Alaminos & the Philipines in a nutshell.

Home sweet home... or at least one of my many. Im now back in Singapore with all of my body parts in tact, so pretty succesful first leg of adventure if you ask me. The last week in the Philipines was amazing. I was taken in by a sweet little family that owned the little hut I was renting. Waking up to a sunrise coming in my window over some "huts" (for lack of a better word) on stilts over the peaceful harbor was yet another sight that words fail to do justice, so I wont even try. I spent a good chunk of my time playing flipflop basketball with some of the local kids, which due to them being pretty darn good was really fun. My best buddy was a little 10 year old kid who was probably the funniest dude I have ever met. His name was Onyok but like everyone there he had some nicknames, the one that the other kids loved was habababa mo onyok, which means long chinned onyok. It was kind of difficult to communicate but he did know one english phrase: "nice one george" and a thumbs up, so we did pretty well.

Anyways at the risk of sounding like abroken record the family was great. They took me to a couple gorgeous beaches where I spend most of my time playing with onyok and the other kids. while trying to ignore the smell of my toasting flesh. It actually worked out pretty well because when I started getting burned there were these awsome rock/coral overhangs that protected you from the sun, so I could sit like a toddler in the shallow water playing with the little pieces of coral and shells and sand in my little natural fort. Pretty cool place if ya ask me. That beach was on one of the 100 islands which also are beyond words and unfortunately avoided my camera due to battery failure, so if you want to see them I guess you have to go, and bring me.

The food that I got in the philipines was pretttty mediocre to be honest. When I got back to Singapore I wept tears of joy while eating a big bowl of hor fan. It wasnt all that bad, but other than the fruit it just wasnt very pleasing to the buds of taste. Most of the meals with the family consisted of plain rice with a grilled fish, and perhaps another side dish to mix it up a bit. The barbeque was very good, except that the items available generally consisted of the following; Solidified chicken blood(not bad), pig intestine(probably one of the more foul things Ive ever eaten, it actually tasted like shit, which I think was due to the fact that the intestine was litterally ripped straight out of the pig, leaving the stuff inside which was just about ready to be shat out.), chicken intestines(see above, only less nausseating because smaller), and finally regular pork which was very good although a bit too much cartalige for my tasstes. There were also a couple of philipino dishes that looked like cake that I almost gagged on, but I still have no idea what was in them. The most exotic thing I tried was Balut, which was basicallly a hard boiled fertalized egg, so there is the beginning of a chick in it. It wasnt bad, although I didnt eat the white part, which had the most remnants of a chick.

The philipino people were really nice, but it makes it frustrating because it becomes much more difficult to tell who is being genuinley nice and who is just trying to get money from you. I found that the further you got away from big city the better your chances to meet genuine folk, like some of the farmers I met in Benaue and the family I stayed with outside of Alaminos. It also impressed me how poor the housing is everywhere you go. I saw perhaps one house that would be considered a middle class house in the US, the rest all looked poorly built, poorly maintained, or in most cases, both.

Overall I had an awesome time, and definately plan to go back someday, especially to Alaminos.

Now I will spend the next few days spoiling myself in beautiful singapore, until I hop onto a train to take me north.

Hope all is well in the western world,
George