Friday, April 08, 2005
The Adventure So Far:
Monday
The flight to the Philippines was pretty uneventful except for a couple of things. During our stopover at Incheon airport, I had just gone through the carry-on bag screening process. As I was picking up my backpack and guitar bag, I was approached by a Korean security girl who was monitoring a different line.
Korean Security Girl: Where you from?
Me: US
Korean Security Girl: *turns to her co-worker* LA
Korean Security Girl 2: Teeheehee. (Or so Jed tells me.)
When we got to our plane that was supposed to take us from Korea to the Philippines, we found that we were assigned these really nice and roomy seats on the upper deck. Cool. We still had economy class meals and entertainment, but still. Lots of leg room, only four seats per row (two aisle and two window seats). Very nice. The check-in guy at LAX wasn't kidding when he told us that he gave us good seats for this flight.
Tuesday
Jed and I finally arrived at the Philippines on Tuesday morning. We were going to stay at my house in Parañaque until we leave for Palawan on Thursday. So I gave Jed the tour of the house/dorm building. My family rents out the front of our house to some small businesses like a bakery and barber shop. Some of the employees also rent rooms in the house. So Jed got to meet my cousin's family and a few of the other people that live/work there. We then met up with his cousin for dinner at Makati and walked around the Greenbelt plaza for a little bit before we went back home.
Wednesday
What's a trip to the Philippines without stopping by a mall? A lot of times, people go to shopping malls just to enter the air-conditioned environment and escape the heat. But this time, we exchanged our money for local currency and split up for the rest of the day. Jed took a taxi to visit his uncle in Quezon City. I, on the other hand, just walked around the street corner to my ninang's (godmother's) house. She asked me why I haven't asked her best friend's granddaughter out yet. Heh.
Thursday
Early flight to Puerto Princesa, Palawan. Alanie, Jed got you your polvoron, so don't worry. Anyway, for the most part, Palawan's a pretty undeveloped island. The airport's essentially just a single runway strip. We even bounced when we landed. Kinda cool and scary at the same time. So as we were waiting for our baggage, it turns out the baggage claim conveyor belt wasn't working. So all of these airline passengers ended up standing around the cargo containers themselves while a couple of guys would pass out their contents.
For some reason, my cell phone can't get a signal here in Palawan even though I see other people here use their cell phones. I have a local sim card and it's a tri-band phone. It worked in Manila but not here. Hmm... oh, well.
As part of our hotel stay, we had an island hopping tour of Honda Bay. We saw, but didn't actually set foot in, quite a few islands like:
Bat Island - Home to thousands of bats
Lu-Li Island - From lulubog-lilitaw meaning "sink-float". This island is completely submerged during high tide.
Dos Palmas Island - Location of Dos Palmas resort where the Abu Sayyaf kidnapped a bunch of guests, including the Burnhams, back in 2000.
Snake Island - Shaped like a snake. We actually set foot on this island and went snorkeling by its shores. We saw a few giant clams and this really territorial fish that would bite my legs whenever I approached the rock it used as its home.
Friday
We had an early start today at 7 AM since this was the day of our tour of the Underground River. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive through at least 50% unpaved roads. Nice full body massage we got there. Anyway, the tour took us through these caves by rowboat. There were a lot of amazing rock formations that words just cannot fully describe. I hope to have these pictures up soon.
So tomorrow, we're supposed to see something called Estrella Falls. Sounds exciting. But still, I can't wait until the rest of the mission team gets here on Monday.
Monday
The flight to the Philippines was pretty uneventful except for a couple of things. During our stopover at Incheon airport, I had just gone through the carry-on bag screening process. As I was picking up my backpack and guitar bag, I was approached by a Korean security girl who was monitoring a different line.
Korean Security Girl: Where you from?
Me: US
Korean Security Girl: *turns to her co-worker* LA
Korean Security Girl 2: Teeheehee. (Or so Jed tells me.)
When we got to our plane that was supposed to take us from Korea to the Philippines, we found that we were assigned these really nice and roomy seats on the upper deck. Cool. We still had economy class meals and entertainment, but still. Lots of leg room, only four seats per row (two aisle and two window seats). Very nice. The check-in guy at LAX wasn't kidding when he told us that he gave us good seats for this flight.
Tuesday
Jed and I finally arrived at the Philippines on Tuesday morning. We were going to stay at my house in Parañaque until we leave for Palawan on Thursday. So I gave Jed the tour of the house/dorm building. My family rents out the front of our house to some small businesses like a bakery and barber shop. Some of the employees also rent rooms in the house. So Jed got to meet my cousin's family and a few of the other people that live/work there. We then met up with his cousin for dinner at Makati and walked around the Greenbelt plaza for a little bit before we went back home.
Wednesday
What's a trip to the Philippines without stopping by a mall? A lot of times, people go to shopping malls just to enter the air-conditioned environment and escape the heat. But this time, we exchanged our money for local currency and split up for the rest of the day. Jed took a taxi to visit his uncle in Quezon City. I, on the other hand, just walked around the street corner to my ninang's (godmother's) house. She asked me why I haven't asked her best friend's granddaughter out yet. Heh.
Thursday
Early flight to Puerto Princesa, Palawan. Alanie, Jed got you your polvoron, so don't worry. Anyway, for the most part, Palawan's a pretty undeveloped island. The airport's essentially just a single runway strip. We even bounced when we landed. Kinda cool and scary at the same time. So as we were waiting for our baggage, it turns out the baggage claim conveyor belt wasn't working. So all of these airline passengers ended up standing around the cargo containers themselves while a couple of guys would pass out their contents.
For some reason, my cell phone can't get a signal here in Palawan even though I see other people here use their cell phones. I have a local sim card and it's a tri-band phone. It worked in Manila but not here. Hmm... oh, well.
As part of our hotel stay, we had an island hopping tour of Honda Bay. We saw, but didn't actually set foot in, quite a few islands like:
Bat Island - Home to thousands of bats
Lu-Li Island - From lulubog-lilitaw meaning "sink-float". This island is completely submerged during high tide.
Dos Palmas Island - Location of Dos Palmas resort where the Abu Sayyaf kidnapped a bunch of guests, including the Burnhams, back in 2000.
Snake Island - Shaped like a snake. We actually set foot on this island and went snorkeling by its shores. We saw a few giant clams and this really territorial fish that would bite my legs whenever I approached the rock it used as its home.
Friday
We had an early start today at 7 AM since this was the day of our tour of the Underground River. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive through at least 50% unpaved roads. Nice full body massage we got there. Anyway, the tour took us through these caves by rowboat. There were a lot of amazing rock formations that words just cannot fully describe. I hope to have these pictures up soon.
So tomorrow, we're supposed to see something called Estrella Falls. Sounds exciting. But still, I can't wait until the rest of the mission team gets here on Monday.
