Philippines - Salamat po

Well, I made it back to Korea after a whirlwind of a vacation in the Philippines.  3 islands and every form of transportation you can think of (and probably some you can't think of), 2 missed flights and some of the best and worst experiences of my life.  Here's the trip in a great big giant nutshell.

Manila -
I arrived in Manila at 1:00 a.m. the day before my friend Tim arrived.  I got scammed at the airport shuttle service and went straight to the hostel.  I got a few hours of sleep and then headed out to explore the Crap (sorry, there are cool parts of the city, but Manila and I had some major issues and we are not getting along at the moment) city that is Manila.  I ventured out with some new friends from the Hostel (1 Portuguese, 2 Denmark, 1 Italy and 2 Americans), a motley crew if I've ever seen one.  I've always said the best part about traveling is the people you meet, this trip was no different.  Point in case, the Italian in our group, his name was Jonny Rock and Roll, he has been traveling for 5 years.  Five months ago he got married to a girl from New Orleans, 3 months ago he got divorced from the girl from New Orleans.  Now he is traveling the Philippines looking for a job as a dive instructor...Incredible!  (Side note: keep a close eye on your wife/girlfriend if you ever go on a dive trip with them).  We explored all over the city together, getting stared at by the locals (I don't really blame them).  It was an extremely hot and exhausting day, some of the key sites to take in are:  Intramuros (the walled city) is the oldest city in Manila and really interesting to walk around.  San Agustin Church and Fort Santiago are really cool and have a ton of history.  You can clearly see the Spanish influence surrounding you and it doesn't really feel like your in the Philippines.  Two of the best hostels are "Our Melting Pot" and "Pink Manila Hostel."  You are not going to find anything fancy, but to meet people and for good location those are prime.  Other than that, get out of Manila as fast as you can!

I wanted everyone to see that Tim went full hippie
and washed his clothes in the shower!  

Tim was arriving that night at midnight so after hanging out with the motley crew back at the hostel I cabbed it back to the airport.
Tim was a little late arriving (like 3 hrs.), so by the time he arrived we had a flight to catch in a few hours.  After a few beers and catching up in the airport we boarded our 5 a.m. flight to Legazpi!

The Woodlands Resort Donsol Bay

Donsol Bay-
We arrived in Legazpi with no sleep, but more than excited because our first stop was swimming with the whale sharks!  It was a bit of a treck from the airport to Donsol Bay.  We were fortunate that 4 other people on our flight were going to the same town so we all shared a van.

Our Australian vacation parents.  

We discussed in the van how great it would be to get right out onto a boat and try our chances with the whale sharks. It was still only around 7 a.m. so we still had all day (despite basically the 2 days with no sleep).  We arrived at our hotel, checked in, and walked into town with our new friends from Bulgaria to book our first outing.

Spotter, Captain and Diver

Here's how these trips work.  The boats go out with 6 people per boat (not including the captain, diver or spotter).  You book your trip with however many people you have and then wait until you have 6 people.  Once you have a full boat you can take off.

Tim practicing, picture not to scale...not even close

Professional Whale Shark Divers

  Once on the boat you head about 300 meters from shore and start your search!  You have the spotter who sits on top of the boat and looks for the sharks, the diver and everyone else sit on the side of the boat with fins and snorkel on ready to jump in at anytime.  Once a shark is spotted all hell breaks lose!  The captain hopefully gets in front of it or close enough to it that when you jump in the shark is right there.  It's chaos because by the afternoon there's 10 boats with 6 people per boat doing the same thing, be prepared to take a few fins to the face.  It was a small price to pay to see these magnificent creature's in the wild.  One second you are swimming in this murky water looking all around you, the next minute there is a whale the size of a school bus swimming right at you with his mouth open.  The scary thing is these guys are not going to get out of your way (for obvious reasons), so you have to be paying attention or you will get run over by a whale.  You can and will get close enough to touch them (and some people did...I won't name any names though... Irina ; )  lucky!)  It's truly a rush I've never experienced before and it's kind of hard to explain.  We ended up getting very lucky, we swam with 7 sharks the first day and 2 the following.  I heard that no sharks were spotted on the 3rd day, so I guess it's good we used that day for our cock fighting adventure.

The cock fighting arena

Now, this isn't something I would typically do, nor will I ever do it again but, it was something I felt we should experience as it was what all the locals did every Sunday.  We went with our new friend (and driver) Carlo, who is a local and literally knows everybody in town.  We were the only foreigners there and got a few looks of bewilderment.  I figured I would throw myself right into the mix so started betting immediately (maybe not a wise choice), I clearly had no idea what I was doing and everybody seemed very aware of this fact.

Cock fighting strategery

 Once wagers were placed chaos ensued, money was being thrown through the air, everybody was yelling and screaming...it was amazing.  I went 0-3 on my first wagers but then caught a hot streak.  Everyone around me would wait until I placed my bet and then they would all join in on the same side.  We quickly had some local friends and a few of them won a pretty decent chunk of change (relatively speaking).

The action begins

adding some serious claws

After the fight we treated our new friends to some dinner and beers back at our hotel.  I loved returning to our hotel because the manager Lynn would always be there to greet us, "Hello Brendan Sir, Tim Sir, welcome back.  You are just in time for happy hour."  So you are aware our hotel had 2 happy hours, 12-2 and 6-8.  We may or may not have done both happy hours on more than one occasion.  They may have even renamed the bar "Brendan Sir and Tim Sir, every hour is happy hour."

The cock fighting crew

Me and my main man Carlo

Boracay-

Boracay

Pretty sure they tried to charge us for this picture

One of our favorite bars, and bartenders, Ronaldo.

Well we missed our first flight to Boracay because I mistakenly booked it for 3 a.m. instead of 3 p.m. we didn't have a prayer of catching that flight (as you can imagine), there's actually a good chance we were still in the bar at that point.

Hard to find a bad spot for the sunset

Hooligans

Boracay is an amazing place, known for it's long white beaches, beach bars and crazy night scene (if you're into that sorta thing).  It's extremely touristy, and you will constantly get hassled to buy everything from selfie sticks to massages.  I have a problem saying no, so I have 9 selfie sticks and got 12 massages.   We ended up getting really lucky with our accommodation, since they were expecting us the night before they had given our room away, so they hooked us up with a upgrade.  This was big news as Tim and I had been sharing beds (to save money...or so I told Tim) and been a bit cramped the past couple days.  We stayed in Station 1 and would do the long hike down to station 3 daily, checking out the scenery and people watching (especially interesting since it was Chinese New Year and it was even more crowded than usual).

One of the better bball courts I've played on.
Notice my buddy wearing his life jacket for safety.

 We booked a boat to do some island hopping and get away from the crowds.  The boat cruised us to some secluded islands for the day which was very nice.  On this boat we met our new friends Reagan and Mez (New Zealand and Australia).  For the next 3 days we hung-out with this lovely couple (well Mez was lovely at least),  We went to the market and Mez (since she could speak Tagalog) would get us some fresh seafood at the "locals" price.  I would say these were the best meals of the trip, we had lobster, sea urchin, tiger prawns and calamari.  We made it a habit of "getting on the horse" (Red Horse is the stronger beer more along the lines of a malt liquor), except for Tim, who as usual kept to the light beer.  There was a point where we started punishing him every time he ordered a light beer, we would order a bartenders choice shot for him (maybe not the best idea).

Lots of options

Game planning with Reagan and Mez

Penalty shot!  Yeah, it's all fun and games now...

 Before we knew it penalty shots were being ordered left and right.  I would like to mention that I started my modeling/acting career at the Nigi Nigi Nu Noos bar.  It's not a big deal but, they did ask me to be on their  new brochure.  It was basically me and a few other models,

This is where my modeling career really took off.
Make sure to look for me on the brochure.  

Tim and Reagan tried to get into some of our shots but we made sure that didn't happen.  I got paid in Weng Wengs (hold the jokes), which I was alright with.  Boracay is an amazing island to meet people, eat a lot of good food, and drink a lot of...well, drink a lot of everything.

Reagan, Mez, Sea Urchin and Lobster.  They were all good, except the sea urchin and Reagan.

 Considering all the booze that was involved we were fairly productive on this island.  We managed to do some island hopping, cliff jumping, snorkeling, having two of our best meals of the trip and whether they will admit it or not, meeting a couple lifelong friends.

Cliff jumping...or plank jumping I guess?

Big trouble aka Red horse aka getting on the horse

Palawan-

The reason behind choosing this island as our 3rd and final stop was simple, it was voted to have the most beautiful beaches in the world, and had the subterranean river (which is one of the new 7 natural wonders of nature).  This was the perfect ending to our trip, after non stop traveling and activities (counting drinking as an activity here), we finally had a place where we could relax and enjoy the solidity this island had to offer.

Before Tim had any idea what he was in for.  So hilarious!

Our first mission was hitting up the underground river, which was sorta cool, but sorta just another river that happened to be underground.  Really the best part of this was Tim and I were in the front of the boat, and Tim was in charge of the flashlight.  Basically, the guide sat in the back and navigated while shouting directions at Tim as far as where to shine the light so everyone could see the landscape.  The hilarious part is Tim can't hear worth shit, and even when he can hear he can't understand anything anyone is saying unless it's in English with no accent of any kind!!  I spent most of this ride laughing hysterically as Tim would shine the light at random rocks and other boats passing bye.
After Puerto Princesa (where the underground river is), we took a 7 hour bus up to El Nido.

Entrance to the underground river, and where Tim eff'd up the
tour for everyone.

This is maybe one of the more crazier things that has ever happened to me while traveling.  First, people in the Philippines drive like maniacs, and I mean everyone with no exceptions.  There were 11 of us in a van making this 7 hour trip up north, we left around 6 p.m. so it was starting to get dark.  There was no sleeping on this ride because it felt like you were on a roller coaster, closing your eyes just made you sick.  We came screaming around a corner to see an ambulance flipped over and about 20 locals gathered around trying to help the people inside.  Our van pulled over immediately and we all jumped out to see if they needed help.  Turns out there were 3 little boys inside, some people helped push the car back over while others helped pull the 3 boys out.  It was insane, they were definitely bloody, injured, and in shock, none of them made a sound.  They weren't crying, they weren't talking, just staring.  Their parents on the other hand were in hysteria.  I'm not exactly sure why, but we were told another ambulance would not be arriving for awhile.  The 11 of us decided to give them our van to get to the hospital, we would wait for another ride or our van to come back later.  We unloaded our gear and the 3 boys and their parents jumped into our van and sped away.

Hopefully similar to Heaven

Needless to say everyone was in shock at this point.  We were all sitting on the side of this pitch black road wondering what the hell had just happened.  After an hour or so our van came back and we reluctantly finished our trek to El Nido.  We arrived after midnight due to everything that just happened and really wanted to just find our hostel and get some sleep.  Unfortunately for us, our hostel turned out to be the worst place I've ever stayed at in my entire life.

I don't know...just a sweet picture

 Once we finally managed to find it (it's never a good sign when nobody has heard of it), the landlord walks us into our little apartment and

Lunch on the beach

Love lunch on the beach

immediately brushes a half dozen cockroaches off the counter into the sink.  The placed just smelled awful and pretty much everything had a stain on it.  I had to sleep with my headphones on so I couldn't hear the roaches running around (or so I told myself).  We got the heck out of there asap and moved into a much nicer hotel for the last couple days.

Crab infested waters, we were both
viciously attacked.

El Nido is where you find the "most beautiful beaches in the world" and I have to agree with that.  Some of the most stunning scenery I've seen.  The whole place was surreal, the combination of turquoise water, giant lush green palm trees, hidden white sand beaches, and massive mountains strutting out of nowhere in the middle of the ocean, it was spectacular.  It was hard not to take pictures of everything, and it was hard to take a bad picture.

beach day

 We took boat rides and just walked for miles along the beaches.  It was truly romantic, there were a few times I thought Tim was going to propose.  Actually, one night we had a few too many and he did propose (not sure he remembers this, and I never brought it up again...sorry Tim).  Our last stop was back in Manila for a night (which turned into 2 for me) and then flying back home.

Sunset in El Nido

Manila, again-
We stayed at Our Melting Pot again because it is right on Makati Ave and right across the street from the market.  Our plan was to go through this market and eat all the crazy absurd food we could find.  We did manage to get some intestine, ear, liver and best of all Balot (balot is a fertilized egg which sits in the sun for 9 days while the embryo matures, after the 9th day the egg is boiled and then sold on the streets usually with some salt or vinegar.)  I had eaten one in Boracay, so I had been bugging Tim to do the same (so nasty by the way, although I wasn't telling Tim this at the time).

Balot...so nasty!

 We finished our night with some midget boxing, which I had the honor of reffing, don't worry, I called a good clean fight.

I guess not everyone thought I called a fair fight.
What can you do...

 That was something I certainly never imagined doing, but I am adding it to and checking it off my bucket list...Bam!

I'm not going into anymore details on the rest of the night/next day.  I told myself I would never think about it or talk about it, plus my parents read this blog.

Overall I can say, minus the last night/day, the trip was indeed a trip of a lifetime.  The things we saw and did are beyond what I could have imagined.  The people we met and friendships we made are still somehow the best part of the trip (o.k. except for Reagan, kinda regretting that one).  The locals are extremely friendly and courteous, I am going to miss being called Brendan Sir and hearing all the ladies called Mom, I absolutely loved that!  I love everything about the Philippines, the people, the culture, the land, the water, the food!  I will be back one day for sure, I am just going to give them time to restock some Red Horse.

Salamat po Philippines, you got us good, you got us real good!

Special shout out to Steve Mack for always being there for me no matter how ridiculous of a situation I get myself into!  I can always count on you buddy!
David, thank you for coming to rescue me from Incheon airport.  I'm not sure what I would have done had you not been able to swoop me up, set us up with a hostel and some food, and most importantly, hooked us up with VIP tickets to the Starcraft championship in Seoul.  I love you guys!

StarCraft Finals, VIP...No big deal
(I was so clueless as to what was going on, shhhh)