The Cubicle is empty!!!

Well, if you know a little about Economic politics, the Greatest 8 countries in the world with the largest economies meet once a year to discuss world trade, trade policies, etc.  Basically, the rich getting richer and globalization.  But this entry will not be about discussing world economics, but the rest of our stay in the Philippines.  The summit of our vacation.  But I think that Hong Kong and China will have something to say about that.

Friday, April 17, Panglao Island, Alona Beach:

Still feeling feverish, but getting better, I decided not to dive today.  Basically slept late and read my dive manual for the better part of the day.  Decided to do the following adventure dives to get my advanced open water diving certification: Deep Dive and Underwater Navigation are required, plus Wreck dive, Drift Dive, Underwater Photography.  Maybe even thinking about getting certified with Nitrox.  In the afternoon, Maria and I went to visit my grandmother for about 3 hrs.  No one was really around except for my uncle and grandmother.  Had some snacks and basically spent time with my grandmother.  Went back late for dinner.  Found a place that did good pizza by the beach.  Not bad at all. Beautifull night, sipped some beers and listened to the waves crashing and called it the night at about 11pm.

Saturday, April 19 Panglao Island, Alona Beach

Got up feeling refreshed and decided to go diving today.  There’s a group heading out at 9:30 from Alona Divers and diving at the sanctuary.  After breakfast with Maria, I went to get my equipment.  Our dive master is Zaldy.  Diving with Ian (a New Zealander) and Micheal (an Irishman).  Ian has travelled the world and worked as a Dive instructor at the Caymen Islands and has taught scuba diving while serving in the NZ Air Force.  Micheal is currently travelling the world.  He’s on his 7th month.  He got certified in Tailand.  He’s planning on travelling until his money runs out.  He worked for Three yrs. after school and quit and travelled.  He’s planning on working in Australia for 1 yr. to fund the rest of his travels to SA and Africa.  The dive at Sanctuary was awesome.  Went to about 20m.  Saw alot of bat fish, nemo’s, parrot fishe, octopus, lobster and others that I don’t know the names of.  It was nice to get down there again.  It felt good.  The highlight was feeding the bat fish.  We had some bread in our hands and the bat fish and others would come and eat them out of our fingers.  Scared that they would bite at first, but relaxed and was fun to do.  Zaldy took his regulator off his mouth and placed the bread next to his mouth and the bat fish would come and eat them, It looked like he was kissing the fish.  Very neat trick!!!  There were others with us.  Al (dive master) led a group of 4 german tourists diving on the same location.

After a nice lunch with Maria, the sun was really out and we just had our siesta and finished doing my homework.  Then took Maria for a motorcycle ride in the afternoon around the island.  She was scared of riding because she does not know how skilled I am with riding an automatic motorbike.  Anyway, the restriction was not to go faster than 30kph.  That’s like 20mph.  Ok.  We did enjoy the scenery.  We went to other beaches and inquired about staying at Bohol Beach Club at Dumaluan beach.  But they were booked solid for the rest of the month.  After spending time walking up and down Dumaluan beach, we headed back before nightfall to Alona beach and had dinner at Lost Horizons.  Tomorrow I start the adventure dives!

Sunday, April 20 Panglao Island, Alona Beach

Today is a big day!  I start the adventure dives which will enable me to be certified AOWD and will be having a big dinner celebration at Lola’s for her birthday.

I started with waching videos about the AOWD certification at Alona Divers.  Then Peter Heberling (a german expat and my instructor) went thru my course work for Deep Diving and Navigation.  We did the deep diving first.  We went to Kalipayan dive site.  We first dropped a reserve tank, weight, and group tables (diving chart) at 3m.  You do this anytime you do a deep dive.  We first went down to 30m.  This is where some people will start to feel the effect of Nitrogen Narcosiss.  This is where PH (Peter Heberling) wrote on his slate two questions and see if I can answer them.  First was 3X33 and second was Who is Arnold Schwarznegger?  I answered by writing in the slate 99 and Austrian, Governor of California, Mr. Universe!  He just grinned and wrote again in the slate 40m?  I wrote back OK!  We then proceeded to 40m.  The limit for recreational diving without further advanced training for decompression stops.  I had no problems at 40m.  We stayed down there for about 5 minutes and slowly started our ascent.  At the 3m stop, I took my regulator off and used the emergency regulator for our 5 minute safety stop.  I then deployed the “sausage” which is an orange thunder stix of sorts for locating divers in open water.  Our whole dive time was 61 min.

After a 3hr rest we did the Navigation  Dive.  We first went thru how to use an underwater compass and some patterns that I have to do underwater (a square and a triangle).  Went to Kalipayan dive site again to about 6m depth only.  There we first tested my kicks.  PH laid out about 100 ft. of line and I counted how many kicks it took for me to cover that distance.  Then I proceeded to do the patterns with 10 kicks on each leg.  PH determined the starting heading and it was up to me to figure out the heading for each leg.  The current was strong, but I completed both with no problem.  Then he tested me with natural navigation.  He placed the sausage marker at a certain location and we swam about.  After 5 min. he told me to lead the direction of the dive.  After another 5 min. he instructed me to find the sausage marker without using the compass.  I knew it was close to the edge of the wall and that it was “behind” us.  Instead of swimming around some of the corrals like we did heading out, I swam over them getting back.  I located the marker in about 1 minute of swimming in the right direction.  Lucky me!  Two down, three to go.

After diving and a little rest, we went to Lola’s for dinner to celebrate her birthday.  She had about 15 of her 39 grandchildren there.  She was happy that we were all there to celebrate with her.  We had quite a spread (Lechon, dinuguan, pancit, humba, and a variety of fruits).  Needless to say we were all stuffed.  We even fed some of the guys playing cards at the Bahay Kubo out back.  It was quite a celebration for her and I was happy to be there.  What a long and happy day.  Maria really enjoyed meeting all my cousins, some for the first time tonight.  Ask her about the pig skin Lechon style.  WOW!!!

Monday, April 21, Panglao Island, Alona Beach

Today I do the underwater photography dive and the drift dive.  Simple dives really.  Both dives went to about 20-25m.  The highlight was during the photo dive, when at the end we went thru a vertical cave that went from 12m to 5m.  That was alot of fun.  Drift dive was just watching alot of fish.  Where we went there wasn’t much of a drift anyway.  Hohum of a dive.   That afternoon, went into Tagbilaran City to drop off laundry and get a haircut.  That was pretty much the day.

Tuesday, April 22 Panglao Island, Alona Beach

Lola’s birthday is actually today and will be heading there for dinner.  But had to do an adventure dive today.  Well things got off to a different theme this morning at the dive shop.  Micheal was back to do another dive with the “german” group.  But the group backed out the last minute.  So instead of doing the wreck dive, decided to do the drift dive and call the drift dive the fish identification dive.  I will also add a fun dive after that.  The three of us, PH, me and Micheal headed out to Balicasag Island to do the dives.  The current were stronger here.  On the first dive we immediately saw a Napoleon fish, Then two minutes later we saw a big Turtle, not 5 minutes after that one, we saw another turtle about 2/3rd the size of the first one.  We also saw a sea snake that scared the bejesus to all of us.  But both dives were fun as heck.  Saw alot with both dives.  When we finished I was finally AOWD certified.  Yeah!

That afternoon, Maria and I went to the ICM (Island City Mall).   Maria got her manicure and pedicure and I just got a shave.  Did a little looking around the mall and went to stop by at Lola’s.

We celebrated Lola’s birthday again with more traditional Filipino food.  Maria even tried calamay, which is a sweet rice jam in a coconut shell.  Some Palabok, anicad, had different fruits.  Star apple, tambis and mangoes of course.  Lola had fun as we all sang happy birthday to her.  She is 88 years young!  It was truly a family night as nearly everyone of my relatives was there.  What a celebration!

Wednesday, April 23 Panglao Island, Alona Beach

Today we tour Bohol.  We hired a driver to take us around for 1800 pesos.  That’s about 45dollars to take us around to see some of the sites for 8hrs.

The first stop was the Blood Compact Site:  This is where the local chieftan and a spaniard conquistador made a compact by drinking a mix of their blood.  Then to Baclayon Church: One of the oldest church in the Philippines dating back to the mid 1500’s.  Made out of corral stones.  Then to Albur town to see the Python:  This snake has been with the family for about 20 or so yrs.  They feed the snake 1 pig per month.  There were pictures there on display that shows this.  It also sheds it’s skin, I think they said about once a month, then they make a bra and panty out of the skin.  Then to Loboc for the lunch river cruise.  We had a buffet lunch at a floating restaurant as it navigated it’s way down Loboc river to the waterfalls.  Then to the hanging bridge of Sevilla:  this bridge deck is entirely made of bamboo.  There’s steel cables that acts as the support and hand railing.  The bridge spans the Loboc River.  Then we went to see the Tarsiers:  Here we posed with the smallest primates known to man, The Tarsier.  Maria fed one after it jumped from her shoulder.  Then onto Chocolate hills:  These hillocks are naturally formed and only known to exist around these parts of the world.  Then to the Bilar for the man-made forest, which were created after WWII by the soldiers.  My grandfather was the engineer that laid out the road thru the forest.  Learned that from my grandmother.  We stopped to see Lola for a bit as it was on the way.  We got back to Alona beach around 8pm.  We were tired as it was a long day of sight seeing.  Got some good grub on the beach and hit the sack.  Pretty much dived out at this point.

Thursday, April 24 Panglao Island, Alona Beach.

Maria and I started out late like around 2pm.  Slept in alittle.  We first went to see St. Joseph Cathedral in Tagbilaran.  This is the church that JoJo and Rommel got married in two yrs ago.  Everything has been cleaned up and the concrete work out front is done.  It looks really nice, especially the altar area.  We then went to pick up our laundry.  Then went to ICM to do some gift shopping.  Got back to Alona beach around 7:30.  Went out and got some dinner and crashed again.  Still tired from the day tour from the day before.  This was our last night at Alona Beach.  We also got some packing done.

Friday, April 25, Alona Beach, Panglao Island

Got up around 7 to start packing.  We’re heading to Manila today flying Cebu Pacific at 1:55 pm.

Wen’t to the internet cafe to check email and get some ID photo taken for AOWD card application.  Mailed that out and wen’t back to pack.  Settled the bill and checked out around 10am.  Hired a Taxi to go to Lola to say goodbye.  Had a great lunch there and talked alittle bit with Lola and autie Diding and Uncle Nonet.  Hired a van to take us to the airport at 12.  It was hard to say goodbye to my grandmother.  Can’t really say when I’ll see her next.

Got to the airport and met up with a guy from Grand Rapids, MI who is engaged to a Filipina from Manila.  They were out here vacationing with her family.  We chatted about Packers and Favre and of course the Lions.  The plane did not leave until 2:30.  Yes, it was late.  The plane ride was smooth sailing for both me and Maria.  She was apprehensive at first, but when she saw the big Airbus jet, her nerves were calmed as it was not a puddle jumper.

We got to Manila and it was pouring rain.  We had to walk from the plane to the terminal.  But they provided us with umbrellas.  We didn’t have to wait long to get our luggage.  Got a taxi and checked at the Heritage hotel again for our only night in Manila before we depart for Hong Kong.  We basically rested in Manila and checking to see if we can get on in an earlier flight to HK tomorrow.  Met with my cousin and went to the Hard Rock Cafe for some food.  Nina was performing that night.  She is supposedly the Mariah Carey of the Philippines.  She wasn’t bad at all.  I would say she was exceptional.  Incidently enough, it was here on my last visit that I saw Ariel Pineda, the new lead singer of Journey! What a day and tomorrow we head to HK.

Until next time, Bahala na!

Thursday, April 17

After a long sleep, we woke up refreshed to start out the new day. 

After breakfast and checking out at Trudi’s place at Noon, we checked to Lost Horizon’s resort down the “road.” 

My first impression was WTF.  I think this plae has seen it’s better days.  But wasn’t bad at all.  I guess we were spoiled by the newness of BBC.  Although the new part of the resort is up and running, our room was on the old section.  They a beach, but was only about 1meter wide during high tide.  They have a pool which is nice.  What made our stay kind of not so good of an experience was that they were painting the building during our stay and the paint smell would linger throughout the day and most of the night. 

Paint smell was bad enough, but the small lizards (Tiki) that are common around these parts are everywhere and would come into the room once in awhile.  This of course would freak Maria out.  So, each night I would patrol the room for these things to make sure all is well.  They are attracted to lights.  So, I turned the balcony light on for the night so they would go there instead of inside the room.  How they get inside the room is I don’t know.  They don’t need much space so I can only think the the doors are the way that they get in.

All in all, it’s an Ok of a resort.  What they lack in amenities, they make up for it in their food.  The food at this resort is one of the best on the strip.  My favorite here is the Pork sinigang!  Absolutely the best, next to my mom’s of course. 

In the afternoon, Maria and I finally went to visit my maternal Grandmother Sotera Magdales.  This was Maria’s first time to meet her.  We were there for about three hrs since that the time we alloted for the taxi hire that we had.  We had a good conversations with Lola.  She was just as thrilled to meet Maria just as Maria was thrilled to meet her.  My aunts and cousins were also there and I had to review with Maria who was who and which family they belong to. 

For snacks, Maria tried some fried bananas and camotes (yams).  They’re always delicious and Maria liked them both. 

After leaving Lola’s place, I wasn’t feeling well as I had a bout with a fever.  It was ok yesterday, but was stuffed up today.

With this condition I delayed my diving class to Sunday. 

Getting back to Alona beach that nigth, we just relaxed by the beach and had some mango and banana shakes to cool us off.

It was an exciting day for both of us.  Maria finally got to meet Lola.  Wow, I never thought that it would happen.   But, here we are.

Until next time, bahala na!

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Ahh, Boracay!  The word alone conjures up an image of fun, sun, beach and babes!  I can tell you, it's all that and more! We left Manila on Saturday, April 12 for Boracay.  We flew SEAir, It was a prop plane ... [Continue reading this entry]

Hello Everyone, In response to some comments:  The Heritige Hotel in Manila is very nice, and very close to the Mall of Asia and the Airport.  I was happy to stay there...I guess there were a few incidences, like when I ... [Continue reading this entry]

See My Link M 2008 Manila for pics  Well, looks like Maria found out a way to write entries on the blog and stole the my thunder and gave you all the synopsis of the last 3-days.  But I'll still write my ... [Continue reading this entry]

Hello Everyone - Jaime and I are enjoying a San Miguel beer at our resort on the Island of Boracay and it is getting late.  We are doing well, and haven't been able to get "on line" until now.  We ... [Continue reading this entry]

Unlike Maria's favorite show "Lost" our plane actually did not split in two in midair and all landed in safety on some unknown island where the first class passengers went crazy and started fighting with the "others" that were seating at ... [Continue reading this entry]