I just wanted to let everyone know that I am alive. Just experienced 5 days in a typhoon on an island with ZERO communication to the outside world. I will post again later to share my experiences in Boracay.

Thanks for caring Joe.

Nick

Today is the going down as the "Day of the Museum" Just another day in my Filipino Life. When I first got here I would joke with people and tell them that I am Filipino when they would ask me where I was from and they would laugh and now folks just give me the reaction of "Really"? So, I guess I am blending in rather well, all besides my color that is. So back to the Day of The Museum. We were looking for something to do so why not check out some famous art work? Seems like a great thing to do. So I checked lonely planet and got the number to the "National Museum of the Philippines" and I clearly (clearly according to my standards) asked the insightful lady on the phone what time they closed and she said "4:00 p.m. sir" It is hard to imagine how much sir is said in this country. When then got ready and headed over to the Museum which took a 45 minute taxi ride that cost approx. 3.00 dollars. I know it is expensive. The cabbie dropped us off at the front gate and then the gate guard approached us and said you can not come in we are closed today. He was right, there was a huge sign that said they were closed today. We then explained to him that we had talked to someone on the phone and they said they were open. After about 5 minutes of telling him we should talk to someone else he finally let us into the building. I think he just did not even want to hear us any more.

We get inside and run into a reception lady who then tells me that the Museum is closed today. I told her there had to be someone else that I could talk to. She strangely looked at me for a minute and said do you have any ID. I was like that is strange, but said sure here ya go and handed her my CA drivers license. I told her in less words that if that did not get back to me I would hunt her down. Then she returned 15 minutes later and said the director of the museum would like to see me. hahahaha. I know, trust me I know. I am just moving of the totem pole of power at the Museum. hahaha.

We make it to the office of the director. I think she was a bit surprised to see two Americans standing there. I retold the story to her how someone said the place was open. I then used my charm which mind you rarely works on Filipinos but some one it was just my day. She started questioning me so I just started telling her what she wanted to hear. My profile at the end of this conversation was: College Student, Art Major, Digital Artist, Rare art collector, oil paint restorer, and biggest kiss ass in Manila. A few phone calls later she said "come with me boys". We had no idea where we were going.

The director then took us to the Masters room where all the pieces there have won first to third places in art shows. Just so happens the art restorer was there and he was willing to give us a private tour. Then next hour and a half we had a private behind the scenes tour for FREE, yes that is correct FREE. You can imagine there is much more to this story but I must move on to other topics. :)





The art restorer from the museum told us to go to a near by church for a little culture and art.


This place was built **88 (its old) and just amazing. Art work every where and ancient artifacts. If you are interested I can email photos and stories when I get home.


Then later that night Mike's lil bro Kevin rolled into town. We all thought that we would take him out and show him a good time. Mike has been stressed at work trying to get a portal up and running so he left early and left Kevin in my trustworthy hands. Kevin had recently broken up with his girl friend and in Manila it is perfectly expectable for a guy to walk up to a girl and say "are you single? can I get your number?" so I think he had five by the end of the night. You can only imagine that laughs and jokes ensued through out the night.




Of course we were out until day break. When then went to JolliBee to get a great wholesome breakfast of something that is suppose to be a breakfast sandwich. If you just don't look at it you are better off. It tastes great but does not look so appealing.

All of us then went of to the Helipad to watch the sun rise in Manila. A slight alcohol haze, a full belly of Jollibee, no safety railings, and you think you are on top of the world.




Then I got an hour of sleep then time to catch the plane flight into Boracay. I had a serious neck cramp from sleeping on this prop plane. I just happen to have luck at finding TURBULENCE in foreign countries. Oh the fun of the plane falling.


The long stretch of white sand there is where we are staying. It is the number beach destination in all of the Philippines. It is nice but I have never had SO MANY people approach me asking me to buy things. It seriously is about every twenty feet someone here asks if you want, Sunglasses, A Rolex, a prostitute, ATV, jet ski, food. It is to the point now where I look at them and say NO like I am going to kick their ass. It is nice at the hotel because they keep all the riff Raff out.


Yes, They were waiting for me and I had no idea. hahaha. always funny when your name is on display at the airport.








So this place does have some incredible sunsets.


Kyle and I thought we would take the fast track to hell and decided to go to a restaurant called "The Hobbit House". Yes, they employee little people. The food was good and the service not that great. The meal costs around 9 dollars because I got a beer which was not san miguel. If it is not a San Mig then it is expensive.

"Small is Beautiful"



I finally got to dive today. I went out with some crazy one eyed english man. He was the most normal out of all the dive shop DM's we had talked to. We made our dive at Croc island it gets its name for the shape of the island and not its inhabitants.


here is the rear view of the one eyed english man incase everyone was curious.

This was a great dive, I actually got to see how clown fish live. This place looked just like finding nemo. I highly recommend it here but my hopes are much higher for Cebu where we are going next.

I will try to blog again soon. Thanks for everyone's continued support and donations. Nick

As the previous blog discussed a portion of the trip to Banaue and Sagada. Here are some pics of the last day up in the hills of the Philippines. I think any one could appreciate the life that these people lead. They are not influenced by any corporate greed nor are they hungry for money they just want to be with their families and have food to eat. They get food to eat by growing it in the rice terraces. They do really care about garbage and keeping their little slice of heaven clean as possible. I found the only thing that is out of place here are all of the cell phones. Everyone has a cell phone and is texting non stop. We are in a beat down jeepney people mover in the middle of Now Where Philippines on a dirt road and these folks are enjoying a 3G cell phone network. Just imagine that I can not even get this type of network connectivity on my Iphone in Monterey. Yeah, I know something seems off.





Here is one of the many broken English signs which depicts that they do care about their towns up in the hills. Give it a read, I am sure you will get the main idea.


This here is my New Friend Bibby which I pronounce "BB". He is from Taipei Taiwan and decided to take a 10 day trek around the Philippines. He hung out with kyle and I for a few days and then we went our separate ways when we got back to Manila from the Mountains.



When you live in a third world country you use what even you can get a hold of for building materials. Up in the Maintains they have pine trees. Yes, I know it is a bit strange to think of pine trees and palm trees growing side by side but I am here to tell you that they are living in harmony and are thriving. Since there are many pine trees available every thing is made out of pine. The interiors of all the building are just spectacularly done with EVERY thing pine and accented with pine. Looks and smells great. These are places you would picture to be Oregon Log Cabins. This is the town while we were in a mini market a little girl walked up to kyle and punched him in the junk. hahahahaha. Maybe you had to be there.



This is just one of the billion black smoke billowing 1970s motorcycles cruzin' around the Philippines. Usually they have some thing inspirational to say about jesus.


The Filipinos love their pool halls. In the most run down and remote places of the Philippines you can find a pool hall. If you are coming bring you Cue.


I thought I should take a pic of the third world country social security. If the U.S. Government sent me a letter saying that they will not give me social security when I am able to receive it what hope do they have here?


I did not try one of these but I guess the name is memorable.



Yesterday was one of those days which will be hard to top. It started off like any other day and seemed to be normal but then quickly progressed in to a top ranking day. I use the word "top" as being a day with the most clear coherent memories and one with the most documentation of the days events to prove my innocence in a court of law later on.

10:00 am: crack my eyes open to see the incredible view off of the 37th floor of the Salcedo Tower. Still a little groggy from the bus ride back from the mountains the night before but not to bad.

10:30 Lenie has my eggs, toast, and fresh mango shake ready to go for me.

10:45 Mike's roomie Glad stopped in the living room to finish his breakfast and chat with us for a bit.

11:45 seems like a good idea to get a hair cut today since I still had some remenance of my accidental mullet month earlier but first I needed to go for a swim to cool off.

12:30 Got down to the pool to take a dip.

1:15 Shower get ready to go get my hair cut with mike.

2:00 we show up at Bruno's Barber shop. For some reason there are only white males there.




While at Bruno's I went ahead got my hair trimmed up and the guy was really good and you can see pictures below. After the hair trim I had them give me a shave and a five minute back massage. All of this was very worth the $8 it cost me. Amy you better watch out if hair cuts ever get out sourced to the Philippines.


Here is a close up just to show how close of a shave this actually was. I did not even know this was possible.

3:00 Mike and Glad suggest the kyle and I go with them to this cruise ship to document it via video footage and still photographs. This initially did not sound exciting but we agreed to go.

4:15 we arrive at the 7101 Cruise Ship and Find out that it is no problem to take a tour but they would be filming a movie on the ship so some areas would not really be accessible. This did not seem like an issue at the time so we just continued on our merry way.


Here is the 7107 Cruise liner out of Manila and you can get tickets at mike's Travel Website if you are going to be coming to the Philippines since it goes to Boracay, Cebu, and Palawan.


5:00 we end up in the ships bar room where the movie crew is set up. Out of now where a lady comes running up to us four American dudes and says "Are you the hired foreign talent?". This was really a turning point in the day and I did not even realize it at the time. Of course we all followed that questions "well no but what kind of talent are you looking for?" remark. Then she followed with "would you like to be in our movie?" who could say no? We all jumped at the opportunity. They gave us places to sit and told us to be energetic. I guess when you bring to much energy they split you up. Mike got put up front and then I was still of to the left.


5:15 On my way to becoming a Filipino movie star.


Kyle, Myself, Glad's GF, Mike, and crazy Russian Lady on set.


Due to my unique looks and charming qualities one of the directors asked me to do a quick walk across the stage for an opening of a scene which you can watch below.



========

After this took place there we people approaching us asking who we were and where we were from and how happy they were to meet us. hahahaha. I know I was laughing to myself the entire time.


Then we got to watch a sun set in the Manila harbor off of the 7107 cruise ship deck.

8:00 You can imagine that we all grabbed a plate of free food and enjoyed after our hard work on the film. :)

9:39 made it back to Mike's apartment and just relaxed for a while by taking another dip in the pool. The pool here are hard to stay away from.


12:00 Midnight we all decided to go out and go to a bar called heckle and jeckle because they have projectors to watch the soccer games on. While there I bumped into a old Oregonian friend. I have not seen this guy for 10+ years what are the odds of running into him in Manila?




Hey Natalie, Some how I met up with JT in Manila.


2:45 seems like a good time to move to the next bar.

3:15 we finally arrive at Cuisines bar after the taxi driver literally drove around in circles trying to run up the meter. Yes, he got to see a LOUD American.

3:45 meet a couple of guys who could get us into Embassy (A 2000 person capacity club) VIP status. We got in there and we start having all these dudes approach us trying to figure out who we are and why are we in Manila. Strange? Yes.

6:00 Time to go and get some fast food. Normally it would be Jollibee but today it just happened to be McDonalds. I got the rice and egg breakfast, mmmmmm. (Not available in the U.S.)

6:45 Make it back to Mike's place. Then Some how (thanks to Kyle) the neighbor found out we were there. She enjoys talking with us so she was trying to talk to me as I was attempting to pass out. you can just imagine how great this convo went.

7:00 Time for bed.

ThI got out of the city again. Yesterday we were in Banaue and today we are in Sagada which is know of its great Yerba Buena in these parts. No I am not dabbeling. This place is interesting because all of the houses and buildings here are the nicesest in the Philippines. This is due to the fact they are so high up they grow Pine trees and make everything out of pine. If it can be made from wood it is made from pine. Some of the hotels and restaurants just have a terrific log cabin feel to them. These two town have been great to get to because there is not a ton of tourist here and no one yells hey sir, hey sir, hey sir, Sir dont leave me. I do not know where the Philippinos picked up those selling tactics but I can not even begin to imagine that they work on any foreigners.

Last night we found out the hard way that the ENTIRE town shuts down promptly at 9 p.m. so what that means is you better be at your hotel by then or you are sleeping on the streets. This is no joke. We some how ended up at a local bar to a local guy singing classic rock songs and mind he was decent and with plenty of san mig in me I and not knowing there was a town curfew, we stayed at the bar until 9 when they told us to pay and get out. So when we ended up back at the hotel with a steel door shut in front of the place, the pounding commenced. eventually a little old woman opened the door and told us we should have been back earlier. How was I to know??? Mom I am sure you will be happy to know that I will be safely in bed before 10 tonight since I have to be back by 9.

There are plenty of touristy things to do here which mind you are very awesome things to do. I will explain next to the pictures.

The Philippino's love their smog and as you can see from my wonderful snap shot out the jeepney window that they just billow black exhaust.

Today in Sagada we decided to fork over the 400 pesos and take the Cave Tour. I had no idea what the hell I was getting myself into. This is not a normal tour where we would walk into a cave and say oooohhhh aaawwww how pretty. NO NO NO this was the tour that you get to work very hard at keeping yourself alive. Let me just tell you that there is some serious satisfaction is walking away from the cave tour. They try to seriously down play how freaking dangerous this is when you sign up. It is amazing, I am happy I did it but some where between slipping down a bat poo covered rocks and scaling a 15 foot rock wall in the dark with the black hole of death on either side of me I though wow this is a great vacation and I should have got life insurance.


Hard to tell from the photo inside the cave but my hands are covered in mud since you can not really stand up right on the rocks because they are so slick.


The tour guide said this looked like something but I am not sure what so if you have any ideas let me know.


I took this photo just encase I didn't make it out there would be one last photo of me.

My pictures are very out of order in this blog. The follow should have come first.

The trip to the Corrigedor Island

A statue of General MacArthur who took the Philippines back from the Japanese in WWII.


Building bombed by the Japanese.

The tour guide expressed to us how Philippinos really do not like Japanese. There were a few points during the tour I was very happy that the Japanese gentleman who was on the tour with us did not speak great English. She was ripping him up one side and down the other. Possibly made everyone on the tour bus uncomfortable. I guess that happens when your country was taken over.




Here is the lovely 200 pesos a night hotel accommodation in Banaue. So that costs roughly about 4.50 a night U.S. Not bad beside the place does not come with TP. TP is a very rare commodity in these parts so when you can get it you hang onto it and don't share. Every one is stealing napkins and paper towels from restaurants. I think there is some serious money to be made if some body wanted to import the stuff. You could be like a local weed deal except cooler.



Here are the incredible and eatable rice terraces. What is interesting about the millions of them is that they are all family owned, spring water feed and organically grown. They do not really sell any of it off because this is what the family's here eat for 3 meals a day. I was bummed out when I found out they do not have Taco Bell 4th meal here but I became happy when I found out they have the Jollibee 5th meal. (Jollibee is Philippines fast food)

More Rice Terraces. Please note the edges of each terraces. It may be hard to see since it is so small and yes we took a 4 hour tour of them walking along those edges. There are zero consideration for the possibility of death here. That could be part of what makes the tours so damn good.

Next week we are off to Boracay in the Philippines. It should be nice sandy beaches and clear water where I can finally do some scuba diving. Mike, totally hooked us with his travel website http://travel.groovenet.ph/ to get us the hook up on cheap flights and hotel. :) I can never complain about a great hook up.

Let me tell you about good deeds. That is all I do around here, I am dropping 20 peso tips everywhere I go. ;) (around 45 cents) Oh yeah big ballin'

Nick

Of course the Philippines is great. The wonderful smog and complete disregard for driving rules who can not love the city of Manila? Soon I will be heading to the famous rice terraces of the northern Philippines. I am not sure if there will be internet so I am not sure I can update the blog, will do if I can though. Thing have just been life as usual around here. The usual being that i get up around 12 lay around and have Lenie bring me breakfast get a nice cold glass of water and then shower around 2 then have Lenie bring me lunch then nap time then time to go do something productive like drink A San Mig Light in the Pool or get an hour back massage for 6 dollars or maybe go out with mike and socialize a bit. All of my current available options are a 9 out 10 on my kickass-o-meter.





Bone marrow stew. mmmm. It really was good but I could not eat the marrow out of the bone like everyone else did.


These fish are a not good but the Phillipinos love them. They taste terrible, they do not even clean them only deep fry them.



This is Lake Taal where we went wake boarding. Once again it reassured me that my professional wake boarding career is going no where since I could not even stand up.



Road Side corn. mmmmmm Nothing on this corn but it tasted like it was salted and buttered. could be the best corn I have ever had and at only 20 cents its hard to pass up.


Of course Mike tries to show us the best possible time. So the follow pics are from a party he took us to.


Yes they are Manly.


She does have a lot of chest hair, muscles and quite tall..

Mike, sure does know how to show a guy a good time. When he said we were going to a party he did not say that we were going to a drag queen party. Free booze and lots of laughs made it turn into a fun evening.



The other day we spent some where in the neighborhood of six hours in the pool. It was the first time I have been cold here. It was so enjoyable I never wanted to leave. It is usually so hot here that I wake up in a pool of my own sweat so it was nice change. Then our second trip to the pool was at two a.m. and the security guard came out because the pool was closed (Nothing was locked) but since this is Manilla and we are now Super Upper Class we get what we want and he kindly went away.

If anyone ever wants to know what their life would be like if you were a multimillionaire this is the place to test the water. Let me tell you the water is NICE. It is an effort to spend over 50 dollars here. a 30-60 min cab ride is around 3 dollars, a ice cold soda around 45 cents, a very elaborate dinner about 4 dollars, any dvd you want is 1 dollar, maid in the house 150.00 a month. 3rd world countries do have something to offer me. :)




Since there are ZERO rules and regulations here we partook in the gentleman's meeting on the Helipad. No doors are lock and no warning signs posted to get to this location. It is even more amazing in person.




This is a pic of Kyle on the left, myself, and mike on the right at lake Taal.


Thanks for all of the comments I enjoy reading them. I will try to post again asap.

Nick

I am not really sure how many days I have been here. The days seem to be blending together. I some how have got into a schedule were I get my day going approx around lets say 3 p.m. Due to the fact that the folks here go out and starting drinking and socializing around MIDNIGHT. why you might ask, I dont know but I am looking for the answer. So, we get going and go to several bars which mind you, Mike knows half the people at each place. which makes it fun so we then seem to know half the place. Last night as we went bar hopping we ended up at a place called Embassy at 4 a.m. and it was so busy that we could barely walk into the place. This is a very upscale place since there is a 400 peso cover charge around $10 dollars. Once we left it was so late we went to a Jolly BEE restaurant and got breakfast. mmmmm Jolly bee.

Yes, Lenie Mike's maid/mom is the best. She just got my laundry done for me and ran a couple more errands. She makes sure that all my meals are well balanced and promptly on time. I almost feel like this place is going to help me get in shape besides all the drinking since I walk everywhere and drink 5 gallons of water everyday and I am eating the most well rounded meals to go into my body In what I am guessing would be the past 5 years.



Today I went over to a place called "Green Field" more pics of it below. On The way there our cabbie went down a one way and so he got a ticket. I thought that I may take the time to document the Magic Moment.



Here are a few pics of green field. This place has an unreal number of vendors, i am talking like upwards of 500 and they all sell the same products. I can not figure out how they stay in business. All the same shops, all the same products, all the same prices. Yo no se.



Here is a typical masked street vendor. The pollution of course is so bad they need masks when they are out on the streets all day. I think I may risk my life and try a street vendors food one of these days. Some of it looks good and some of it smells like poo. Actually there are many poo smells through out the city.



This is one of a million "Jeepneys" which are large contributors to the pollution and rat race of the Manila streets.


Jess they have your family's stores here.


mmmmmmm mango filled waffle. This was 20 pesos so about 50 cents and well worth it. I am scared to eat mango since Natalie told me about here explosive diarrhea happenings in Costa Rica and how she got to share it with the whole fam. so, mango in small amounts only.


These people love BIG SHOPPING CENTERS. everywhere is ten stories tall and 20 miles long with everything possible to buy. I feel so awkward taking my camera out that I have not gotten many great photo graphs. Of course I already feel uncomfortable taking pictures in front of fifty people staring at me but then my camera ALWAYS wants to use the flash to make me stand out even more. So, I decided to turn the flash off but then everyone of my pics are blurred. rrrrrr. my camera and I have short tempers for each other right now.