I have found Laziness to follow me around the world this is why I have not updated my blog in a while. Perhaps this is also due to the fact that I have no deadlines to meet no time schedule to keep or much else to worry about at this time. yes, I know that this world will not last for ever. Or could it, perhaps with all your donations? hahaha. I find traveling to be like tattoos, Addictive.
I seem to be having troubles uploading pictures with my camera. So I will try to remedy the situation with purchasing a SD card reader. I guess I will have to take my camera back to costco. I do not want to start explaining all my adventures with out the images or it will just not have the same effect.
I am headed off to Palawan Island today with Pat Gentry so I will post images and stories asap.
We made it back to Manila just in enough to go have a great dinner and say goodbye to staying out until the wee hours of the morning nightlife.
Of course the first order of business was to pay Glad back for providing us the only possible way off the island. We had to treat his gf and him to dinner. Had he not bought us plane tickets and texted me the confirmation number we may have been on the island even until today. We really had ran out of options. So, dinner was in order. We went to a great Italian food place. Kyle and I were still in our nasty clothes from the boracay beach. Oh well what do you do?
After that we went back to Mike's place got cleaned up so we could hit the town with Mike's brother who had come into town. Mike had shown Kyle and I the ropes when we first got there so I felt I could return the favor by showing is bro around. Kevin is a great guy to hang out with since he has an out going personality and is not easily embarrassed.
A photo of us out on the town.
The Philippines has been fun and I want to go back but it will be nice to be home.
Right after my last full length blog post a Typhoon hit the Philippines. you can check all the stories out about it here: Google News
When the typhoon hit all forms of communication where disabled. Something of this magnitude would never happen in the U.S. Only in a third world country would this happen. When they get strong wind and rain and it wipes out cell phones, land phones, internet, electricity and no boats in the water or planes in the air. You can not get off the island, you can not get to the island, and you can not talk to anyone off of the island. I know what you are thinking, I was stuck in paradise. Boracay is rated the number six beach destination in all of the world and number one in the Philippines. Well, paradise can become a harsh reality of sand demons, water bbs, and days of sitting in your hotel room when a level 3 typhoon is rolling through.
We decided to go out for a walk on boracay's main walk way during the storm. you are correct in the assumption that it was not the best idea.
Pic from under cover at the Regency hotel in Boracay.
Street going to the Regency in Boracay.
people watching the tide continuing to rise.
This is just a quick video of the wind and rain from the Boracay regency hotel.
As you can see from the paper this Typhoon was deadly.
This picture was taken at the airport waiting area in Cataclan, Philippines. This is an island which houses the airport that you fly into in order to get to Boracay. We intended to leave the island on a thursday but the storm was still so strong after 4 days that all the flights were canceled. Then on Friday we paid to stay another night at the Boracay Rengency. We final made it to the airport. Since we did not make it there the previous day we would have been put on anther flight but Cebu Air the company we were flying with canceled all their flights for the rest of day. Which meant we would have to go with another carrier and we were put on stand by. Now when you are in a tiny and I mean microscopic airport they are not meant to handle thousands of people at a time so this place was a zoo. When we finally got on a stand by list we were number 212. hahahah. Yeah right we were going to get on a flight. So we waited to see if we could get on a flight. In desperate time you do unusual things like sit around for hours waiting for dears to come true.
How did we ever leave I am sure is the question you are asking. This is the scenario: we are at the airport and need to get tickets for the following day. The credit card machine is out of order because there is no phone line, atms do not work because of no electricity, I have 800 pesos cash on me, Plane ticket costs 6,000 pesos and they are currently only excepting cash, One bar of signal on my cell phone which is enough to text but not enough to make a phone call.
Luckily I had Mike's roommate Glad's phone number. Glad happens to work in the travel biz http://www.travelonline.ph/ After 3 hours of text messaging Glad purchased tickets for Kyle and I after we agreed to pay him back when we got to Manila. Then We had to spend one more night on the island before we could get off. My eyes were pasted to the window of the airplane and filled with joy when we were taking off and I could see the Boracay beach getting smaller and smaller.
