 150 pesos ($30ish) plus fee for however much you use. When it isn't the rainy season, Vance has to pay 50 pesos every three days for someone to drive in and deliver water to the house. The sad thing is that for most of the people in the neighborhood, they still won't be able to afford the cost of having running water.
Here are the men work:
It takes one to operate the jackhammer, one to shovel a few things occasionally and the other three to stand and watch.
Notice how deep they lay the waterline in this photo above. It's pretty much going to be right on the surface with a thin layer of cement on top. Katy thinks it is so they can access it easier if it springs a leak. When they were finished for the day, they tested the line and let people in the neighborhood take home buckets of water. The guy in this photo has a rather large blue bucket of water riding shotgun in his pedicab.
It is so easy to take things for granted in America. Water is an important necessity of life it is just too bad that so few people in this neighborhood have easy access to this necessity.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Leaving a Beach Paradise
While enjoying the calm of the morning, we found a new little friend scampering across the sand. To Deiter, I said, "I shall call him Calvin the crab."
Calvin was awfully cute crossing the beach. I’ve never really held a crab that wasn’t sitting lifeless on a dinner plate, so I decided that I’d try something new and pick up Calvin the crab. As my hand got closer to it, Calvin crawled back into his shell to try and hide from me. I picked up his shell and placed it on my bag. As soon as I removed my hand, he would crawl out of his shell enough to start scampering away as fast he could. We played this game a few times so I could get a photo of him walking. After I adequately blinded him with my flash, I let him go back to crossing the beach.
This was a very quiet and peaceful resort that I’m glad to have stayed at while in the Philippines. Henry, the German owner really catered divers, making a spot away from all the hustle and bustle of Alona beach.
If you're looking for a place to party all the time, party all the time, Alona is your place where the resorts are literally wall to wall and you share the beach with all sorts of people. But if you are looking for a place that is quiet in the evening, where you can get some sleep and be able to get up early to go diving, or adventuring you better stay at Bohol Sea Resort. Just look at the beautiful grounds…
And the pool and dining area isn’t too bad either…
So long Bohol Sea Resort, I will miss you!
We went out to the pier and jumped on our Supercat back to Cebu City. The seas were not so angry this time and we had no issues with motion sickness. The catamaran had a gentle enough rocking that it made for a nice super catnap.
We were expecting to take the bus home to Naga, but Katy got a text from her family that they were in the city. Vance, David, Mark, and all five members of the STN team where there to pick us up. Apparently, they needed to come to town to finish up some getting their visas and one of the girls needed some emergency dental work. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We came home, unpacked, shared our Bohol adventures with the family, and saw the STN team off as they head to a new island.
Katy and her family took a little photo with Brendon before he left. The only one who is missing is Mike.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Bohol
We made it here to the beautiful Bohol Sea Resort. It's quite beautiful here. Right behind me is our resort…hidden in the palm trees. Our beach resort is a little further away from all the other resorts, making it very peaceful. The rest of our day consisted of swimming and reading in the shade. It was a nice relaxing day.
Here is a very nice map of the island, painted on the wall of our resort restaurant/front desk.
Today our taxi driver from the pier yesterday (who happens to guide driving tours), Ray, picked us up from our resort and took us around the island to see the sites of Bohol. First thing you need to know about Ray is that he looooves sappy 80s ballads covered by some random gal who slowed everything way down to a musical crawl. We listened to songs like I Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore, and I almost died when he started singing along with On the Wings of Love!
Our first stop was a historical site. This photo is at the site of the first Blood Compact made between the people of Bohol and the Spanish in 1565. This was the first peace treaty between the Filipinos and the Spanish made out in a boat beyond the location of this statue. Both the Spanish and tribesmen of the island slit their wrists and poured their blood into a glass of wine and drank it together. Doesn't that sound tasty?
We also saw the oldest church on Bohol…Baclayon Church…it dates back to 1596...but I think the current building structure is from the 1700s.
Next we saw the Tarsier. They look like small monkeys but they aren’t technically monkeys…but that’s more biology than I want to go into right now. There aren't too many of them, so they are a protected species.
We didn’t get to hold the Tarsier, but we were able to come pretty close to it. I guess I’ll have to be content with a lion cub being the only zoo animal I’ve gotten to hold (in Korea).
After visiting with these small primates, we drove into the center part of the island to view the Chocolate Hills. We had to climb up some stairs to a sort of observatory in the municipality of Carmen.
I guess there are around 1200 of them in all, but we didn’t bother counting. They aren’t very brown right now since we are in the rainy season, but still awesome to look at!
As cool as we would be wearing these, we decided not to get our picture on a shirt...
Ray told us that most people earn their living on this island through rice farming in the interior and by fishing along the coast. We were surrounded by fields of rice as we drove in…you can kind of see them below if you know what you’re looking for.
Next we went to a butterfly garden. It was very beautiful. We learned lots about butterflies and got to take pictures with them too!
We drove through a "man made forest" on our way to to and from Carmen...we asked what made it "man made" and Ray said it was because it was government ordered and protected. It was a whole lot of 40 year old mahogany trees...we decided not to stop and take our photo there, because it just looked like a forest. Our next stop was a bamboo suspension bridge. Katy did a pretty good job crossing it for having a slight fear of heights. Way to go Katy!
When we got to Panglao (the tiny little island on the southwest side of Bohol where most of the resorts are located), we had Ray drop us off at Alona Beach…where a lot of other restaurants and resorts were located. We enjoyed some beachfront dining and had a few cold beverages made by San Miguel and walked 40 minutes back to our hotel. It was a nice cool evening for a walk.
Tomorrow will be our last full day in Bohol before we take the Super Cat back to Cebu. We’re looking forward to a quiet and peaceful day of reading and relaxing by the water.