Photos were taken by my friend Cracklypork, during our visit to the Wawa Dam in Montalban, Rizal last February. Here are the photos.

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Photo above : This is the actual "nag uumpugang bato" that was mentioned in the myth of Bernardo Carpio.

It's Sunday and it's my day off so I'll go malling (hehehe… sounds familiar?)

Next to watching korean/chinese/filipino telenovelas the next favorite Filipino pasttime is malling. It's actually a national sport that should be introduced into the next Olympics, we'll snatch a gold for sure if it will be included… nyahahaha. Besides the usual historical sites, boring art galleries and night life, malls are actually the new tourist destinations. You just have to realize how many malls we have now just in Metro Manila.

Ok, so back to my malling adventure. So for family day we decided to visit this new mall as a short activity, mom has to buy some gift for a golden anniversary wedding which they will be attending at 4pm. This sunday has an unusual bad sunday traffic so we got there around 230pm (so we've got only about 1hour of malling left). Once you get to the vicinity of the mall you'd see lot of cars anywhere… along side the roads, parking lots, parking spaces and literally anywhere surrounding the mall. So if you have that many cars… expect the number of people who are in that place… and I'd say literally swarming in that place. It's like suddenly the Mall of Asia is the most dense place in the country for the day. But the mall is like this giant behemoth… ready to take in as many people as it can. It's big and spacious.

According to Wiki (key: SM Mall Of Asia), SM Mall of Asia is now considered as the third largest mall in the world behind the Edmonton Mall of Canada and Golden Resource Mall of China. It boasts of an Olympic size skating rink and the much awaited IMax Theater which is one of the biggest cinema in the world… take that!

After buying the wedding gift, we have to scram out of the place so mom and my sis could go to their wedding itinerary. I went to the gym in Robinson's Place Manila and will have to go back again to Mall Of Asia for another itinerary… hehehe… see my next blog entry for this.

To be continued…

Sigh! I couldn't post Flickr's slideshow here in my blog so I made a short movie of pictures taken in Singapore.

Here's another taken in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Our worries of last night faded eventually as we summed up all our strengths to move out of our hostel at 3am in the morning. We followed my ex-officemates advice on how to get to the Airport and to cut the story short, we got to the airport in no time and with the least expense. We saved up more than 50RM enough to buy us breakfast for that morning and some chocolates for "pasalubong".

We met a new friend in the airport, he's a chinese-malaysian guy who used to work for a call center in Cebu for the last two years. We hang out together shared some interesting stories and become seatmates on the plane and eventually said our good byes as we reached the Diosdado Macapagal Airport.

Around 12pm we got ourselves off the immigration and readied ourselves to the bus trip on the way to Manila. So we got into the Philtranco bus just outside the airport. We seated ourselves on the last row of seats and placed our packs on the back of the bus. Unfortunately, the bus was already fully booked and we have to alight the bus and find an alternative way out of Clark Airport. Thus we got into an airport taxi and sped our way to the nearest bus station where we can get a bus going to any point in Manila.

In the taxi I just realized that we left one plastic bag containing Cyril's digicam, Toblerone chocolates and other souvenir we bought in Singapore. The bad thing was, the bus already left the airport just as we rode our taxi. We have no choice but to get to the other terminal as fast as we could before the other bus reaches its terminal in Pasay which is a two hours away drive.

So the chase was on! If you think it's like being in the Amazing Race game… yes it was… we have to make decisions fast and fight our aching tired bodies due to the long walks and lack of sleep in the previous days.

When we got to the bus station we immediately rode on the first available bus going to any point in Manila. The plan was to get a bus going to EDSA then we'll take the MRT off to Pasay Rotonda where the Philtranco terminal is. So off we go! The Philtranco bus already has a great lead on us. Though, we expect them to have a drop off point somewhere in MegaMall and that would cut their lead. After about an hour of bus ride we dropped ourselves in Camachille a mile short of EDSA where we planned to take a taxi to bring us to the MRT. Since there were no taxi's in Camachile area we rode off a jeep to Monumento, dropped ourselves to the nearest footbridge and rode an ordinary bus to MRT. Imagine doing this in the scorching heat of the sun at around past 1pm in the afternoon, and this is not a game… it real!

When we reached the MRT North EDSA station we immediately rode on the first train as possible. Praying that the bus we are chasing was slowed down by the city traffic. After around 30 minutes of cooling down in the train, we are nearing the Taft Avenue station I pointed to Cyril where the Philtranco bus station is located and WHOA! just as the train passed by the bus station, there was a bus opposite our direction just about to enter the station. BUS 887! The bus that we are chasing! So as soon that we alighted the train and passengers doesn't really want to move fast at all, me with my big backpack on my bag squeezed through the multitude as if I was in a race for my life. So instead of riding a jeep towards the bus station I decided to walk towards it which is quite a walking distance from MRT station. When I got there (Cy was still walking his way out of the MRT station) I immediately asked the guard to where the bus was parked and I immediately went there. No sign of the plastic bag! Darn! Where could it be?

The driver told me to talk to the dispatcher officer to see the bus stewardess. We entered their office and WHOA! there it was in one of the seats. I immediately recognized the package and the stewardess didn't think twice to allow me to take it. It was a sigh of relief for me and Cy. Instead of going home early and catch our needed rest we are forced to catch a bus.

In the end, me and Cy just laughed about it. We rewarded ourselves with Jollibee snacks to recover.

No more adventures for me this day!

Drowsing off!

ZzzzzZZZZZzzzZZZ!

I am in Kuala Lumpur right now, we arrived about 7:30 pm this evening. The good thing is that our only itenerary here is to workout in the nearest Fitness First branch and take some pictures in the Petronas towers. We were lucky that the final destination of the bus we took from Singapore is just right beside Petronas towers and the other good news is that there is a Fitness First branch right beside the towers. So in less than an hour we finished our itenerary. The only thing that is left was to find a cheap hotel that we can stay for the night and leave as early as 4:30 am for our 7:30 am flight.

We got to a cheap hostel in Bukit Bintang area. Our problem now is how do we get to the airport as early as 4:30 am. Bad thing about Malaysia is that taxi drivers don't usually use the taxi meter (or maybe it is obvious that we are tourist… but hey I do look like a Malaysian… only I don't speak Bahasa Malaysian… bisaya pa siguro!). So for a 10 minute ride from Petronas to Bukit Bintang we were charged 10 RM (around 130 Pesos). If we do that to go to the airport… how much would a 45 minute ride would cost? Second thing is that we only have around 100 RM left in our pool. We didn't buy a lot of Ringgit coz we don't want to over budget our trip here to KL for just a few hours of stay. Good thing that I chatted with my friend Carlo, who is now here in Malaysia on how can we get to Kuala Lumpur International Airport the fastest, the cheapest and safest way.

No need to panic now. Sigh! Thank goodness!

Singapore I miss you! Manila I miss you a lot!

Need to pack my things again. I'll be in Manila tomorrow afternoon. Bye for now!

It's about 9:30 am here and am still in Singpore. It's our last day here and we are off to a 4 to 5 hour trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We booked the bus late yesterday so we got a 2pm bus trip instead of the 6am bus trip. Sad to say our supposed to be one day escapade to Malaysia was cut to half.

Am off to breakfast and have to prepare my things again… we'll be checking out from our hotel this 12 noon. See you tomorrow guys… I'll be back to Manila. Bags! I already miss Singapore.

Am back to home base here in Chinatown… very tiring day… our legs are sore of walking around Singapore. I'll be resting in a little while so I just posted new pictures in my flicker account. Click here.

Zzzzzz…

I have downloaded some of the pictures we've taken yesterday and early this morning… check my Flickr account. Click here.

Am here in Singapore's Chinatown, still alive… lolz… tomorrow will be a busy day for us… will stroll a lot of places and will take lots and lots of pictures… it's our last day of staying here in Singapura and we'll be embarking in new adventure in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur… It has been a very adventuruos two days for me and my friends… talk about getting lost all the time… walking 'til we sore our feet… and miraculously finding the places where we want to go… Oh! There are a lot of Filipinos here too! But more on that when I get to sit down and post a new blog entry for these adventures! That is all I can tell for now… my friend is bugging me that he want to use the sole computer here in the backpackers (yes we are backpackers!) hotel. Bye for now!

Good Friday. Another family day. We went to Sta. Teresita Hospital to visit my grandma who just had a knee operation a few days back. We had lunch and lots of chit-chat with my Ninong and Ninang and two of my cousins. My elder cousin invited my to try basic boxing training set weekend next week. Hmm… boxing anyone? When we got home we watched Tristan and Isolde in DVD, malls are closed and almost no establishments are open. Bored to death of course and have to stay home because of the very very hot summer.

Black Saturday. Have to wake up early again (by my definition this is not counted as a vacation!), we are off to Tagaytay to catch a cooler weather. It's the first time that me and my sis got to have chit chat over coffee with my parents in Starbucks. Weather is great here sunny but not hot, plus has a great view of Taal Lake.

Easter Sunday. Got to watch a DVD of Cassanova just before lunch. Great movie! The movie was funny and full of twists. Heath Ledger rocks! Got disappointed again with Smart Wifi service, I've got no connection from Saturday afternoon 'til Sunday night. I panicked when I tried visiting my wordpress blog and didn't see any of my posts. Was my account hacked? Nope! WordPress was actually doing some maintenance works during this day. Phew! I thought I lost my blog entries!

See more pictures here.

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Boracay… here I go again!!!

It’s not officially summer yet, but the weather is starting to get humid, hot and the summer fever is spreading fast amdist the busy month of February.

Boracay is still on its off-peak season yet (unlike my previous visits to the island), but is starting to gain visitors until it officially opens for summer when the sun is at its hottest and schools closes for a break.

It’s actually my 5th time here, twice in 2005, once in 2004 and once when I was 13 years old. There is always something new in every visit to Boracay, this time I’ve seen the new D’Mall Plaza, a small narrow street of stores selling signature beach apparels and accesories, photo developing and internet services. There are also new restos in D’Mall which Manileños are quite familiar with.

Surprisingly, there were more foreigner tourist than Filipinos on the island during this time. I thought I have seen enough too many Koreans in telenovelas on TV… only to find them swarming the islands during this time of the year (uhmmm… Boracay is still a part of the Philippines? Isn’t it?) . Boracay is not only known for its white sand and clear blue waters (ok… sometimes green because of the algae), it is also known for great diving sites just around the perimeters of the island in which a lot of Koreans old and new to diving are fond of. Schools of fish are actually trying to learn the Korean language to communicate with these swarming sea visitors… just kidding… there were too many Koreans that you can’t help to make fun of them (evil grin!) . Other tourists other than Pinoys are mostly Europeans, distinguishable by the way they look and talk. See them frying their skins under the sun for almost the whole morning or in the afternoon and playing frisbees and beach volleyball with some locals.

Our nights in Boracay was spent mostly on choosing the best place for dinner. The Boracay night spots like Paraw, Coco Mangas and Summer Place surprisingly aren’t that crowded to get some party spirit started. I guess it has to wait until it is officially summer.

So that’s it, 4 days and 3 nights of a laid back vacation on the summer island of Boracay, it seems I just can’t get enough of this island. Sigh! I dunno if I can wait for another year to get another Boracay getaway.
I’ll be posting the pictures soon! (We almost lost those pics thank god technology allowed us to restore them).

On the side : Here is another Boracay Blog written by a foreign friend of mine who was with us during our vacation in Boracay. He blogged some of his experiences and observations on his blog… read on…