Philippines: Part II of II

27 March

The last morning in El Nido included sleeping in (I was actually able to which was nice) and some quality beach time. The nice thing about the main strip of El Nido is that it is on a pretty solid beach. Not of the quality you get when you do the island tours, but still good sand and water.

Randomly met up with Jeremy and Kasandra on the beach and we walked the beach around the bend as far as we could go before it became too rocky.

We then meandered back to town to shower and pack up our things. We had to check out by noon and we were planning on catching the 1pm van leaving for Puerto Princesa.

Lunch that day was at my hotel and I enjoyed some more pork sisig.

The van ride back to PPS sucked. What do you want me to say? Five-plus hours being tossed left and right without being able to stretch my legs. It sucked. Oh well.

Jeremy and Kasandra already had a room booked at a hotel in PPS for the night. I had no accommodation but their hotel had an extra room so I took it. They were nice enough to take me to the airport at 5am the next morning for the price of free99.

Dinner in PPS was at a Filipino joint called Kinabuchs Grill and Bar. We knew we had made a good decision because the place was packed.

I tried a couple more dishes I was supposed to: lechon kawali (fried pork) and liempo (pork). My lechon kawali came with mang tomas; it was this incredible liver-based sauce.

Dinner was lovely. We jumped in a tricycle* and headed back to the hotel. This was goodbye for Jeremy and Kasandra. They had a different flight to Manila the following day and were staying in a completely different part of town than I was. Can’t stress enough how great it was to have their company in El Nido.

*Tricycles are motorcycles with an attached seating area. Common transportation in El Nido and PPS.

28 March

Alarm went off at 4:30am so I could make my flight. It would seem like an un-Godly hour, but that’s an average weekday for me, so…

Got to the airport and waited for the flight. On one of the TVs in the terminal there were Philippines facts that would pop up from time to time.

Fun fact: the Philippines is the only country whose flag is flown upside down when they are at war.

(I like flags; this is the flag upright; pretty dope)

Land safely in Manila.

Get on a bus that will drop me at the LRT station so I can head up to the Malate area where I am supposed to explore*.

*This was the great part about my trip to Manila. I work with so many Filipinos that are from the area, they just told me where to go and what to see (mostly Ms. Tet; she was a huge help).

(LRT outside)

(LRT inside)

Manila is…how do I put this…it’s…not Jakarta….umm…I don’t know. I can’t really explain Manila. It is very SE Asia.

(Manila)

I think it is a little nicer than Jakarta. I think the people are a little more (this is going to sound really offensive, but it’s the only way I can express it) intelligent*.

*This may not be completely fair. Not many Indonesians speak English, where almost all Filipinos speak at least some English - most of them are quite fluent. I may be interpreting the language as intelligence, but just the way that people moved and carried themselves in Manila seemed a little more advanced than those in Jakarta. Sorry if that's offensive, but that's really the best way I can verbalize it.

The first thing I noticed in Manila was the jeepneys (combo of the word “jeep” and “jitney”).

I actually had a little prior knowledge about jeepneys thanks to the teacher that sits across from me in our workroom at school. Her name is Ms. Lydia and she is an awesome person. She got me this mug that gives some background information on jeepneys. Jeepneys are the most common public transportation method in Manila. They go on designated routes and are super cheap to use (roughly 20 cents). The jeepney itself started from the leftover jeeps that America used in the Philippines during WWII. Locals transformed these into what they are today: public transportation. The back has two benches running parallel with the sides of the vehicle.

I think they are pretty sweet. They give flavor and a unique image to the city. I would say that at a given time in Manila the road could be occupied by 20-60% jeepneys. My Filipino colleagues complain about the pollution they omit. It's a fair point.

The Philippines is a very Catholic nation coming from their roots of Spanish colonization. It was cool to see Christ-centered messages throughout the city. Anything from “God’s Will” to “God Bless Us” could be on a jeepney or on a sign in the city.

The first place I stopped in the Malate area was Robinson’s Place.

It was a big mall. That’s pretty much SE Asia for you. The nice areas are big malls where you can hang out/shop/eat.

(Manny !!)

(MANNY!!!!)

The mall was nice because I got to hook up to wifi and chat via Viber with my parents in Virginia. They finally got to go see Ellie Katherine after a very long month of waiting. It was late their time and I didn’t get to chat with Michael, Emilie, or the grandparents, but it’s always good to talk with mom and dad. And I know mom always worries about me – especially when travelling – especially alone. But I tell her not to worry. My parents did a great job of raising me. I can take care of myself. I just hope, if I’m given the chance, I can be a fraction of the parents they have been*.

*I think a huge moment in every person’s life, well at least it was in my life, is fully realizing that our parents are people too. That really messed with my head when that dawned on me. They were young, they made mistakes, they had to find their way, etc. It makes me want to pry and ask them a lot of questions. But in all honesty, I don’t want to know the answers. I think if I knew the answers I would sort of think more negatively on the world. Like there isn’t hope for something full, complete, perfect. Currently, I can still look at them and strive to be that as I mature. But I probably don’t want that. Does that make any sense? Probably not. My thoughts rarely make sense.

The Filipinos I work with have all told me that the dried mangoes are so much better in the Philippines than here in Indonesia. So for lunch, I had to check them out.

(sarap)

They were pretty delicious. Maybe it was the placebo effect, but they did taste incredible.

From the mall, I walked to my hostel. It was about a mile and a half, but it gave me a chance to roam the streets and get a vibe for Manila.

Got to the hostel and took a nap for a couple hours. I knew that I was going to meet up with friends of a colleague that night and figured I’d better rest up in case things went late.

(view from the hostel)

After the nap, I still had a couple hours to kick it before Ms. Tet’s (my friend and colleague from Manila) friend came and picked me up.

I hung out in the living room area of the hostel I was staying at in Manila. I met Italian Daniel, Aussie Matt, and Canadian Matt. Canadian Matt and I clicked instantly over our love of sports. I knew he was good people when I said I was from Kansas and he said, “Oh, the Jayhawks!”

Phyllis (Ms. Tet’s friend) was nice enough to pick me up at my hostel and took me out to dinner with him and another of Ms. Tet’s friends, Herbie. The three of us went to Gerry’s Grill which had some great Filipino food.

My favorite that night was probably the kare kare which came in a terrific yellow sauce. We also had pork sisig (delicious as always) and I believe it was called dried adobo. It looked nothing like the adobo I had previously had. The best way I could describe it was that it was like a bloomin onion of adobo. I don’t know. It tasted good, but I preferred the traditional adobo.

After dinner, we met up with one of their friends at some bar. Some people they worked with were there and had already ordered a ton of beer. They insisted that we join and help them finish it off*.

*Filipinos are so hospitable. All of them wanted me to thoroughly enjoy my time in their country. They wouldn’t let me do/pay for anything. They went way out of their way to make my time there enjoyable. Love the Filipinos. Can't stress that enough.

It was a fun night and they were a good group to chill with. My favorite person from the night, I feel terrible I forgot his name, was a coworker of theirs. He was pretty buzzed and kept coming over to say what up to me and he invited me to join a bunch of people for a weekend getaway in May. He was a riot.

(you escaped what I escaped, you’d be in Manila gettin ****** up too !!)

29 March

Slept in until 11:20am the next morning. That is an insane number for me. I’m rarely able to sleep past 8am.

I went downstairs to grab a bottle of Gatorade and Canadian Matt was chillin there watchin a Golden State-Memphis game that was on TV. God bless the Philippines.

The only thing I had on my agenda for that day was to pick up some Filipino goodies for my colleagues.

Robinson’s Place was close so I got the goodies there from the supermarket and a sweets shop called Goldilocks*.

*The reason for stopping at Goldilocks was the polvoron. I was first introduced to polvoron thanks to my coworkers. It is a Filipino sweet that is amazing. It is a type of crumbly Spanish shortbread that is made from flour and powdered milk. They are delicious. They have several different flavors and I made sure to grab some to share with my coworkers upon my return to Jakarta.

(jeepney flo)

Ms. Tet’s friend Herbie was nice enough to accompany me around so I didn’t get lost or killed or something*. Whenever we took any type of transportation, she was always making sure I had my wallet/phone and that my bag wouldn’t be stolen. Haha. I thought it was funny. I’ve lived in Jakarta for 9 months yo !!

*One thing about Filipino women I’ve noticed is that they are very motherly. I’ve noticed it from Day 1 at work. I don’t think it is necessarily a good thing or a bad thing. I think it’s just neutral. It is just very apparent. They are constantly checking up on me and making sure I’m having kids cover their mouths if I cough/sneeze, that I am eating enough food, and demonstrating proper posture (I’m gettin better about the last one, Ms. Toni !!). I think it is kind of funny, but it is definitely the Filipinos that have the motherly instinct.

The one cultural thing I did in Manila was visit Intramuros.

“Intramuros” means inside the walls and it makes sense because it is a walled off area where the Spanish used to live when the Philippines was part of the Spanish Empire. The coolest part was the cathedral, San Agustin Church. There was a museum that had a ton of sick paintings and portraits.

After Intramuros, I headed down to the Makati area which is the fancy financial district of Manila. These malls were a little nicer than Robinson’s Place. The one thing I wasn’t able to find in the Philippines that I was hoping to get was a Philippines flag. I got one when I was in Australia and thought it would be cool to have a flag of all the places I have visited. The only problem is that I am now short an Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, and Philippines flag. But other than that, it’s a great idea.

The last Filipino dish that I was introduced to was gising gising. It was spicy vegetables in a coconut milk sauce. It was incredible. Put that on top of rice and it was almost a meal in and of itself.

Back to the hostel after that. The hostel had wifi which was nice and I spent about an hour chatting on WhatsApp. The only problem was that the wifi just stopped working around 10:30pm. I thought it might have had something to do with the whole Earth Hour thing, but that was around 8ish when I headed back to the hostel and all the buildings had their lights off. Who knows.

Off to bed before waking up and heading to the airport to go home*.

*Yes, Jakarta is my home.

30 March

Woke up around 6am to make sure I had all my things organized.

Left the hostel around 6:50am. I thought I had given myself plenty of time because I had a 9:35am flight (more on this in a sec).

I easily found a taxi and he started to head to the airport. The first problem was that the main highway was blocked off. There was a marathon or some exercise-based event going on which caused us to change our route. Then with all of the congested traffic because of the event, a giant truck stalled out in one of the three lanes that was already packed. I started to worry a little bit, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. I got to the airport right before 8am. Not the 2 hours recommended for an international flight, but close enough.

Where I screwed up was forgetting that I had received an e-mail about a month ago from Philippine Airlines saying that my flight times had changed. I remember because the Jakarta-Manila leg was changed something miniscule like 5 minutes. The Manila-Jakarta leg was moved up to 9:05am, apparently.

I think one of the greatest feelings of relief in the world is when you hear the "click-click" of the customs agent whenever traveling internationally.

I was the next to last one to board, but I jumped in the back of the line where they were taking boarding passes (which was about 10 deep), so it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Philippine Airlines hooked us up with lunch on the flight, which was nice. They were showing the Hobbit on the TVs on the plane, but I opted for the iPod instead.

Safe touch down in JKT ;;

Another great trip. So blessed. Honestly don’t know what I did to have life so good. I can only thank God for the amazing situation He has put me in.

Thanks for reading the blog. I’m very humbled that I have so many people interested in what’s going on in my life. The blog will hit over 7,000 pageviews sometime this month. Cray. If you have anything you want to ask me or need to get a hold of me please feel free to e-mail me at mattsphillips@cox.net

Keep on keepin on !!

Philippines: Part I of II

We’ll start this blog post with a fair amount of background information before getting into my one-week trip to the Philippines.

I was really excited to get the hell out of Jakarta, to put it delicately. I felt like I had hit my wall* for about the previous month and I was ready to get away from life. By no means am I not happy here or am regretting my decision to be abroad; I have just experienced some frustrations recently. That’s life.

*It was a matter of when – not if. I had been told months 3-6 were traditionally when homesickness settled in and you started to get really frustrated with your surroundings. It took about 8 months for this to happen with me, but I think it had to do more with other factors than just my surroundings. My older brother and his wife had a baby girl, Ellie Katherine, at the end of February, so I’m ready to meet my niece; I’m ready to see one of my best friends marry the love of his life this summer (can’t wait Ian and Hillary !!); I’m ready to kick it with my homies for a few days; I’m ready to hug my mom so she doesn’t have a panic attack.

 (the only problem is Craig will def be the cool uncle, not me)

(so happy for you big bruh; you have been such a great role model for me; blessed to have you) 

The planning of this trip goes all the way back to December. I was in a car with a couple Filipino teachers I work with and we were heading home from a couple hours of ballin.

They mentioned that the Christmas sale on flights to Manila was really good right now. I said that I was interested in going there during our March break because that is their summer time. After being told that my paperwork would not be an issue and I would be able to travel abroad in March, I booked the ticket.

Indonesia has elections coming up on 9 April and apparently the government offices more-or-less shut down leading up to election time. This caused the renewal of my work visa to be delayed and it became a question of whether or not it would be processed in time for me to leave the country at the end of March. Obviously, I was a little disappointed by this, but I had not booked anything else and did not until I got the green light a little bit later on; that happened the day after my birthday. I was told that I was good to go and I could start booking other stuff. Sweet….

Except the following Tuesday I was told that I actually would not be able to go. This got me pretty livid because I had booked a lot of nonrefundable stuff over the weekend.

After a crazy three days, my passport arrived at my apartment Friday night at 8:45pm and I was good to head to Manila. Plenty of time to catch my 12:55am flight that night. What was I freaking out about??

But in all seriousness, the school has been very good to me. I have had great relationships with almost everyone I have worked with and I think the school genuinely cares about my well-being.

wheels up ;;

22 March

I ran into several Filipino teachers I work with at the airport that were going to be on the same flight as me*. They gave me a list of some Filipino dishes that I needed to try and a few words that would help me get around. They speak Tagalog Filipino frequently in the workroom, but I don’t understand any of it. Whenever the conversation switches to Tagalog, I just assume they are making fun of the dumb American (can't blame them).

*I’ve mentioned before that I work with almost all Filipinos. I have nothing but respect for all of them. I’m very blessed to be surrounded by them. I hope they know that.

We get on our flight with Philippine Airlines (great company) and I pass out. Wake up and I’m in Mania.

(#hardlyhomebutalwaysreppin)

One thing that is really nice about being an American is that you don’t really have to worry about a visa in most countries. I just showed up in the Philippines and they let me in. It was the same way in Thailand and Singapore. It’s complete BS and totally unfair, but hey, I got that going for me…which is nice.

The first thing I did at the airport was trade some USD into Pesos. The rate at the airport was almost exactly the current exchange rate. By far the best exchange rate I’ve experienced while traveling and it was at the airport.

The next step was to go from Terminal 2 to Terminal 3 to catch my flight from Manila to Puerto Princesa. That is the main city on the island of Palawan.

At the terminal I grabbed some Filipino fast food, Jollibee. It was fried chicken. (shrugs shoulders)

At the gate, there is a TV with the Bulls-Pacers game on TV*. I think I’m going to like the Philippines…

*Filipinos love them some NBA. The teacher I sit next to at work, Mr. Jonas (tremendous dude), and I talk NBA all the time. None of the Filipinos really have a favorite team, but they love to watch and talk about it (Heat are probably their favorites because they are so good and Erik Spoelstra is half Filipino).

Safe flight to PPS and if the beaches I saw flying in are any indication, this vacation is gonna be sick.

The easiest way to go from PPS to El Nido (where I would be spending my first 5 nights in the Philippines) is to jump in a minivan for about $12 and suck it up for the 5+ hour drive. It is really uncomfortable.

SE Asian travel is not designed for an athletically built Westerner. It was worse than the ride to Lake Toba because of the windy roads, but hey, it was cheap and we got there safely.

(the landscape of Palawan reminded me a lot of Northern Thailand)

After checking in at my hotel with Jao*, I take the 2 minute walk to the beach.

*Jao was a huge help all week. Great kid. He was really hungover when I checked in (at 5pm) and he seemed a little out of it. He asked me how old I was and I told him. He then asked me to guess his age. I guessed 17. He immediately perked up and we became best friends. “Thank you! Finally someone guesses my age correct. You’re the first to get it correct,” he beamed. I was a little surprised by the enthusiasm, but it was genuine. Anyway, he is 17 and more-or-less runs the hotel for his aunt. Good kid.

(aaayyyeee (tee_y voice))

Beautiful area. As I’m walking down the beach, I get yelled at, “Bule!!” Out of habit, I turn and see Jeremy and Kasandra sitting and enjoying a drink on the beach. Jeremy is a native of A Whale’s Vagina (I believe that’s the translation) and is teaching Biology in the secondary school at BBS. His wife, Kasandra, is a teacher at the unofficial feeder preschool to BBS; she is Venezuelan and they met in Venezuela when Jeremy was becoming a dive master.

I knew that they were planning almost the exact same trip as me (El Nido for 5 days and then Manila for 2) but we had only mentioned in passing that we might meet up in El Nido. I didn’t want to crash their getaway and I really enjoyed traveling by myself to Thailand.

Turns out, we did almost everything together in El Nido. I kept stressing that I wouldn’t be offended if they wanted to do their own thing, but they brushed that off each time and I don’t think I got on their nerves too bad. I think that turned out for the best because for some reason I don’t think I would have enjoyed being by myself in El Nido now that it is over. Maybe it is because I had such a great time with them I can’t imagine doing it by myself, but I think it was a big blessing being able to chill with them.

We had a few San Miguel beers (the main one in the Philippines) and then I mentioned that the Filipino teachers I work with had all mentioned that I needed to try Red Horse beer. It is brewed by San Miguel and has slightly less taste but is 6.9 instead of 5.0. I had Red Horse 90% of the rest of the trip. Solid.

(#teamfoe)

After a good start, we all strolled over to my hotel and we noticed a lot of Filipino food was out and ready for the taking. This was my first experience with checking off the dishes my Filipino colleagues had told me to try. We all split some pork adobo, chicken adobo, and some pork sisig. Adobo is a dish with a meat cooked in vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and a variation of veggies. It was everywhere in the Philippines and I can see why. It was incredible. Sisig is another dish that involves a meat cooked in vinegar; from what I can tell, sisig is in much smaller chunks, kind of diced up, and served on a sizzling plate. Also incredible.

After dinner, we went down to the Reggae Bar to have a couple drinks.

We got into a pretty heated game of sleep with*, marry, kill that night.

(the happy couple arguing about who they would sleep with, marry, and kill out the 3 choices)

*We use family-friendly language here at mattinindonesia.blogspot.com

Good times with good people.

23 March:

Ok…I see you Red Horse.

Included in my stay at the hotel was a breakfast item each morning. You couldn’t go wrong. The omelet was incredible as was the banana or mango pancake.

Here is a map of El Nido:

(where Palawan is on a map of the Philippines)

(where El Nido is on Palawan)

(map of El Nido; the main town is located right under the letter "I" in Helicopter Is.)

The big thing to do in El Nido is the island hopping tours. There are 4 tours (A-D) and they leave each morning, have lunch on the boat, and get back each afternoon.

Our first day we (Jeremy and Kasandra included) decided to do Tour A. We had heard that Tours A and C were the best.

We get on the boat and the two guys sitting next to me are Danish. I now must kindly ask that all readers be seated so that they can explode out of their chairs in an Anrio Adams-esque fashion after the following two paragraphs.

Oscar was the Danish guy sitting right next to me.

(koolin on the boat with my youngin Oscar)

He had slightly better English than his buddy, Emile, but they were both plenty fluent. Oscar and I talked about all kinds of sports: European soccer, American football, basketball, etc. In passing, I mentioned that my dad’s best friend is a Dane who he met through soccer in America. After mentioning I was from Wichita, KS (#hardlyhomebutalwaysreppin) he asked if I had heard of the Wichita Wings…heard of them? Are you kidding?! I just met a homie…from Denmark…on a boat in a remote part of the Philippines…who knew the Wichita Wings !!

If you can drop the mic on a blog post, I just did it.

He knew of the Wings because of Erik “the Wizard” Rasmussen who played for the Wings and is a soccer commentator in Denmark. He is also a close friend of my dad. Just nuts. Anyway, he was a good dude and it was fun chillin with him on the boat for Tour A.

Tour A included Big Lagoon, Cigarette Lagoon, and a few other places. There were incredible cliffs and even a cave that we swam to in Cigarette Lagoon. There was also a good amount of snorkeling during Tour A. Here are a few pics from Tour A (Jeremy is a beast with the underwater camera):

(just chillin in my cave)

After done with Tour A, I headed back to my room and took a shower and chilled out before meeting back up with Jeremy and Kasandra for dinner.

(the stairs leading up to my room; shockingly no injures occurred throughout the stay)

(outside view of the hotel)

I spent a little bit of the chill time just thanking God for everything. Everything. A great family that supports me no matter what. A great job that provides more than I could ever need. Great people surrounding me while I’m almost 10,000 miles from home. Health and a body that allows to see amazing places on this planet.

Then, being the selfish Christian I am, I asked for something. I prayed for the perfect girl at the perfect time. Selfishly, I think the time is now, but it would be limiting God to ask for something specific right now. I need to pray for the perfect girl to be presented to me at the perfect time. So I’m praying for that. A lot. Those of you that know me really well know that the only thing I have ever wanted is to find the right girl and run off happily ever after. I don’t care if I have to turn in my man card for saying that, it’s the truth. That’s all I want. I’m impatient and I hope it happens soon.

For dinner that night, we listened to our good friend TripAdvisor and checked out a pizza place called Altrove. They had some really great combination pizzas and the food did not disappoint. The only problem with finding a great place to eat right off the bat of a vacation is that you are tempted to just go back there and not try other places.

After dinner, we ventured over to the dive shop to see if tomorrow would be a good day to do some scuba diving. They were expecting strong winds so we decided to push our dive back a day and do some kayaking tomorrow instead.

24 March

Probably the biggest complaint about El Nido is that they turn the electricity off in the city during the day. Silly brownouts. At my hotel, that meant that at 6am, my fan turned off. That always woke me up (I’m a light sleeper to start with) and usually meant that was the start of my day. The electricity is back on early in the afternoon, before you get back from the day's activities, so it is not that big of a deal. Those couple extra hours each night would have come in handy though.

Since we were renting kayaks, we were on no strict timetable to catch a boat in the morning. We finally got in our kayaks around 9:30am if I remember correctly. Jeremy and Kasandra split a 2-person kayak while I was in a single.

The day included us kayaking from beach to beach and chillin/snorkeling. It was a great day.

Some pics of our day kayaking:

("Do you think you could show me Magnum?" "Are you kidding...I shouldn't even be talking about it")

The only problem was that with each beach we got further and further away from the city. That left a massive trip back into the wind with the waves picking up that afternoon. I’m not great at estimating, but I’m guessing it was 3km to get back to the city. The fact that it was into the wind and I was by myself made it brutal. Probably the best upper-body workout of my life. I didn’t check the time, but I bet it was slightly over an hour of straight paddling to get back.

After showering, I lied down on my bed until Jeremy and Kasandra came and grabbed me for dinner. I got that Asian bed. My feet dangled off the end. I was so tired each night that it didn’t matter, though.

After a quick equipment fitting at the dive shop for our 3 dives the next day, we headed to the beach to grab a Red Horse before dinner. The night before we had spotted a Mexican restaurant and we had our minds set on it for dinner. It did not disappoint. The only downside was that they were out of tortilla chips, so there were no nachos. If that is the biggest disappoint of the day, it was a good one.

Back on the beach that night we heard the all-too-familiar sound of “Baloooooot!” from the local children as they were walking up and down the beach with balot. What is balot? Excellent question. I was first introduced to the idea of balot at the airport with my Filipino colleagues. Ate Rhea was nice enough to type a note for me in my phone with all the different dishes I should try. Before making fun of ate Rhea (ate means “older sister”), I have to say that she is a really nice person. Unfortunately, she explained to me that balot is a developing chick embryo that is boiled alive and then eaten out of the shell. When it was first explained to me, I thought it was a joke.

It was no joke. Filipinos eat this stuff! So gross. Almost all the Filipinos I came across on this trip not only had tried it, but they like it! Oh, man. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. Sorry if the following picture disturbs you, but y’all gotta see this.

For the record, I did not try it.

25 March

After a quick breakfast, I took a slight detour so I could walk on the beach on my way to the dive shop.

I got there early and had some time to kill.

(#yahedid)

Kasandra has done diving before, but she is not super comfortable with it, so it was just Jeremy and I on the dives. The other couple that was paired with our guide was from Germany. They were cool.

Jeremy is the perfect person to dive with. He is a total nerd when it comes to underwater life and he was a wealth of knowledge for everything diving.

Our 3 dives that day were at South Miniloc, Twin Rocks, and Nut Nut Beach.

Some pics from diving:

After showering following the diving, we enjoyed pizza again for dinner that night. Was incredible again.

Wifi was few and far between in El Nido so when it was available it was nice to check up on people and let mom know I was safe.

So blessed to have the family that I do. I say this a lot, but I truly believe it: I’m the luckiest man in the world.

When it came time to pay at the bar that night, I slipped Jeremy Indonesian Rupiah instead of Philippine Pesos. Both Kasandra and I were laughing hysterically, but it took Jeremy about 90 seconds to realize what had happened.

As we were strolling the streets that night, Jeremy ducked his head into a souvenir store which left Kasandra and I on the street together. A white dude came out of a store at that time and introduced himself to us*.

*I don’t get the introducing yourself to other white people move. I am not a participant.

He thought that we were married and I explained that I worked with her husband and I was single. At this time, his Filipino wife came out of the store and introduced herself. His parting words to me were, “Don’t worry. You’ll find and marry a nice Filipino woman.”

26 March

Our last full day in El Nido was dedicated to doing Tour C. Jao was nice enough to take us out on Tour C with just the 3 of us for the same price as the other tour companies would charge.

We hit up the main spots on Tour C, but the highlight was when we went to Binang Kulan (Jao didn’t know what that translated to) and chilled there for a while. It was a great place with tremendous coral and a lot of fish. Fishermen had used dynamite in the area to get fish, but the coral was still pretty good. It was off the official list of Tour C sites, so we were the only ones there.

(one of the most beautiful places I've ever been)

(#wigginsing)

Jao and skipper made lunch for us there. The mangoes on Palawan were fantastic. They also made some great chicken and fish. I ate well on the trip.

The next few spots were Secret Beach (it wasn’t much of a secret – it was packed), Star Beach, and we drove by Paradise Beach but it looked just as crowded as Secret Beach*.

*El Nido and the surrounding islands had awesome cliffs and rock formations. Around bends and different corners were small beaches to hang out. It was really cool. A few of the really cool places like Secret Beach were hidden behind rocks and you had to swim through narrow alleys to get there.

At our last beach, Jeremy and Kasandra put on tanning oil. I had never tried it, so I thought, what the hell. Who knows if it helped/hurt/whatever. It smelled kind of nice, though.

Got back to the hotel and showered. Grabbed dinner. Jeremy and I were playing quarters during dinner. He is such a goofball.

He is incredibly immature but in all the right ways. It was cool to see him and Kasandra interact together. They are perfect for each other. Both big kids that are just enjoying life. I’m lucky I got to spend time with them.

That concludes Part I. Part II will cover my last morning in El Nido, my one night in Puerto Princesa and my time in Manila.

As always, thank you for reading. I can’t thank you enough for all the love and support. If you ever need to get a hold of me, hit me up at mattsphillips@cox.net

God bless !!