So once in Manila we decided to get a cheap hotel for the night...if only it were that easy. On the plane we met an Australian guy who is married to a Philippino woman who lives in Manila. He suggested a couple of cheap places to stay just for the night. Once we were in the cab line, we asked them to take us a specific hotel and got in the taxi. The taxi smelled so strongly of moth balls I could hardly breathe. The cabby told us that he knew a better place than the one we wanted to go to and proceeded to take us on a 2am tour of Manila. He took us from hotel to hotel - none of which we asked to be taken to - and then finally we were so freaked out we begged him to take us back to the airport, back to the Marriott hotel we could see from the airport. Upon entering the parking lot of the Marriott our car was sniffed out by dogs and the trunk had to be opened. Once we were cleared we got out of the the godforsaken cab and went through a metal detector as our bags, then our persons were sniffed out by guard dogs. The hotel was immaculate. Beautiful and obviously too expensive for us...but we had to ask. They didn't have anything available in our price range and recommended similar hotel that we stayed at.
Here's our too expensive hotel room and view ---
Remember I told you our flight was canceled? Riiiight well here's the rest of that story. The day before we were schedule to fly out of Korea I got this email from Cebu Pacific------
Good day!
Please be advised of the schedule change of your flight/s. We apologize for the inconvenience that this disruption may cause you.
HELDRETH/ERICA
ELLISON/STORMY
Record locator: PCZBNN
5J 891 SA24JUL MNLMPH ETD 0530 ETA 0630 (CANCELLED FLIGHT)
5J 331 SA24JUL MNLKLO ETD 1230 ETA 1345 (CONFIRMED SCHEDULE)
5J 896 SA31JUL MPHMNL ETD 1115 ETA 1225 (CONFIRMED SCHEDULE)
For inquiries or rebooking, please call our Call Center in Manila at (+632) 7020888 or in Cebu at (+6332) 2308888. Thank you...
THAT'S IT! THAT'S ALL IT SAID! So my flight was changed not only in time, but location. Stormy sent them an email asking what they were planning to do to compensate for our lost vacation time -no response. Turns our Kalibo or KLO is about a two hour drive to Caticlain (Boracay) and it's not an easy drive! The terrain is mountainous and the roads are narrow. On the way there we almost hit a cow, a couple of dogs and countless other cars and pedestrians. This caused the bus we were on to slam on the brakes and swerve around corners...naturally I got car sick. Which wasn't so bad except the flight to Kalibo wasn't that great either and then we were rushed into a bus, then directly from the bus to a ferry to take us to Boracay Island we were picked up and taken in another car about 10 minutes to our resort. The day was exhausting and my stomach would not quit turning!
Boarding our plane -
Stormy boarding-
We took a short breather in our room before heading out to the beach to find some food. It was a little rainy and over cast but still beautiful! After all the stress of getting there, we relaxed on the beach and had a massage.
White beach the first night -
The next morning we were feeling well rested and ready for a full day in paradise! When we booked our hotel we took part in a promotional deal that gave us a lot of activities. We received our schedule and that morning we were to take a Land Tour of the island. We had met a nice couple, Amber and Tommie, who were staying at our same resort and our hotel booked all of our built-in activities with them. We met up with them and began our Land Tour.
This little monkey was the only one that wasn't chained up :/
Bear cat---Why?
Stormy and I at Puka Beach
After our land tour we went back to the hotel for a little beach time.
Me on White Beach
Here are our new friends, Amber and Tommie.
Every night the kids that live behind our resort make these beautiful flowers in the sand and for a small contribution they'll write your name in the sand! Stormy and Erica!
Amber, Tommie and I decided to take the BBC drink challenge, which is 5 cocktails - promotional priced - and then you get a t-shirt! We decided we would probably drink as much anyway and we all got the shirts, even though number 3 was a killer!
The next day we ventured out to Ariel's Point which is about a 30 minute boat ride from White Beach. We set sail at 11am and returned at about 6pm. For the trip there, access to the cliffs for jumping, lunch and all the alcohol you can drink - the price was an insane $25! We enjoyed the day in a new setting with a lot of the people from our resort as well as some others.
This was the view from the tip of the cliff
Another beautiful view from the cliff
Stormy relaxing on the raft and taking pictures
A few of us enjoying the raft
This was our boat and everyone waiting on us to leave...we were busy taking pics ;)
Sunset beginning from the boat.
Back at White Beach
So now you have to wonder...did I do it? Did I jump off the cliff? The answer is yes. After much hesitation, I knew I would be angry with myself if I didn't do it so I went to the highest platform - the one all the boys were nervous about jumping from - and made my cliff jumping debut... Here's the video!
A group jump
This is the results of me trying to be a badass...a bad ass. Surprisingly, the bruises were gone within a week.
We returned to the beach and had our favorite little boy, Bernie, write our name in the sand and take pictures with us.
Every night and day these boys are out on the beach doing flips and playing. They make a little money drawing in the sand and seem to spend most of their days just having fun. Here's a pic of Bernie being thrown in the air.
The next morning we didn't waste anytime and got straight to para-sailing! The sky was clear and beautiful and it was a perfect day!
The next day at breakfast we saw that the weather was picture perfect. It couldn't have been a prettier day! SO Stormy and I decided to trek over to the other side of the island to get to a less crowded beach and enjoy some new scenery.
These are pictures from our resort at breakfast.
The ants loved me because I always spilled my sugar.. :/
When we arrived at Puka Beach we were surprised that there were hardly any people there. In fact, we spent the entire day on this beach and only saw maybe 6 other people -all of which were just walking past. One guy selling ice cream, he only asked once and left us alone the rest of the day. It was our personal paradise for the day and we both agree that the day produced some of our favorite pictures from the entire trip! We spent the entire day taking pictures and sifting through the rough, coral ridden sand.
SHOPPING DAY!!! It had to be done...so we took the 10 minute walk down the beach to the D-Mall where everything is overpriced! :) It was a nice way to spend our day but we were so hot and anxious to get in the water by the end of the day...
D-Mall
This place is called "The Hobbit House". It has a lot of imported beers and you're served by little people..gotta love the gimmick.
View from our table at lunch.
And another
HAHA! They gave her tap water! Excellent!
Sunset that night was unbelievable! I must have a million pictures of it because it was changing every two minutes, but here are a couple of my favorite shots
Our final full day on the island we weren't sure what to do. We had taken all the adventure trips we wanted and even scouted out the other beaches. The only thing missing was a day to relax. We had seen "Mojitos to-go" stand down the beach and ever since I was determined to have one! Stormy agreed we needed one and we headed down the beach to an amazing resort that served some of the best mojitos I've ever had! We also me a nice Philippino guy who lives in the states. He drank with us the rest of the day and even went out with us to the club that evening...along with our waiter - Benji! :)
This is also where I decided to eat balut, which was listed as one of the most terrifying foods in the world :)
If you haven't already clicked one of the above links, balut is a duck fetus aged 16 days and then boiled. Yeah, I know! I saw it on Fear Factor too!! Here is a picture of one that a friend of ours ate and then a video of me sucking down mine :) It's too bad we didn't get a good picture of mine...it was pretty repulsive.
After a nice relaxing day filled with mojitos, relaxation and duck fetus we made our way back to our resort to get ready for dinner and a little dance!
Naturally, we had to stop for photo ops!
This is our little group. Benji - our waiter at the mojitos resort, Dino, the Philippino guy we met and hung out with us all day.
Benji and I
Me and the Koreans I met on the beach. They couldn't understand my English or my Korean so I wrote everything out in Korean in the sand and that's how we communicated and found out that they live in Ansan too!!!
The next morning was our last in the paradise that was Boracay. We had breakfast, said goodbye to our beach kids and went to the ferry. The weather was terrible and the ferry was rocking out of control. I fell right to sleep while Stormy stayed awake and got motion sickness :/
Once we arrived to the "airport" we were worried that our flight was going to be redirected again to Kalibo...and it was. We told them we didn't want to do that, we wanted to take a later flight..they wouldn't let us. Then they said we had to take a bus to Kalibo AND we had to pay for it!!! It was like $6 per person but still!!! They canceled the flight and diverted us to another airport and then expected us to pay for the transportation to the other airport. They said, "It's for your safety that the flight is canceled. It's not our fault, it's a weather issue." Stormy replied, "Right. It's not our fault that YOU canceled the flight because of the weather." After making a scene for about 10 minutes we finally gave up.
When we got to the buses Stormy was still fuming. We paid and another couple got in the bus with us. They weren't told they had to pay until they got to the bus. There was only 4 of us in the minibus/van thing and we were all raging mad!!! Then as we were waiting for the driver, planes started taking off from the runway!!! The other airlines had chosen to delay the flights rather than cancel them and they rain had quit and planes were able to take off. The guy in the back stuck his head out the window of the van and ask a Cebu Pacific man why other planes were able to take off and our flight was canceled??? The man said, "Oh, those are different planes." Yeah, no Sh**!
After the gut wrenching ride to Kalibo we were rushed to board our flight (we were 20 minutes late). The flight was bumpy...of course.
I took this picture of Stormy in the height of her anger - risking my life to do so.
When we got off the plane, we were taxied to the terminal. A guy sat next me, he kept talking to me claiming that he is a Philippino model/actor. Apparently he was the face of Coke a couple of years ago. Now he's working hard to get into acting and he's bi-polar and people in the Philippines don't understand the complex minds of the artists like him. They're so far behind and he's on of the greats if only they would recognize....or so he tells me all of this. He was talking mostly to himself I think. I was listening intently and I think he liked that I was actually paying attention. He told me that I have a kind soul, he could tell. He was happy to meet me. He also decided to autograph this book for me and give it to me, nevermind that the book is written in Italian, which I pointed out to him...
Once in Manila we decided to have lunch at the airport. Disaster. They didn't get our order right and then they never fixed the order. How many times do you have to repeat the name of a dish for someone to understand that it's what you want?! Apparently 39420395823405924059280459234895 times wasn't quite enough.
We went to a hotel recommended by the airport tourist information desk and stayed in our room for the rest of the day. We ordered McDonald's delivery and didn't emerge from our room until the next day when we were leaving to go to the airport.
Here are some photos of "beautiful" Manila or as I lovingly call it, Hell's Armpit.
At the airport we took pictures with our most hated airline before our departure. OH how I loath them! I even tried to email a complaint to them. They have a link on their website where you can send them your thoughts and complaints...I got a page error and I'm not surprised.
Other than Manila and Cebu Pacific airlines, the trip was pretty much perfect! The hotel was amazing and we were so well taken care of in Boracay that we hated to return to Korea! Back in Korea Stormy was only here three days before leaving to go home FOR-EV-ER! Now I have one week left in Korea... What an amazing vacation to take just before my departure from Asia!
“My life is like a stroll on the beach...as near to the edge as I can go.”
--Thoreau
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