The Philippines

34 hours of travel + 6 islands + $150 over budget = An adventure in Paradise!

Our trip started after work Tuesday night around 2:00 am Wednesday morning technically. We caught the 2:20 bus to seoul, in which they employ a crazy bus driver that can get you there in 3 1/2 hours and that's including a 30 min. stop! Usually a solid 4 hour trip. Once we arrived at Incheon we got all checked in and before we knew it I was drugged on my oriental medicine and we were flying through the air! That oriental medicine is some beautiful stuff! We arrived in Manila around 11:30, paid an entrance fee into the country - 200 pesos and proceeded to the domestic terminal where we took a short flight to Cebu in the southern part of the Philippines called the Visayas. From there we had to take a ferry to the island of Bohol where we would be staying for the 1st night. As soon as we arrived we started looking for the same tour guide that our friends recently had on their trip to the Philippines. Luckily, the taxi driver that we had knew him! Must be a small island! He let us use his phone to call and set up a tour time for the next day! The first night we were supposed to stay at this place called Nuts Huts. It's in the Lonely Planet travel guide book but there wasn't really a lot of information about the place. However, when our taxi driver asked us if we had a flashlight and I replied with "for what?" I started to get a little nervous. He said, "Well for the path in case there's a snake or something." Right then and there I was ready to turn back to the port city we landed at and get a hotel room! My 3 biggest fears are: Flying in airplanes, spiders, and then snakes. I don't enjoy any of these things in the least bit! After 17 hours of travel I was exhausted and walking through the jungle in the pitch black dark with just a flashlight was the last thing I wanted to do with a sprained ankle. However, that's exactly what happened.

The guy dropped us off near a wooden sign with some paint that said "Nuts Huts" ---> That way 750m. It was a dirt path that was muddy, with lots of rocks, not a path I wanted to walk with a sprained ankle by any means. Our little flashlight was barely enough light for both of us so I had to resort to using my iphone. Once again, thank god for that little piece of technology that has saved me in so many situations. We walked for what seemed like 30 mins. when in all reality it was probably 15. We finally saw a sign and the longest staircase I've ever personally witnessed. We started our descend and before we knew it we had arrived. As we were checking in I saw the biggest lizard that I've ever seen and I snapped a photo of it at the exact time that it decided to consume a large grasshopper for dinner! Very cool picture! After we got checked in we went about ordering some food and this strange guy showed us to our "hut" and when I say "hut", I literally mean "hut". This place was like something out of adventure land in the magic kingdom at disneyworld. Closely resembling something out of Swiss Family Robinson treehouse - RUGGED! I was not in the least bit thrilled. We climbed up this bamboo thing to our hut and once inside the reality set in that I was going to have to sleep here, there was no going back, we were in the freaking Jungle! I've never actually been in a jungle so it was pretty interesting and scary all at the same time. I saw these yellow things hanging from the ceiling and asked Karissa what that was all about, she of course replied with, "those are our mosquito nets silly!" EEK! We threw our stuff down, and headed back to the main hut for our dinner. I will say that whatever they made for us was probably the freshest food I've had since being in Asia. Fresh picked green beans, carrots, and beef with rice. I'm not sure if I was just starving or what but, I ate every little speckle of food on my plate and I've never been so happy to have white rice in my life! After dinner we headed back to our hut, which was surprisingly named the "baghdad hut." I'm not sure if she put us in that one cause we were American or what, seems kinda racist to me though! haha Even though I was tired, there was no way I was going to be able to sleep without a drink or two so Karissa and I cracked open our first bottle of Rum. I was enjoying a drink when Karissa yells from the bathroom, "Annie! There is no handle on the toilet, how do I flush the toilet?" I go over to survey the scene and quickly realize that there is no handle and then I notice the bucket of water beside the toilet with a huge dipping pan. I put two and two together and combined with my experiences of being without electricity many, many times in WV due to god only knows what, I showed Karissa how to flush a toilet without electricity! She was impressed to say the least and wanted to know how I knew that! My only response was, 'I grew up in West Virginia, would you expect any less!?" After a good laugh I explained to her that you just have to fill a toilet up with enough water, quickly, to make whatever is in it go down, and after losing power in the middle of nowhere at least 3 times a winter,  I know all tricks of the trade when it comes to this kinda crap.

Chocolate Hills

Me with the Tarsier!

I probably got a good 3 hours of shut eye that night in the jungle and when the sun rose at 5:50 am the next morning, I jumped out of bed ready to start the day if it meant leaving the jungle and all of the bugs that came with it behind! It was interesting to see this place in the day light, I mean we literally stayed in a tiki hut in the jungle. Brutal. We had to climb that terrible staircase that we came down the night before which was not enjoyable. Who wants to do a stair-master at 6 am? After we made it back out to the main ride our tour guide picked us up and chauffeured us around in his car all day showing us everything there was to see on the island of Bohol. Our first stop was the man made forest. This is where, 750 years ago, a nearby town planted all these mahogany trees in one area. It has since then become a protected area with the tallest trees I've ever seen! Next, we headed to the hanging bridge made entirely out of bamboo. We walked across the river and back and sipped fresh coconut juice and ate coconuts! Quite the island experience. Then we headed to the Chocolate Hills, one of the natural wonders of the world, and Asia. There were over 1000 of these little mound-like hills that turn a brown color May-August and resemble little hershey kisses! They were mostly all green when we were there but there were still 1 or 2 that had some brown patches.  After that, we visited a butterfly sanctuary where we learned about butterflies and moths and the followed that up with a friendly visit to the smallest primate in the world, the tarsier! I thought he was the cutest thing in the world, very strange looking, but still cute just because they are so small! I was excited because I got to hold him and let him crawl all over me but, Karissa felt differently, she held him for 30 seconds and was done! (pictures on FB) Next we headed for a river cruise, it was pretty much exactly like the jungle cruise at disneyworld except there was a buffet with food on the boat!  I felt like I was sailing down the Amazon at one point. The jungle is a very mystic place. Next we saw the oldest Catholic church on the island and then the Blood Compact Statue where hundreds of years ago the Spanish and the Filipinos made peace. There is still a very heavy Spanish influence in the Philippines.  Their language has many spanish words and the fact that the majority of the population is still Roman Catholic speaks volumes when you think about the scary Muslim influence there. Our entire tour was awesome, we saw so many things but around 2 pm, Jojo drove us over to Panglao island where we would spend the next 3 days of our vacation on the beautiful, white sand, clear water, Alona Beach!

When we arrived at the hotel, the didn't have our reservation. Right then and there I was regretting our decision to stay there. They finally gave us our room, thank goodness I made a print out of the confirmation page! The staff was extremely rude to us and Karissa and I refused to eat at the hotel restaurant because we were afraid they would spit in our food. We got into our room and just wanted to shower and relax before having dinner. Well, we couldn't get the shower to work and that was when we realized that there was no telephone in our hotel room. What kind of hotel room doesn't have a telephone!?! They also didn't have a hair dryer on property. Like, hello? I didn't know we were paying hotel prices to stay at a hostel! Even hostels have hair dryers to borrow! No blankets either, just sheets, the safe didn't come with clear instructions, and the beds were literally like rocks. Being a hotel person, I was pissed to say the least but whatever, we decided we weren't going to let it ruin anything. We headed out and hand picked our dinner, rabbit fish, fresh from the ocean! It was a great end to our day! We enjoyed some rum and coke while looking out onto the beach and then called it a night because we had a boat tour at 5:45 am the next morning.

I've chosen to title this day of the trip Island Hopping on the Holy Family with Captain Johnny!

Virgin Island

 We got up around 5:30! Please don't ask why I was rising so early on vacation. I haven't seen these kind of times since last spring when I was still attending university and working a full time job and I'm still trying to figure out why I wanted to put myself through that agony. Anywho, we boarded this small boat called the holy family, (the main seat  had "Jesus Christ" in red paint all over it) with our captain for the day named Johnny. We had me his cousin the day before at the restaurant we ate at and he volunteered his cousin to take us out for the day on an tour. Our first stop was dolphin watching. I've never seen dolphin's in their natural habitat, only in aquariums, so the first time I saw a dolphin leap out of the water I was amazed! Just watching them swim around the boats full of people who had come to watch them have their breakfast was an experience in itself! After that we proceeded to the first island on our tour where we jumped off the side of the boat and snorkeled over the most amazing coral reef! I've only seen coral reef like this in aquariums and seeing it up close and personal and actually touching it and getting close to the fish was just unbelievable! It was one of the prettiest things! Coral reef is so colorful and alive, who knew such real beauty lurked so close to the surface! I wish I could do more stuff like that on a regular basis back home. Close to the end of snorkeling I think I got stung by a jelly fish and then not even 1 minute later, Karissa did too! We were finished anyways so we boarded the boat again and headed to inland to the island where we Karissa shared a beer with Johnny and I tried some cocnut wine! The next island was called the virgin island, they call this because it's hard to get to, and hard to get out of! (At least that's what captain johnny told us!) haha It was basically just like a sandbar out in the middle of the ocean, it's obviously a newer island and you could tell that it's still forming, it had maybe 1 or 2 little tiny trees and some grass growing in some of the sand. It's pretty cool seeing something like that that you know is still in the process of developing. 10 years from now, I wonder how much bigger it will be? The small little island was full of starfish galore! I had a blast with them and decided at one point it would be a good idea to spell out all of our initials in starfish! Captain Johnny also gathered some sea urchins from the water for us to try. He did the dirty work cracking them open and I had the disgusting pleasure of eating one. I'm not a fan of slimy fish like mussles, clams, oysters, etc. So the sea urchin didn't settle well with my tastes. Nonetheless, it was an experience and took me straight back to my greece days of eating fresh clams with lemon juice fished out of the ocean by the sexy swedish intern. haha Those were the days! After all that excitment, we headed back to the main island, grabbed a quick lunch, and took a much deserved nap before showering and enjoying a bottle of rum and coke before dinner!

 We had another great dinner that night, fish again, this time white snapper and parrot fish, I also had the traditional Filipino dessert called Halo Halo, it was like ice cream in a bowl of corn-flakes with jellies, it was strange but parts of it were enjoyable. Some sexy guys also sent over a tequila shot that i took like a champ even though I hate tequila! The terrible downpour of rain prevented our night from getting much wilder, we were in bed again by 9:30 like 80 year old grandma's!

The next morning we slept in till about 9 o'clock then had a lovely breakfast before embarking on our scuba diving adventure! We met our scuba instructors at the dive shop around 10:30 and then headed out on the boat to the same small island that we went snorkeling at. It's supposedly some of the best coral reef in the area. We dove on the other side of the island though. The oceans were really rough on the way out and we were worried about diving in the conditions but our guide said that it would be fine. Once we arrived we immediately got into the water and started our lesson. I'm not sure if I thought there would be a minute to gain my composure or what? All I knew is that this was really happening and I was nervous! We learned how to do a mask clearing, which is scary, and our airway clearing as well as a few other necessary things. Before I knew it, we were going down! I was nervous that I would need to come up for something? I'm not sure why but the thought of being 10 meters under and not being able to just go up to the surface for some air is a little unsettling for me! As soon as it started though I was so distracted by the beautiful things that I was seeing that I didn't even notice what was going on, grass on the sea floor, so many bright and colorful fish, I saw Nemo and all of his friends! The ocean is just full of life! It was awesome seeing these things in their natural habitat as opposed to in an aquarium, you can practically reach your hand out and touch them without them being too scared! Being our first dive and all, our instructors went with us of course and held on to us and sort of guided us, really nice of them honestly because I could have easily gotten lost! I was a little claustrophobic at some points but I managed to stay calm. Karissa and I had purchased an underwater camera but it's hard to take pictures when you are trying to think about breathing! The pictures that came out are on facebook if you'd like to see more! We went down 10 meters (30 feet) and were under for about 30 mins. It's the most amazing world under the sea and I can't wait to do it again! I'm going to put it up there on my list of "the coolest things I've ever done!" If you ever have the chance to go diving, it's worth every penny, luckily, we didn't have to pay that much compared to what it would cost in most places because everything is cheap in the Philippines! Great experience! After we dove we had to wait for these annoying chinese people to go, they spoke hardly any English, I can't imagine being a diving instructor for people who barely speak English! Scary! So, in the meantime, Karissa and I snorkeled a little bit and went inland and sat on the beach for a while, it was fun! The boat ride back was equally as exciting and rough, at one point I thought we were going to capsize, it was like something off deadliest catch! I've never been out in the ocean on a boat when the waters are rough like that! Thrilling! After we returned we got 9 dollar hour long body massages on the beach! They were fabulous!! :) So cheap and probably better than some professional massages I've had done in the states.  After that we did some shell searching on the beach, had a light snack and then went for showers before dinner. Our food that night was not the best, we wanted tuna like Ahi Tuna, instead we got grilled tuna and it tasted like something out of a can! We had some drinks at a bar that night and started a conversation with some Swedish lady that spends her winters there as a diving instructor, she eventually started to bore us and  the nightlife was not huge on this small island so we headed to bed around 12.

Our final morning was spent lounging on the beach, but not without some fruit pancakes and eggs first! I had mango, pineapple and banana pancakes for breakfast! Delicious! We relaxed on our beautiful white sand beach complete with crystal clear blue waters and starfish all around! Next we showered, checked out and waited for our tour guide from the first day, JoJo, to pick us up! He arrived and took us back into the jungle for our last adventure....zip lining! Basically what happens is they harness you all up and send you flying across this river gorge on a tiny little cable! Scary to say the least! Being so adventuress the past few days though, I actually found it quite fun, almost like a roller coaster! On the way back to the port JoJo stopped in this small town and we got to witness a Filipino cockfight. A HUGE tradition in the Philippines on a Sunday. JoJo said it's what all the men in the town do and I believe it because the place was chocked full of nothing but men, the only women I saw were the ones outside cooking the dead chickens! It was sweaty and stinky but we stuck around for at least 20 mins. to see some action, it's quite a brutal sporting event. They tie knives around the chickens' legs, get them mad at each other, and then let them fight to the death! I posted a lovely video on facebook if you dare to have a look. After all that excitement we headed to the port where our 17 hours of travel began again! We didn't have much money left so when we got to the airport I thought to ask about having to pay an exit fee since we had to pay an entrance fee...turns out...we did and it just so happened that we had no more cash, and between us an American Express card that wouldn't work in any machine and my Mastercard which i didn't know the pin number for and our Korean bank cards. It was not a pretty situation. We scrounged up enough Korean won between the two of us to pay the fee to get out of Cebu and agreed that when we got to Manila we would have to come up with a different plan. Well, when we arrived we tried every ATM machine with no luck, we were in a panic and explained out situation to the foreign officers but to no avail. They were actually kind of rude to us so we had to go over and talk to our airline, they suggested we ask fellow passengers on the same flight to loan us some money until we could pay them back in Korea!! She wanted us to be beggars!? Karissa and I were at the mercy of Koreans!! NEVER a good thing in our opinion! However, they brought up a translator, thank god, because lord knows any Korean over the age of 16 does not speak hardly any English, all they know is hello and make it a point to let you know every time you pass one of them on the street. Luckily the translator woman worked her magic and these nice business guys just handed us the money like it was pocket change. We promised to pay them back but just looked at us with this confused look, I'm guessing it was because they didn't understand us but whatever. So, we board the plane, I have some oriental medicine and the next thing I know, our red eye flight has landed and it is 6 am Seoul time! We get off the plane, took forever to get through passport control because of the stupid Chinese people not having their paperwork in order. **PEOPLE** If you are traveling to another country, make sure you have the correct documentation upon arrival, after a 4-5 hour flight you'd think they'd have this shit together, but then again, it is China. Anywho...after we made it through we couldn't find our generous Korean friends! We looked everywhere and waited forever and eventually we just gave up! Thank god for their kindness though or I'd probably still be stranded on that island!!

What a great vacay! Seoul is next! Stay Tuned! :)

Chuseok

In Korea, they celebrate this holiday called Chuseok, it's a 3 day holiday in which they pray to their ancestors for a good harvest. It always falls right in the middle of the week - Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Whoever is planning out the holiday calendar is an idiot. Who wants 3 days off in the middle of the week and then have to work Monday and Friday!? This prevents further travel around this time period. DISLIKE. So Monday, after the work day was complete, our boss gave us all a Chuseok present - 4 cans of tuna in oil and 3 BOXES of seaweed! - Mmmmmm, my favorite! NOT! What the hell am I going to do with 3 boxes of seaweed? 3 Boxes!! The tuna, in oil not water, I could stomach if I was poor and starving. 

It was nice gesture though. With 3 days off ahead of me, I wasn't sure what to do. 

Tuesday I went for a run to the river and walked around the park but my ankle was hurting pretty bad so I decided to go back home. I noticed Monday that my ankle was swollen but didn't really think too much of it. Wednesday I didn't leave my house all day! I was so lazy! I stayed home, iced and elevated my swollen ankle and watched season 1 of Gossip Girl! It was cold and rainy all day so I probably wouldn't have gone outside anyways. 

Thursday I decided to be somewhat productive. Karissa and I got up early and went for a hike! We hiked up Palgongsan mountain to see this huge statue of Buddha balancing a book on his head, called Gatbawi. It was carved out of this mountain rock in the 7th century?? It was quite the hike if I do say so myself. It was like doing the stairmaster for a good 1 hour. It was also crowded. I think hiking is the most popular hobby among Koreans. The get all dressed up in these hiking outfits, climb the mountain without sweating, and then sit down for a full out meal on a hot plate and drink booze. It's insane. Chaos is the best word to describe the scene at the top of the mountain. There were probably at least 100 people praying on these little mats and lighting candles and such. It was quite the sight to see. Legend has it that if you pray for one wish whole heartedly at this statue, and if you really, really mean it, it will come true. I was tired but I tried to pray for my one wish meaningfully. Still hasn't come true yet thought...so I'm doubting the powers of this mountain Buddha. After we descended the mountain we proceeded to the next stop on the tour - this beautiful temple. It was under construction but still lovely nonetheless. After the temple we headed to the hot spring spa in this same area. Karissa had never been to a jinjabong (Korean bathhouse) before so this was her first go around with the naked Korean ladies! haha It wasn't what we expected it to be but it was still nice. They had many different pools but only 3 outdoor pools feed by the hot spring. It definitely wasn't as nice as the hot springs we visited in Taiwan, but it was still nice, just very crowded. We ended the day with a chicken club sandwich to celebrate all that we had accomplished and were home by 6! 

Next day it was time to go back to work...boo! My ankle was even worse the next day so I decided to go to the doctor before work. His english is not the best, but long story short I have a sprained ankle! I can't believe that I ran tuesday and then hiked on it thursday! No wonder it was hurting so bad! He gave me some meds to help with the swelling and told me to stay off of it, which is almost impossible. It was still hurting Tuesday, the day before we were supposed to leave for the Philippines, so I went back to the doctor and now I have to wear a splint on my foot for 2-3 weeks until all the tenderness is gone! Hopefully it heals itself soon because I want to get back to the gym!