Photos of Nagcarlan

T.J., Michael's cousin's adorable 5-year-old son!

Look Mom, I went to church and lit candles for you! (except Michael didn't get any pictures of the actual church!! haha)

More candles!

Michael's aunt's house where we are staying.

Cock fights! They have blades on the back of their feet.

Michael's friend Leico. He made all of our bets for us!

Because we couldn't do it ourselves! They have many crazy hand signals, and this is just one of them. It was very loud and very confusing haha.

Taho. A drink made of tofu, tapioca balls and caramel. So delicious!

Top view of the taho. Yummy!

Nagcarlan, Philippines pt 2

On Thursday we went swimming at a resort. The water was freezing cold! It was hot outside, but still difficult to get into freezing cold water. On Friday morning we went to church (your welcome mom). Well, technically there was no mass, but we lit candles and said prayers at a church. I have pictures for proof! We didn't do much else Friday. We went back to the cock fighting place, and lost! Not so lucky like the other day. 

Today was extremely hot! Much hotter than any of the other days we have been in Nagcarlan. 

Michael and I went to the cemetery so he could see his family's gravestones. They are not buried under the ground here. They are in caskets above ground, inside of cement holes. Some of the gravestones are fancy, and have a two story building built around them. It was interesting to see. Many of them were very old. 

We also went to Michael's great aunt's 80th birthday party. Definitely not the same as a normal birthday party in the US. There was a DJ (who was playing music way too loud), and who announced lots of things, and awkwardly tried to get people to dance. That was pretty entertaining.

After the party we went back to the cock fighting ring (of course) and lost a little bit more money. Michael's cousin has a chicken farm, and he fights chickens as well (I don't remember if I said that or not). So the chickens are in a little box that is separated in half, so it can hold two chickens. If they aren't separated then they will fight each other. So the chickens sit in the front part of the tricycle with Michael and I, and today one of them was really feisty. So feisty that when I was stepping over the box, the chicken stuck his beak out of a hole and bit my foot! It's a small cut, but he pecked it hard enough to make it bleed!

Nagcarlan

Tuesday June 12, 2012
We arrived at the airport too early. Our flight was scheduled for 1:00pm, and we got there at 11:15am. The airport is small, and by small I mean about half the size of the CR airport. We definitely did not need to be there that early.When we got there, we found out our flight from Puerto Princesa to Manila was delayed for 2 hours! In the end we didn't actually leave Puerto Princesa until about 4:00pm.So we spent a day at the airport! When we got to Manila Michael's cousins picked us up again, and we drove straight from there to Nagcarlan. It was about 2.5 hour drive.

Wednesday June 13, 2012
Today we hung out all morning at the house, and after lunch we did something I never imagined I would be doing. We went to a 'cock fighting arena'. Basically they have a ring in the center and two big chickens that fight each other to the death. They put a blade on each chicken on the back of their foot to make it go a little quicker. I wasn't sure if I would like it, but it was actually much less gruesome then it sounds. I didn't see any blood, just a lot of feathers flying! So the point of this is to bet on the chickens, and hopefully choosing the winner. Turns out I'm pretty good at choosing the winning chickens! I bet $3-5 on about 7 different fights, and I only lost once! My winnings for the day were 930 pesos, so about $22. I was proud of myself!

I'm not sure of our plans for the rest of the week, but I know Michael wants to go rock climbing (of course) somewhere around here.

I don't have many good photos from the cock fighting, but I have a feeling we will be back there again before we leave!

Pictures!

Delicious Polvoron!

Sandy boy playing on the beach in El Nido!

A monkey in El Nido

Three cute girls sitting in a tricycle in El Nido.

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A boy walking in El Nido.

A view through on of the alleys to the beach in El Nido

Cute boy on a motorcycle in El Nido.

Our first boat trip to go snorkeling!

The kittens :)

So adorable!

:)

No Underground River, back to Manila!

Tuesday June 12

Michael and I decided not to go to Sabang and to the underground river. It was way to difficult and expensive to get to Sabang from El Nido. We loved El Nido and we weren't ready to leave, so we stayed! El Nido was a great place, very relaxed and easy going. I loved it!

Sunday we did another boat tour. Michael wanted to go back to a little beach we found that had some boulders to rock climb. We headed out in the afternoon and stayed until 5pm. There were tons of boulders and rocks and Michael definitely had fun! I watched and played in the water all day. 

Monday was our long van ride back to Puerto Princesa. This time we had seats in the front of the van, which made the bumps much more bearable. However our driver was a little crazier, so going around the curves (and there were many!) was not so fun. 

Today is our flight back to Manila. From there we are going to Nagcarlan, the place where Michael grew up. 

El Nido, Sunburn and rock climbing

Saturday June 9

Friday morning Michael went scrambling, a.k.a hiking that is more like rock climbing without a rope. I'm really glad I didn't go, I don't think I would have liked it much. He said it was basically like 5.7 climbing for 1.5 hours up, and 1.5 hours back down. He did that early in the morning and was back by 9:45. They asked 500 pesos for a guide.

We debated going on another tour of the little islands, and decided to do it even though it  was only for half a day. It cost around 1500 pesos for both of us. We had a private boat and went to 2 snorkeling spots and a beach. My favorite place was called helicopter island. As the name says, the rock formations looked like an actual helicopter. There were tons of different fish to look at while snorkeling. We even saw two (dead) jellyfish! 

I put sunscreen on three times yesterday, but still managed to get sunburnt. It's not horrible but sunburn always sucks!

We stayed out of the sun today because of my sunburn. We laid on the beach in the shade all day reading our kindle books and taking photos. The past two days it has been very sunny and extremely hot! Our room sucks during the day because there is no electricity, so that means no fan and no air. Our room is not well ventilated either. Even with the fan it's very muggy and hot in our room. But we can't complain! It only costs about $8 each per night!

El Nido!

Thursday June 7

We left Puerto Princesa Tuesday morning at about 7am. We took a 6 hour ride in an air conditioned (thank god!) van to El Nido. The van ride was an adventure in itself! The first few hours on paved roads were tolerable. 

Then the road was no longer paved. 

Imagine the worst gravel road you've even driven on. Now add A LOT more pot holes. Finally, sit in the back of a van with virtually no shocks.

The last few hours were rough to say the least! 

Once we arrived it was 1:30pm and we found a place to stay called Davayne's. It's 700 pesos per night with a fan. 850 with air conditioning. We have our own little cottage room on the main road, very near the beach. The place is nice, we chose to only have a fan and no air conditioning. El Nido only has electricity from 2:30pm to 6:30 am, and the rest of the day there is none. So we figured we could survive without it. 

We walked around and found a restaurant on the beach. It was open air and there was no floor, only sand. It had an awesome view of the giant rocks and cliffs coming out of the water. Plus the water was only about 10 steps away from the restaurant. There are several places similar to this along the beach.

On Wednesday we went on an island hopping tour, Tour A. It was Michael and I plus another family with a really cute kid, he was about 10-13 years old. The water was rough and the boat ride to the first stop was not so pleasant. The water was really rough that day. The spray from the boat was constantly in our face and we were completely soaked by the time we got there. The first place was a lagoon where you had to swim through a tiny little 3 foot tunnel of rocks to get to the lagoon. We went snorkeling and saw a few fish, but they made us leave this stop after only about 15 mints. I was very disappointed. Then we drove around the other lagoon but didn't stop for some reason. After that they made us an awesome lunch of grilled fresh fish. It was delicious! Did I mention how much I love the food here?? Lunch on the beach was great, but a storm came in and it started raining, so we got ready to leave. Our guides took the leftover food and fed the fish from the boat. Some people got in the water to watch, and I wish that I had! The fish were literally eating the food right out of their hands! There were a ton of them, and a lot of them were neon colors!

After the fish feeding we went to the last stop which was a nice big beach. It was rainy though so we didn't want to swim. We huddled under a little food shop/bar. They happened to have the most adorable one-week old kittens! We played with them and took many pictures of course. The sun finally came out as we were getting ready to leave and head back to El Nido. Overall it was worth it, but I was disappointed that we didn't get to snorkel more. It cost 900 pesos each.

Today we went to a secluded beach about 10 minutes outside of El Nido. We laid out on the hammock all day and read our kindles! Fantastic day for sure. I'm starting to get a little more of a tan finally! By tan I mean burned of course!

The weather has been better than I expected. It is the rainy season now, but it has only sprinkled a few times when we were out, and rained for about 45 minutes yesterday. It has been cloudy all the time, not usually very sunny, but thats okay because it isn't quite as hot that way!

Philippines

Monday June 4th

Moving out was such a hassle! We stayed up until about 3 am the night before, did A LOT of last minute packing in the morning, and left the English Village for the last time at about 2:15pm. It was a weird feeling to be leaving. I am happy that I am finished, but I think I will miss the place a little bit. 

Today we arrived in Manilla, Philippines! Well, last night at about 1am anyway. We met Michael's cousin Audrey and her husband who picked us up at the airport. They brought us to their house where I met his god daughter Kim, another cousin, Rens, his aunt and his grandmother. We had to repack again, because we had brought so many things that were going to stay with his family in the Philippines. So we packed most things in our giant backpacks, and went to sleep around 3:30am again. Our flight to go to Puerto Princesa was today at 11am, so we had to leave his cousins house at 9am. We also needed to finish packing. So we woke up around 7am, and did some more last minute packing!

We made it to Puerto Princesa at about 1:30pm. We decided to stay here for a night, and head out to El Nido tomorrow. On the 10th we are going to Sabang, to the underground river. In El Nido and Sabang, they only have electricity from about 2:30pm to 6:30am.

Today we got a tricycle, which is like a motorcycle with a cart attached. He drove us around all day while we figured out everything we need to go to the underground river (which is actually a lot of work and a lot of waiting!) and to get a van to El Nido. Tomorrow we leave at 7am for a long 6 hour ride to El Nido.

We also ate delicious food! This food is a MILLION times better than Korean food (in my opinion). We ate fried chicken at Jollibee, a fast food chain. Then we ate BBQ chicken and some stir fried veggies at a restaurant called Ugong Rock. Our supper was very delicious at Balinsasayaw Chicken Grill and Restaurant Inc. We ate some fried fish in sweet and sour sauce (amazing!) eggplant, garlic rice, fresh lumpier (a spring roll type thing), and I even drank the juice out of a fresh coconut! 

Time for sleep!