Philippines

How nice it is to travel with no destination in mind. Flew into Manilla a fun and busy city with it's own charms and stayed a couple of nights at the rainbow hotel in the Ermita & malate erea. The hotel was nice, clean and well located and very modestly priced. With my Lonely Planet book in hand i filled up my 2 days there with sightseeing, enjoying the street food and getting to know a couple of locals hanging out at a small restaurant. From here I decided to go to Vegan, a small pretty old Spanish town with nice character but just don't look for what there is to do, this is a sleepy town and taking a horse and cairrage is about as excited as it gets.  Which is highly recommended to do.  This town is very popular to get married in because of it's Spanish charm.

From there I took the bus to the World famous Rice Terraces, I was hoping to cross thru country but unfortunately roads are sparse and I have to go way back south in order to go nort east there the terraces are.       and what can I say, WOW. Besided the famous terraces there is also  within the area  rice terraces that take a 4 hour hike to get there, the views and hike is magnificent and what is unique about this place is that there is a village with about 1100 people living there. There are a couple of places that serve dinner and a couple of local hotels. only 10 businesses have electricity. and yes it is so worth the hike.

From there off too Palawan a great and beautifull island that has the worlds largest water cave that host  35000 bats, plenty of fisher villages and to the north, El Nido a pretty small town with great islands aound to visit, all very local, no main hotel chains or anything like that, a place where you can be a tourist among the locals.

And then there is Mindoro Oriental, just south off Manilla. A 2 hour bus ride and a hourlong boat trip and you are in the village of Sabang. The place where I lost or better yet give away my heart on the third day. I was looking for something peaceful and quite to chill for a week, the last week of my trip. Since I've been all over the place with night busses, ect. This is a beautifu smal place right on the beach with enought night life to get you in just enought trouble. Nice places around for daily trip so you won't get bored and off course who can forget about the friendlyness of those wonderfull Philipino people. On my third evening there I met my wonderful friend Joovie that I will have fond memories of for the rest of my life, thank you for that my Joovie.

That is as close as a perfect woman you can come to.

Slowly we traveled back to Manilla and detoured by the Paganjan river for a couple of days so we can canoe our way to the waterfall for a nice cool and pressurized shower. Back in Manilla we did the markets, eat some great food and just hangedout.

WQhat a great vacation, to bad it was only for 3 1/2 weeks you need about 6 months to see it all. But don't worry, I'll be back. Stronger and wiser. Better watch out :)

If you lioke what you've read, than please smile, smiling is a good thing.