Cultural Shows

A good sign that you've ended up in a nice resort is the cultural show held in the resort during dinner time. I'm pretty sure the cultural shows have been a mainstay in many resorts all over the world but in Philippine resorts I think this may be a new thing. In Bohol for instance the resort we stayed in didn't have a show so people went to dinner and just had . . . . dinner.

In Palawan, not in El Nido, there was a cultural show but I thought it was kind of corny. The performers weren't into it and I could have sworn one of them was the receptionist that greeted us the day we arrived. To top it all off, a corny fire dancer finished the show.

In El Nido however, the cultural show was just that, a show. Apparently they had real performers come in complete with their costumes and commentaries of the origins of their dance, s real production number. The outcome, instead of people looking up from food every now and then to see what's going on people actually stopped, stood up to have a better look and forgot about dinner completely. Now that's a show, enough to make me run back to my room to get my camera.

El Nido

Sorry for the long silence, been busy with projects and jobs and vacations. Yes, one can be busy with vacationing, especially my last vacation in El Nido but before I start gushing about that particular trip allow me to set the proper tone for this. I think I mentioned earlier, for a local destination, the resort we went to is expensive. You could just as easily have gone to HK or Singapore for the weekend. Having said that I personally thought it was value for money, not a bargain, but you definitely get what you paid for.

Back to getting busy. The moment you land in El Nido an activity guide will sit down with you and go over the options of what exactly you can do during your stay here. There's diving, snorkeling, fish feeding, bird watching, lagoon touring, island hopping, massage, spa, etc. etc. They don't only give you a leaflet they actually schedule everything for you. This is pretty new to me, usually when I end up in a resort I end up swimming, on the beach, eating, drinking and that's it. Here they actually persuade you to go out there and explore everything. I don't think I even had time to nod off on the beach.

Also, you don't end up in one resort and that's it. They have a system of ferrying people over to their other resort (Miniloc, we stayed in Lagen) and the other islands that feature beach fronts that they manage (a total of another 4 islands for you to explore apart from the one you are staying at). No additional charge for the activities unless it's a bit specialized like diving for instance. Snorkeling gear is readily available for free as are the regular tours around the different islands and lagoons. For the lagoon tour you even get the use of a kayak to explore the inland bays.

There's not much else you have to pay extra for, maybe the drinks but that's expected. Of course there's that romantic dinner my wife and I had set up on a secluded beach but I'll write about that separately.

Live - from El Nido

Just finished gorging myself on the second buffet of the day. As mentioned earlier, the wife and I decided to make the most of the 3 day weekend (and leave the rallying to the rest of you guys). This morning I was rushing through the busy streets of Manila to get to the airport and a hop (on a turbo prop Dornier 228), skip (jeepney) and a jump (bangka or outrigger) after, we find ourselves on the limestone islands of Palawan.

It cost quite a bit (let's just say going to HK for the weekend would have been cheaper) but what the heck, you have to support your own and despite its hoity toity price tag, it has received eco - awards from the likes of Conde Nast, etc. so we didn't feel too bad. Also, there's a lot of stuff to do and you have an activity person bugging you about your next gimmick. Today we went island hopping, did a bit of caving and were going to go bird watching in the late afternoon but gravity took over and we ended up in the pool. Tomorrow it's diving and snorkeling and maybe I can finally get to watch those birds.

Here's the surprising thing, I know it's a 3 day weekend and so you'd expect a lot of people here but most of them aren't locals but foreign tourists from the US, Japan and Europe. The staff also said that they're pretty much fully booked so despite all the drama on the political side, people still like to have fun in the Philippines.

Dangers and Annoyances

Okay, if you are paranoid about travelling, worried about scams, hold-ups, rip-offs, etc. then you might want to skip the next section (you may want to skip this whole blog). Personally I think that you're probably safer abroad than in some areas of your home town and these things really shouldn't stop you from going out there and exploring the world. Some countries even flaunt these areas such as the infamous shanty towns, favelas of Rio (they obviously haven't seen the shanty towns in the Philippines).

I like reading the dangers and annoyances section of guidebooks just to keep me in the know about what to look out for although I have to say I've never run into anything mentioned in those sections. I have however run into a whole lot of other stuff.

Here are some of my close calls:

• London Bridge, near the House of Commons. A small car pulls up as my wife and I are strolling across the bridge. A guy in a fake Italian accent explains that he is a budding designer who came to London for a fashion fair but has run out of money. He doesn't want money for nothing so he is willing to sell one of his designer jackets for GBP70. Here's the clincher, I nearly fell for it before my wife pulled me aside and straightened me out.

• Here's another one, this time in Shanghai. My wife and I are walking down the Bund when one of two women walking in the opposite directions suddenly stoops down and puts some sort of kerosene-based shoe polish on my shoes. "Shoe polish, shoe polish" she kept asking wanting to polish my shoes. I walked on but I swear she must have stuck with me for a good 20 meters before she gave up. Even her pleas of "No pay, no pay" wouldn't get me to stop, what was she going to do, retrieve the shoe polish already on my shoe? All this time my wife is falling behind giggling to herself when all of a sudden the second woman did exactly the same thing to her. Her reaction, a full out runaway from the woman. Now that was funny.

• In a crowded metro station in Paris I felt a slight tug on the zipper pocket of my cargo pants. I turn around to kind of acknowledge that I noticed something going on and hopefully the crook would take the hint. Next, the train comes, everyone piles in and I feel another tug. This time I turn around and stare the guy down, some teenager. I gave him one of my evil eye looks and so he got off at the next station.

• Then there were the three stooges in St. Petersburg. Three police officers that were trying to extort 50 Euros from us for walking on the grass. Luckily, our friend who works with the Philippine Embassy in Moscow straightened them out.
  

• Probably the closest call was in Avignon. I felt a slight tug on my messenger bag which I had slung around my back. I moved it forwards only to find it already open. I stop in my tracks causing few people bumping into me, and check out the contents of my bag. Nothing was lost, I think I reacted just in time and the guys that bumped into me were probably the pickpockets, a bunch of teenagers.

You'll note that in all of the above cases, nothing bad really happened. If anything I've been able to come back home and tell this story to my friends. They're all what I call necessary evils if you want to explore the world. You really just need to keep a straight head on you at all times and try not to look like too much of a tourist. That's why I've decided to retire my bright yellow North Face jacket, it just screams "pick on me" when you're abroad. In the end though you just got to keep your head on straight wherever you go and not worry about stuff like that.

Museums

I hate museums. Well, maybe hate is a little too harsh but if you ask me to spend a whole day in museum it better be a very interesting one. If it's full of paintings and sculptures I may just head straight for the highlights and gloss over the rest and get out of there.

The only exception to my museum rule would be natural history museums. They're pretty interesting. I know I'm divulging my mental age here but what the heck, give me a big fat whale hanging off a ceiling to a painting any day.

Apologies for the graininess of the picture, most museums nowadays will allow you to take pictures inside for free but without a flash, others will charge you a minimal fee. I remember the days when no pictures were allowed, I guess they realize that the more pictures are taken, the more people can share them with others.

Holiday Economics

Politics aside, the one thing the government has done right is fix the dates of Philippine holidays and announcing these in advance. I remember the days when we'd hear about a holiday being announced the day before, late afternoon at that, practically killing any chance of booking that three day weekend getaway.

Here are this year's holidays as per Proclamation No. 1463;

March

• Maundy Thursday - 20 March, Thursday (duh) and Good Friday 21 March, Friday ( 4 day weekend).

April

• Araw ng Kagitingan - April 9 to be celebrated April 7, Monday (3 day weekend)

May

• Labor Day - 1 May, Thursday (this one isn't moved to Friday or Monday so no long weekend)

June

• Independence Day - 12 June to be celebrated 9 June, Monday (3 day weekend)

August

• National Heroes Day - Last Monday of August which is 25 August, Monday (3 day weekend)
• Ninoy Aquino Day - 21 August to be celebrated on 18 August, Monday (3 day weekend)

December

• Bonifacio Day - Monday nearest November 30 which is 1 December, Monday (3 day weekend)
• And the jackpot of all holidays 25 December, Christmas Day (Thursday), 26 December Additional non-working holiday (Friday), 29 December Additional non-working holiday (Monday), Rizal Day 30 December (Tuesday) and 31 December (Wednesday) Last Day of the year (which results in a 7 day long break, weekend included)

Time to book those trips.

If man were meant to fly

Look what I did during the weekend, looks like fun right? Well it is, once you get over the initial idea that you're hanging in a chair 500 feet above the ground with no cockpit just the rushing wind in your face. I'll do a more thorough write up when I finish processing the photos but I just couldn't wait.

Here's the good part. Anyone can go up and it's just one hour away from Metro Manila. Watch this space.

I let it slip by . . . .

I don't believe I forgot to write about Chinese New Year, especially this year when at midnight I was woken up by fireworks. I nudged my wife and greeted her happy new year. I think that was the first time that's happened to me, usually it just slips right by. Now however, Chinese New Year is starting to take on a bigger part in our culture. Tikoy, the rice cake concoction, is starting to get passed around like fruit cake during Christmas and shops are decorating for the event too.

Before forget, I hope everyone has a prosperous new year.

Amazing Race Asia 2 . . . I want to cry

Just finished watching the last episode of Amazing Race Asia 2 and I was all set for the Philippine team to sweep into first place (they've been leading in most of the stages) and win the grand prize of $100,000.  It was not meant to be, instead the Singapore Team snatched the coveted first price in the last section. Well, they kind of deserved it, apart from being the constant second placer, one of the guys was deaf.  

It doesn't matter, I heard that one of the Philippine team members is going out with the cute Thai girl he met during the race.  Still a winner in my book.

Singapore F1 Tickets on sale by tomorrow

Not that I need additional competition, but tickets for the First Singapore F1 Grand Prix will go on sale starting tomorrow. I think the initial tranche will be for 70,000 tickets ranging from 168 to 1,388 SGD. The track will be around the city itself, like the Monaco GP, so it should be exciting. The event will be spread over three days - Sep 26 to the 28th.

I've already told all my friend in Singapore that I will be staying with them during that time but they all come back with the same reply - "First come, first served". The best I've been able to do is a confirmed reservation for a space on my cousin's front lawn for a tent . . . and even there I might get bumped off if he decides to rent that out.

Visit http://www.singaporegp.sg/index.html

Travel Tour Expo 2008

I haven't been to one of these personally but a friend of ours has and she seems to be going all over the world. It will be held in the new SMX (SM Exhibition and Convention Center) beside the Mall of Asia Halls 3 & 4 on Feb 15 to 17, Friday to Sunday from 10am - 8pm (Saturday it's open until 9pm). If you guys don't make it I'll give you a report on it sometime next week, see if I got any good deals. The theme apparently is "Beyond Borders".

Maintenance completed

Okay, I must have had a geek growth spurt there. Usually I'm bad with anything technical (a testament to that is the dismantled desktop in my study) but looks like I was able to migrate my blog address to the shorter "www.sleepingonthebus.com" with no hassle. You can still use the one with blogspot attached if you are weird and it will direct it automatically to the shorter address. Please spread the word.

Maintenance announcement

Am trying to move my domain name to the shorted www.sleepingonthebus.com (dropping the blogspot bit) but it might take a few days. If you cannot access my site in the next few days please bear with me and try www.sleepingonthebus.com every now and then.

Hope to see you guys soon.

World's highest post office

Stick a mailbox on top of one of the tallest buildings in the world (in this case Shanghai's Jin Mao Tower) and presto, you have the world's tallest post office. Sounds a bit weak if you ask me but hey, if it's good enough for their tourism board it's good enough for me.

The Jin Mao Tower is pretty amazing though, it's currently the 5th tallest building on earth but in this world of "bigger, taller, faster" engineering feats I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't last long. The building going up right beside it, the Shanghai World Financial Center is set to eclipse this once it is finished.

Inside Jin Mao is the Grand Hyatt hotel which has its lobby on the 53rd floor and an open atrium all the way to the top (the 87th floor). You can actually look down (way down) at the lobby from the observation deck on the 88th floor.

On the rare clear days (which nowadays means never) you can see the Yangtze river empty out into the ocean.

On the move

I am going mobile. Now that i know my cellphone can take great pics, i will sometimes be posting directly from it also. Going hi tech.

Gear: Photo Dump Drive

Here's the scenario. You're heading off to some distant destination. You'll have to travel light which means you have to take the old travel adage "Bring only what you can carry yourself" seriously. In my case, my trip to Kota Kinabalu is a prime example. I'd be climbing a mountain and staying in a $2 a night hostel and so I didn't feel like bringing my laptop.

Now I have about 8 gig worth of CF cards which I take with me wherever I go (you can never have enough) but even for a trip like Kota I knew I was going to run out eventually. You could rely on photoservices to burn discs at the location but that's always a hit or miss proposition and so without further ado, I introduce the simple device that's worth its weight in gold, the Photo Dump Drive.

Basically, it is a hard drive with a card reader attached and it's battery operated (the cable above is to charge the device). Depending on what size hard drive you stick in it, it can back up anything between 40 to 100 gig worth of photos and it takes all kinds of memory cards (CF, memory stick, SD). Here's my shooting SOP. I take my dump drive where ever I go, when the CF card fills up I back it up immediately on the dump drive, the CF card sticks into the top of the device. If my trip does allow me to take my laptop, when I go back to the hotel room I back up my photos up again on my laptop. I now have two copies of my photos and of course I keep the dump drive on me all the time separate from your laptop. Just in case you lose one, you still have the other.

If you've got money to burn you might want to pick up an EPSON P-5000 which has a 3" LCD display where you can view your photos. It has 80 gig worth of storage and can play a wide array of video and audio formats (for those times when you're just killing time).  

If you are poor like me however, you can just pick up the dump drive casing, stick a 2.5 inch laptop drive in it and you're good to go.  The cheapest one available is from CD-R king (www.cdrking.com and look under other products).

Duomo Di Milano under wraps

We were rushing through the metro in Milan, we'd arrived late and didn't have a place to stay. We were going to get a recommendation from the local tourist office but that was going to close in a few minutes.

We decided to go to Milan last minute just for two historical places. The Last Supper painting (symepre pinoy tayo) and the Duomo di Milano or Cathedral of Milan, the second largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Turns out the cathedral and the tourist office were in the same place.

So we rush up the square hoping to get a great first look of Milan and the cathedral and are faced with this picture.

Turns out the Duomo would be under restoration for another couple of months and of course the only other site we were going to go to would not allow photography. To add insult to injury, the tourist office was also closed by then. I remember reading about a website that lists all the restoration projects ongoing in Europe but in any case, it might be worthwhile doing a little research before you head off. It's easy enough nowadays and it will at least let you down easy when you get there (if you decide to push through with it).


NOTE: This was way back in 2003 so I assume its all restored now and we found a place to stay by going to the nearest bookstore and browsing through their travel section.

NY Night

I'm not sure whether it's because of security fears (post 9/11) or if they never allowed tripods up the Empire State Building to begin with but when I got there, all kitted out with all my gear they wouldn't allow me to bring my tripod up. So the following pictures were taken with a combination of high ISO, steady hands and pressing against the wire barriers of the viewing deck. Still turned out pretty nice I think even though it was pretty late at night. Must do this again during sunset.

Coming home to Homecoming

Just a quick one about a recent HS homecoming I went to. I admit I'm a delinquent alumni member but I thought it was about time I went to the annual LSGH Alumni homecoming this year and it was good. Good catching up with friends, some whose names were "pare" for the evening, sorry guys, it's been too long, and some that you recognize immediately. Also nice setting foot on the campus. It's a bit swankier now with a temporary parking structure at the far end of the field and a great oval track surface where once it was just hard packed dirt.

And just to tie this into photography, I didn't want to bring my SLR with me because there would be a lot of drinking involved and "stumbling" around afterwards was a real possibility. Still, when the entertainment came out (bands, people, bands. . . . girl bands) I wish I had my SLR. So contrary to my previous posts about having a point and shoot handy, it's just not the same when you need the flexibility of an SLR.

Free flowing drinks, not so flowing food but what the heck, it was the company I was there for. Great time catching up with the guys.

Hail, Hail . . . . . .