The Philippines Part 1: Puerto Princessa

We flew into Manila from Seoul Korea at around 12:30 at night on March 13th. I hd the name of a hotel that I had found online so we caught (an extremely overpriced) cab and headed toward Hostel 1632. It's not really a hostel, I don't know why it's called that. The drive to the hotel was kind of creepy. We knew going in that Manila is supposed to be a bit of a seedy joint (exactly why we weren't spending any significant time there.) Manila reminds me of those late 80's and early 90's movies that tried to make America's inner cities look like post-apocolyptic war zones with out of control youth roaming the streets. Like the beginning of The Terminator, only tropical. By the time we got close to our hotel it was 1:30 am. We were stopped in traffic when a 7 or 8 year old girl ran up to our car with a handful of "flowers for the lady!' She was trying to sell us the sad dead flowers and yelling "Happy Balentines day!" with her face pressed up against my window. Balentines is not a typo by the way, that's the way she pronounced it. We both just kind of stared at her and Brendan commented n the fact that it was freaking 2 in the morning before we drove on. We arived at a pretty OK looking hotel and they got us a room. It had the Korean style stick-your-key-in-this-slot-to-turn-on-the-electricity thing. The interesting part about the room was that it was about the width of your average hallway. Narrow enough, in fact that the 2 beds had to be pushed against the wall sideways to fit. In any case, it had airconditioning, a tv, a shower, and it was only for a few hours so it worked. Unfortunately the ac turned out to be a big problem, it blew on my face all night and I ended up getting a mild sinus infection because of it. Brendan also didn't appreciate the prostitutes outside of our window that had a 6 hour long screaming competition. (I slept through most of that.)

We got up as late as possible the next morning, I downed some Benadryl and we looked out of the lobby to find the street much less menacing inthe daytime. We decided to have breakfast/lunch in the reataurant of our hotel outside on the patio. This would have been really nice (warm weather, breeze) had there not been the most obnoxious Canadian woman sitting out there with us. We've all heard of the "Ugly American" stereotype. The traveler who is completely naiive about the world outside of their own region and lacks any cultural sensitivity, usually treating the locals like servants or pre-schoolers. This woman was the "Ugly Canadian." Between sips of her 6th beer at noon these little gems escaped her lips at a completely unnecessary volume:
"Who's the president of this country? I'll teach him a thing or 2!"
When a family of philippinos walked toward her, "Oh, they travel in packs!"
To a philippino man (who are generally of small stature), "Don't you ever wish you were taller?"
"Is it rude to pick your teeth in the Philippines? We pick our teeth in Canada."
"I heard this was a rich country, it doesn't look rich to me."
There were so many more that I can't think of right now. She started talking at us and we gave a few polite answers to her questions, but I wanted to get away from her as quickly as possible so we got out of there.

We crossed the street to change some money. We had to change Korean Won to dollars at the airport and then into Philippine pesos in the country to get a better exchange rate. We changed our money with an extremely old dude who had a line of ants marching across his counter and a tiny grandaughter asking questions in tagalog (Philippine language) and desperately trying to lift o 5 pound weight.

Caught a taxi to the national airport to board a plane to the island of Palawan, where we would be staying for most of our trip. There we had a brief interlude with a toothless and crippled man who was trying to lead us to a restaurant or something. I thought Brendan would have a heart attack before he got the guy to leave us alone, as politely as possible of course.

The Plane from Manila to Puerto Princessa

Brendan and I did a million crosswords during transit on this trip

Zest Air: Asia's most refreshing airline

We arrived in Puerto Princesa in the afternoon of the 14th. It was immediately more laid back. When we got there we caught a tuk-tuk to our hotel and checked in to the Moana Hotel and Dive Center. It was a really nice, small hotel with lots of shady trees , a pool, 2 bars and really friendly employees. It was also within walking distace of a few good restaurants and stores. It was immediately relaxing. We set up our dives for the next morning as soon as we arrived and spent the rest of the day wandering around the town.

This restaurant as awesome. It was called Ka Loui and served awesome fresh fish and seafood

The light in our hotel room

Our transportation to the first dive site. They don't do seat belts in The Philippines.

A banka

Some of the other divers

My dive instructor, Rhammel. Pretty awesome guy, but why wouldn't he be? He's got the LIFE.

This isn't our dive, but it was filmed in the same location, a few days after ours with one of the guys we dove with.

What a terrible view

You are looking at a newly certified diver! (me)

The bar at our hotel. We met a cat there and Brendan offered him a beer.

Butterfly farm

Kind of lame, kind of cool

Pupa

The bar at our hotel

Front entrance

A tu-tuk or trike. Main mode of transportation. In these, one person faces forward and one backward. They are literally just kawasaki dirt bikes hooked up to these sidecar things.

Inside out hotel

We arrived on Valentines day. This was a nice reminder.