So long, farewell...
With only a couple of days left here, we have done our best to fit in as much stuff as possible in the last week before we leave. Starting on Monday, we headed to the south of Cebu to a place called Badian, famous for its white sandy beaches and Kawasan Falls. We arrived at the beach resort after a wet and bumpy three hour drive. It stopped raining enough for us to have a look at the place and rush our stuff inside our two-story beach-front cottage. The cottage was made ent
irely out of nipa (local wood) and was native-styles at its best! It was very quaint. The location was fantastic as the sand was literally at the door (and in our mattress, but that's another story) and we were six paces away from the water. Luckily the rain eased up and we swam and ate into the evening. Later that night, we drove about 25 minutes to the town of Moal Boal, which had plenty of great restaurants to choose from. There were heaps of restaurants and bars all lining the sea edge and overlooking the water. And at then end of the stretch was a gorgeous little bunch of cottages, which were fully air conditioned and had mahogany ceilings and furniture. And with a 30 second walk to the water we were kinda wishing at that point we were staying there (at only $40 a night or $500 a month it was a shame we didn't know about it earlier.), which was only amplified later on during the night while we were lying on our sandy mattresses!
The next day we got up early (not hard... SANDY MATTRESSES)
and took the trek to Kawasan Falls. We were all a bit groggy and not in the best of moods after our night of little sleep so we failed to bring any swimming attire along with us... big mistake! When we got to our destination of cool blue/green water, we were dying to jump in. My cousins Sarah and Janine proceeded to raid the souvenir shop for t-shirts and shorts to swim in, but Luke and I thought we were satisfied with just walking around in the water. We
ended up walking to the water's source where again there was a bunch of falls and ice cold water. Since there was no one except me and my fam around we jumped in the water in our undies! Woo! There was a raft that took us under the falls where you could have yourself quite a high pressured water massage! I tell you what, swimming in our undies was the best decision ever! Hahaha. We were very glad we took the plunge (har har) and went for a swim. It was great!
After our swimming
adventures we went back to the van to get changed and went to Moal Boal again for lunch. On the journey back home, we ended up taking a detour to a place called Hidden Paradise Mountain Resort. And believe you me, this place was hidden. It was a good half hour drive into the mountains, which were all covered in palm trees, before we got to this place... and it was nice, but not really my idea of paradise. A fun trip up though! It was a while before we managed to get back home as we had more visiting and stuff to do, but when we did get home we were exhausted. Definitely a good kind of exhausted though. Kawasan Falls is probably one of my fave places we've been to here (at some stage I will do a top five places/things we've done here).
The next day we took a while to recover and slept in and relaxed for the day. Yesterday, however, we were back in action as we went on a shopping expedition to buy all the stuff we would need for VietNam and thermals for Europe. About four hours and many full bags later we made plans to go out with my cousin Jason and his friend for dinner (we went to a great place called Zoa resto/grill. We wanted to go to this particular Mexican restaurant, but they didn't have any beef... what Mexican restaurant doesn't have any beef?) and some “bikini bar” hoping! (Jason reckons it was important for us to see Cebu's seedy underbelly... I think he wanted to go see some half-nakie girls!) And it was quite an experience. You can't really call them strip clubs because the girls don't strip and are more concerned about their make-up and looking in the mirror than the whole pole-dance thing. It's very tame compared to home (or so Luke tells me ;) bahaha). They even danced to the Pinoy Big Brother song (kinda like how everyone knows the moves to the Macarena... it had us in hysterics). And at one bar we went to, the girls who did solo numbers “danced” (walked around, talked to the other girls at the side of the stage, i don't know... they don't take it very seriously here) to love songs. Like Celine Dion and stuff. It was so romantic! All in all it was a funny experience. At “The Black Hole” (the most strip-clubby of all the places we went to) four girls came up to our table and started talking to Jason. I though they would be asking about Luke as he is one of the few YOUNG white guys around... instead they were asking about me and where I was from and what my name was and stuff! Haha. Very weird and very embarrassing. Funny. I felt sorry for all the girls though because you could tell they were uncomfortable at times. Jason was telling us that some of the girls are as young as 17. It's sad really.
So today is another rest day and last minute chores day. We head off to Viet Nam on Saturday so this will probably be my last post in the Phils. It's been really fantastic and we're both sad to leave. I wish I had another couple of weeks to do stuff we didn't have time for, but I think we have done a pretty good effort as it is. I'm really going to miss everyone and am already trying to think of the next time we will be able to visit here!
I would also like to make a quick shout out to Akash Arora who wrote an article based on this blog for The Sunday Magazine (Telegraph) a few weeks back. If I get a scan I'll post it up here for all y'all to read! Thanks heaps Kashy! ;)
So I guess you'll be hearing from us next when we are in Vieters (my nickname for VietNam)! We will be in Saigon for New Years so that should be an experience and a half! Woot!
A family affair...
Yesterday, the whole reason for making the Philippines our first port of call, was my mum's family's 6th annual reunion... And these sort of shindigs always make for some crazy, crazy times. We didn't get off to a good start arriving half an hour late, but these things happen. I don't think anyone noticed as there was a mass service going on. Anyway, after mass there were the usual speeches and introductions of all the different family "clans" (the word clan really freaks me out. I don't know why they couldn't just say family or group or something. FYI we were the "Alesna clan". Shudder.) Then lunch proc
eeded and what happened from then on was almost dream-like and very likely bordering on insanity. We had singers, dancers, a magician (who looked like he was wacked out on something chronic) a ballroom competition, a caroling competition AND my favourite... a beauty pageant. Well it was called the "2005 Muse Selection" or something along those lines (muse? Ummm, ok then.). In reality it was just a beauty contest between all the "clans". The lucky representative from our "clan" was my cousin Sarah (who didn't even know she was entering this thing until they called out her name!) . It was hilarious! The girls had to walk, pose, talk about themselves... you know, usual Miss Universe stuff.
The girls were judged on face and beauty, figure, poise and crowd interaction. Man, it was great. I couldn't stop lauging and Luke couldn't stop saying "I've never seen anything like it!". I unfortunately have. Many a times. Sarah, unfortunately, couldn't take us over the line. The winner was presented with a crown, cape and one of the stick things the Queen holds (I can't for the life of me think of what it's called). We wrapped up the day with dancing (kind of like line dancing where everyone knew the dance moves except us...) and a lot of laughing.
Today, Luke and I are recovering from the festivities. It might take us awhile. Sigh, poor Lukey. I think he might be slightly traumatised.
Oh and Merry Christmas to y'all too! We hope everyone has a festive and happy holiday season. Take care and remember to smile! :)
Tales of table dancing and hilarous adventures!
Well it's been quite a fun-packed week so I'll just jump right in at the beginning... Last Saturday night we went to a club called Pump to meet my old Filo school friend Elaine. After about four or five mind-changes we finally decided to go. And thank god we did because we had sooo much fun! The music was good and everyone was dancing on the tables! Even Luke! I know... EVEN LUKE (I'm still in shock). It also helps when Elaine is friends with one of the owners/endorsers of the club. We had free food and booze for the majority of the night. That's hott. Anywho, we didn't get home til 3am, which was a little unfortunate as we had to be up early the next day to go to church! Because I'm such a good Catholic (that's sarcasm for all you guys that can't tell).
SO the next day started with church (even Luke! I know... EVEN LUKE!), but about half an hour before we were due there my mum decides she wants to dye her hair... I'm like what? Anyway, she gets started dying her hair with yellow kitchen gloves on (the hair dye didn't come with gloves... it was Chinese hair dye...) as you do. We were supposed to leave at 10am and my mum is running around with these yellow gloves and dye in her hair ordering everyone around as there were fiesta preparations going on. We ended up leaving as she said she would meet us there (the church is only a five minute walk away thankfully). We come back and she is still in the shower... turns out her hair turned orange and she had to dye it again to black! Great stuff! Luke and I found this greatly amusing and we napped and chatted while people rushed around us cooking and arranging things for the fiesta that afternoon.
The fiesta itself was quite funny too. There was a karaoke machine so that always makes for interesting times. Especially after my cousin Janine had nine shots of Tequila! Word. Elaine came around too and brought her new adorable puppy! PUPPY! So cute and I want one.
The day after that I went and got a wisdom tooth out. Really not fun. I get to eat a lot of ice cream though and that's really fun! Still hurts, but you know, I'll make it. But for the next couple of days, after the removal of tooth, I was quite bed-ridden. Yuck.
Wednesday night, however, was a different story. We (we being me, Luke, my mum, aunts, cousins and other family members and friends of sorts... this is always the case) went to a comedy bar called 22nd Street and OMG SOOOO FUNNY! There were four gay guys and one girl who all sang, made jokes (usually about the members of the audience) and performed skits. It was mostly in Tagalog so a lot of the jokes went over our heads, but they were so hilarious that the hilarity was universal. Luke and I got singled out again. Spotlight and everything. The usual 'where are you from' and 'when are you going to get married' questions. Sigh. When will it ever end? Needless to say we didn't get home til early in the morn, which is again unfortunate as we had to get up early the next day to go on a tour. You think we would have learnt out lesson the first time.
Yesterday we headed to Bohol, one of the islands close to Cebu. We had to wake up at 5am. Sigh what is with these people and wanting to wake up so freakin early? Anyway, it turned out to be a really fun day. We saw heaps of touristy things like the Blood Compact Site (where the Spaniards and the
Filipinos became blood brothers back in the day of the 1500s), the Chocolate Hills and ate on a floating restaurant and saw old school churches made out of coral.
It was great. My favourite thing was seeing the Tarsiers. They are, like, the smallest monkeys in the world and they are only found on Bohol. They are endangered and stuff and Prince Charles funds the research and conservation. They are sooo cute! They have massive eyes which are
bigger than their brains and are only about 10cm long. SOOOO CUTE! And so soft! However, they are territorial AND have suicidal tendencies (weird I know) so if you take them out of their natural habitat they bump their heads (which are mega fragile) and kill themselves. D: How something so cute can have suicidal tendencies is beyond me.
So that's about it for now. I'd like to give a shout out to all those crazy HWWians who called me last friday night at the work Christmas party. You guys are 'ilarious! Y'all should come down here and catch some rays with me. Roffle. You are. No way. Haha. No laughing. Word.
Miss youse and everyone else!
Cocktails, traffic and one sleepless night...
So we've just come back from two days at Maribago Bluewaters Beach Club, which Luke and I have affectionately nicknamed "Bargs", and it was good at times and annoying at others. The first day we got there it started raining 20 minutes after we arrived so we were bound to the room, while my mum and my aunt waited for my other aunt and two cousins to arrive at the airport. It was only about an hour before they
arrived, four hours delayed, that I figured out how to use the cable TV. I mean I love Fashion TV but there is only so much I can take, you know what I mean? Anywho, we spent the rest of the time at the resort (it was sunny the next day! Woo!) just sunbaking and your usual resort type things. Like COCKTAILS! YAY! (See first post). "Bargs makes the hottest
cocktails around. And bartender Joel is the man. We go back way back to our first cocktail days back in like 2000! And wow. Sarah and Janine and six cocktails later... made for funny pictures! And we then skipped on to the casino after that (Well we had dinner etc, but we had finished drinking cocktails at 7:30pm... The girls started at 4pm.) where we rocked the roulette tables. Fun!
We are starting to feel really settled now. It feels like we have been here for about a year rather than a week and a half! We are used to the chaos that is the traffic (you know how in Sydney the traffic is chaos but it's more like organised chaos? Here it's just plain chaos. No one pays attention to lanes, street signs or traffic lights. It's really, really REALLY crazy.). We are also used to how sloooooooow everything takes here. I think that's due to the fact that time really doesn't matter here. We are also used to the secret language of the country. We call it the "eyebrow raise". EVERYONE does it! No matter where you are. It is used especially when people don't understand what you are saying. Which causes some confusion (and a lot of frustration) at times. "Can I please get a side order of fries?"
Eyebrow raise. No action. "Fries?"
Eyebrow raise. Silence. "Do you understand what I am saying?"
Eyebrow raise...
AND omg the other night, Luke and I had one of the most horrendous nights sleeps you could ever imagine. I don't think you could ever imagine it because it was really quite bad. It started with an abrupt 3am wake-up call from my cousin. By her grinding teeth. Seriously this kid is 11 (and looks like she is about 6) and has a jaw that could crack concrete. I don't think I could ever properly describe it. The fact that it woke both myself and Luke up should speak for itself. We have nicknamed her old mate "Grindy" (pictured). THEN we had old mate "Jingle Bums", who is my other cousin with a charm braclet that jingles and clinks together everytime she moves. THEN we had old mate pig squealing until the early morn. THEN we had barking dog, who Luke is very close to shooting with a BB gun. THEN we had the roosters who started crowing a lot earlier than usual. Luke joked all we were missing was the cat fight. I wish he hadn't of said that because THEN we had a cat fight to add to the mix. We also had aformentioned (see below posts) bunk bed with rods holding up the mattress. Not your usual wooden slates. Metal. Rods. In. Our. Backs. I couldn't believe only Luke and I were awakened by what "Jingle Bums" calls the "live concert". By 5:30am Luke said we was getting up at the first hint of light. And at approximately 5:50am, he got up. I followed 30 seconds after. We were then met by my mum and aunt, who slept out in the lounge, and their laughter after we told them why we were up so early. Thanks guys. But they did end up giving us their bed so we could get a couple of hours sleep before the day got going. Yeah we find it funny now. But not really.
In other news, I have to get my wisdom teeth out. Which should be interesting. I'm trying not think about it. Yuck. Let's hope and pray to the shopping gods that I won't get an infection. Word.
Will post more pics when I get home to my usb cable thingie. :D
It's the birthday, it's the birthday, it's the birthday... boy or girl!
Well again it has been another eventful couple of days with Lukey's birthday celebrations
starting the night before his actual birthday. He wandered out for a wander and didn't wander back in til something like 4am! He managed to find some piss pot (awww just kidding!) friends to bum around and drink beer with! Now he is, like, totally the big man on campus around A Lopez (where we are situated). AND precisely at 12am his birthday started with a bang... literally. Fireworks and all. The night continued on with drunken singing and laughter. Believe me, I heard it all. Including the story about the pros the boys bumped into during the night... Yeah. PROS. But we won't go there.
And at about 11am the next morning celebrations started again! That night we went out and experienced some nightlife. Sooo different to what we have at home. We had dinner at an open style restarant where you can pick your own food and you can watch them cook it up. After a hearty feast, we kicked off at The Village, a complex of bars and restaurants where instead of your usual CD backing track, you could relax or dance to live cover bands! And everyone totally gives the people on
Idol (except for this one girl at Latino. Wow, she was bad.) a severe run for their monies! Cocktails and beers for all! Woot!
Speaking of cocktails, Lukey and I went off to a different bar while everyone was partying away at the blinding club with the annoying lasers, and we got two Margaritas (they were really rank Margs. So GROSS!) and two softdrinks for only P220... That's less than $AUD6 to you thanks. You gotta love that.
Another thing... if Luke and I are asked when, if, or are we married one more time... well I think Luke will have a heart attack. WOW. Like, ok, we were at one of the bars last night and we yelled out that it was Lukey's birthday and the singers proceeded to ask where he was from blah blah your usual questions. Then came the inevitable who's the beautiful girl (Word. Haha I can't help it if I'm gorgeous! Kidding hahaha.) next to you and are you married questions. In front of the whole bar! No joke we have been asked this questions about 15 times since we've arrived here. I can just see Luke's face going white everytime the "M" word is mentioned. Lukey, I want a princess cut diamond set in a white gold band from Tiffany's thanks. Actually, I really like the rings they have at Canturi too, we'll talk about it later. Bahahahahahaha.
Today, we are just kicking back and whatnot. Later, we will continue visiting and eating. That's basically all we have been up to for the last week! Eating, talking, eating, shopping (Woo! I got some cool stuff!), eating, sleeping and eating. It's really good! I really want to upload some pics for y'all to have a lookie at, but I'm still unsure how I'm going to go about that. Sigh. Hopefully in the next week or something. Yeop!
Aight, take care and keep in touch. Check out my cousin's blog (Sarah's Excellent Adventures) too. See I fully started a trend here guys. Go me!
Apparently this is the cool time of year in Cebu...
Someone needs to let them know that 30 degrees Celsius is not that "cool". Sure, it's cooler than the 40+ degrees we endured during May, but this "cooler" weather certainly gives Sydney's pathetic excuse for a summer a run for its money!
So we are here in Cebu and it is sooo great! I love coming back to the Philippines. It always makes for hilarious times. For example, we landed in Manila and there was this wonderful welcome sign that said (and I have pictures... I will upload when I get the chance) "Welcome to Bird Flu free Philippines!" Yeeooooop!
AND ohmigod I had this brilliant Borsec (Border Security, like hello it's Australia's Frontline...or something, Nicole what is it called?) moment at Sydney Airport. This guy stopped me and got me to read out this thingie which basically said that they were going to do some test for explosives in my hand luggage and even though it said I could say no, I really didn't have a choice (if I said no, I would still be in Sydney... probably in a customs jail or something). Anywho, he went ahead and swabbed all my stuff and ran the samples in some special machine. Luke reckons he stopped me because he though I was hot. I reckon he stopped me because he though I was a terrorist. So Not Cool.
Another fantastically wondrous experience (and I say wondrous for a reason) is when I went to get my nails done and my hair did this afternoon (it's what is affectionately called "pa beauty" here, meaning to get beautified), the salon I was advised to visit didn't have any hair dryers. What sort of salon doesn't have hair dryers? The ones I visit apparently. So I left with wet hair and a not so happy disposition as I went to get a blow-dry at the salon across from this place (we were at a mall). ANYWAY, you wouldn't believe it took over HALF-AN-HOUR for this freakin blow-dry. And I left with some pretty ferocious looking '90s style flicks. AND what makes this experience even more humourously annoying is that Luke went and got his hair and beard trimmed and all went according to plan AND he got a head, neck and back massage too!!!! Damn him.
But in all honesty, I found it all pretty funny. Yeah I was laughing through tears, but it's ok. We're in the Philippines. It's to be expected. Another thing that is to be expected in this part of the world is the honesty of the people. Luke and I have been told quite a few times that we are fatter than when we were here in May. Woo. Thanks for that. My mum's aunt (so my aunt once removed? Meh, lets just call her a relation) said we looked Healthy though. Word. I guess it's hard not to Be So Large in the Land Of The Malnourished though. Awww kiddles.
But all in all we are having a fabulous time. We are much happier being in
Cebu than in Manila and it's so nice to have so much family around. It's also great that we sleep in a room with my mum, my aunt and my three cousins. So there is seven of us in the one room. And what's even better... we get the top bunk. Double woo. All this and we have only been away for like three days!
Something tells me there are going to be a lot of posts in this blog...
