Travel Ninjas

Kim and I flew to the Philippines last weekend for $175 each.  It was just a regular old weekend...not a 3-day, not a holiday.  That was why it was so cheap.  We knew we were crazy...but who could resist that price?  For those of you who don't know, the Philippines are like the Caribbean...tropical islands.  We could leave really early Saturday morning, get to Manila by 10:30am, and spend the day shopping.  On Sunday, we could take a day trip out of Manila, and still have time to do some more shopping and eat dinner and rest at the hotel.  We would leave that night at midnight and get to Seoul at 6am, in time to get to work on Monday.

The idea was totally nuts.  And we were just crazy enough to go through with it.  Of course, when we purchased the tickets about 3 months ago, I had no idea that I would be at a brand new job.  Suddenly, the idea didn't seem so hot.  The Monday before we left, I messaged Kim.

"Are we sure we want to do this?"  I could only think about how tired I'd be next Monday at work...or even worse scenarios, like our flight being delayed...or cancelled!  What were we thinking?


By Wednesday I realized that the trip was happening no matter what, so I may as well look forward to it.  I began self-medicating with as many raw vegetables as possible.  By Friday I felt on top of the world!  Yay!!!  We're going to Manila!

"Why are you going to Maniller?" my friend Gene from my new school asked me in her South African accent.  "Maniller is awful!"

Awful?  This had to be good.  It sounded right up my alley!  The grittier the better, in my opinion.  She had no idea she was single-handedly talking me into it.

Our plan for Manilla was simple:  Arrive Saturday morning by plane, take a cab to our hotel, grab a bite to eat, and go shopping/sight-seeing.  We could hit Chinatown, then go to one of Manila's famous shopping malls.  On Sunday, we planned a day trip to a spa/resort outside of Manila in the rainforest where you could swim in pools filled with natural spring water.  We'd get back to the city by 6pm, in time to shower, have dinner, and go to another mall to shop before having to return to the airport.

Friday night, I met Kim at Zelen in Itaewon for some Bulgarian food.  Then we walked back to my apartment and she spent the night on my fold-out couch.  My alarm was set for 4am.  When it went off, we slowly got up, grabbed our bags, and hopped into a cab.

The sun rising at the Seoul airport

We were at our hotel in Manila by 10:30am. It was surprisingly close to the airport.  On the way, we saw dirty streets absolutely crawling with activity and numerous blatantly obvious brothels.  I soaked in the unfamiliar views with relish.  Our hotel was nice--the air conditioner was already on when we got inside...there were 2 beds with 3 pillows each...and a bathroom with a real bathtub/shower!  It was really funny...I hadn't stood in a bathtub in so long, I literally almost fell over.  "What's this?" I thought.  "The sides sort of bend, and go up!  I can't put my feet there!"  It was uncomfortably weird not just standing in the middle of my bathroom floor to shower.

The first thing we did was hop in a cab and say, "Chinatown!"  Kim had read that it was pretty cool.  Actually, a better description would probably be "sketchy and disturbing," but that certainly didn't make me like it any less.  There was really nothing China-y about it, though.  It was a great place, however, to buy a blank or screen-printed t-shirt in any color you wanted, or cheap Christmas decorations.  We saw delicious, unfamiliar fruits there.  We also saw children working and begging for food, a woman bathing herself and her children in a polluted river, and naked babies taking their afternoon naps on cardboard boxes.

It's the price you pay when you want to go somewhere dirt cheap and tropical.  I felt like the poverty here far surpassed what I had seen before, even in Thailand.

It's not that I enjoy seeing hungry children in nothing but a dirty, oversized T-shirt, motioning towards their mouths that they'd like to eat something.  It's just that I appreciate gaining perspective.  There's absolutely no reason why I should have it this good and they shouldn't.  I just do.  It just happened that way.  Blessings.  I'm not better than anybody else, and they're not better than me.  You've heard the phrase, "It's tough in the streets."  Well, it's true...but you and I will never know it like they do.

A man selling bananas in Chinatown

T-shirts for sale

Children working a street stand

Toys for sale

Gorgeous grapes!

The outside of this fruit looks like a spiky football...the inside like a grapefruit.  It tasted similar to grapefruit, just milder and kind of dry

Pretty vegetables!

Happy children

Crowded with people, various vehicles, and electrical wires

Straight out of a "Feed the Children" commercial

Christmas decorations in October?  Reminds me of home!

Selling curtains

This fruit was similar to a lychee, but different....yummy!

Crowded puppies for sale

Live bunnies piled on top of each other

Chinatown was sketchy--but ALIVE!

But the people were very friendly.

They are obsessed with Angry Birds in Asia.

...and it really is.

I honestly don't know what that is on her head...cool!

Men chillin' in the back of the truck

Families living on the streets

Homeless baby

This is a city bus!  They had 2 long benches in the back to sit on.

I saw people bathing in this river.

More people living in the streets

Once Kim and I were sufficiently sketched out, we did something even more sketchy...we hopped in a motorcycle cab to get the heck out of there! (See "Families living on the streets" photo above)

"Oh!  So this is why I got that tetanus shot before I left home!" I thought to myself as we squished into the rusty side compartment together.   It's nice when something you've done, which previously seemed annoying and pointless, suddenly has merit and meaning.

I'm psyched--Kim's scared.  This is what happens when you travel with me...

"Don't picture yourself falling out of this contraption, rolling onto the street, and getting run over by that truck, Annie, just don't..." went my internal dialog.

Our driver...and a picture of Jesus just in case you get scared.

He took us to "Intramuros," which is an area of town from the Spanish Colonial Period.  The Philippines definitely has a Spanish flair to it...you'll hear them speaking their unfamiliar dialects with each other, with a familiar Spanish word thrown in here and there...most notably, the numbers.  I heard my cab driver speaking with the lady at the airport and it was like, "Blah blah blah blah blah cinquenta blah blah blah..."  Interesting!

A tour guide found us in front of the big Catholic cathedral and offered to take us around Intramuros in his rickety horse-driven carriage.  We took him up on his offer.  He was a funny little man, and spoke fluent English, just like everyone else in Manila seemed to.  He took us inside the cathedral, where an actual wedding was currently taking place, and upstairs to the balcony, where we could watch the bride walk down the aisle and take pictures.  Other than the palm trees growing in the humongous courtyard, it felt like we were in Europe!  He told us interesting things about the Spanish times, and how the Philippines are 85% Catholic.  He also took us to some interesting ruins that reminded me of the inside of the Roman Colosseum, only much smaller, and with more moss growing on it.

"Those were the dungeons," he told us.  "They would open a gate and flood it with water from the ocean and drown the people inside," he said, pointing to the ocean, which we could see from where we were standing.  Now they are just a prime breeding ground for dragonflies, which were swarming above our heads by the millions, like little fairies.

Big Spanish cathedral at Intramuros

Part of the cathedral

The beautiful courtyard

Inside the domed ceiling

Stained-glass window

Inside the cathedral--a wedding is going on!

Here comes the bride...

Our funny little pipsqueak tour guide

He took about a hundred awkward pictures of us in various places 

Bright green moss growing up the stairs at some ruins

These used to be the dungeons they would flood!  Now it's a dragonfly nursery.

A picture of us at the dungeon ruins

The tour had definitely been worth the price.  Our guide took us around for 2 and a half hours to different places.  He also fancied himself a photographer, and kept insisting on using our cameras to get pictures of us in random places.  When he'd take one he liked, he'd look at it and go, "NICE!" with enthusiastic zeal.  But getting in and out of that horse carriage was tricky, to say the least!  We didn't go too fast, and at one point, some children, who were playing in the street, decided to follow us.  One of them flipped me two birds as I took his picture...classic!

Our tour guide/photographer taking Kim's picture in a pretty garden

Here come some kids!

The best picture I took in Manila

Wow, this one's caught us!  This can't be safe...we are moving!

Look at this cutie.

We had our tour guide drop us off where we could catch a (real) cab when we were finished.  Next, we went to a big mall!  It was like being in the States...an indoor mall, with actual separate stores with doors on them and everything!  One big difference, though, was that we had to get metal detected on our way in!  It was obvious from that, and from the numerous anti-gun bilboards along the highway, that the Philippines hosts a problem of violent crime--something which is fortunately virtually unheard of in Korea.

At the mall I easily found a vegetarian dinner, and we decided to treat our weary feet to a full pedicure, complete with a leg scrub to the knee and massage.  After all, it was less than $10.

While we were there, a flamingly gay guy in tiny shorts came in to get a pedicure alongside us.  It's always refreshing to see an openly gay person, because in Korea they are unfortunately very closeted still.  He told us he used to be a cheerleader, but now is a cheerleading coach.  The women in the salon loved him...and so did we!

There was no one in the "Male" line.  It was pretty funny.

Kim getting her bag looked in

Happy getting pedicures

Our new flamboyantly gay friend in short-shorts, also getting a pedicure

Inside one of the malls--it was really nice!

The next morning we woke up at 7am to get picked up by a van taking us on our day trip outside of the city.  In the first van, we met a couple from Kentucky in their 70's who had been all over the world and told us about some of their adventures.  They'd trekked through Tibet and taken cars through Laos and Cambodia, for example.  "We decided when we turned 30 that we were going to take a different trip every year.  That's what we wanted to spend our money on," they explained.  They emphasized how important it is to travel...and not just when you're old.  "Too many people wait until they retire to travel," they explained, "when they could have gained so much useful insight to use throughout their whole lives."  I could have talked to them all day long, but they were on their way to a volcano, and we parted ways after about 30 minutes, when we were put in separate vans.

We had thought about doing the volcano day trip, which was supposed to have spectacular views, but had decided instead to go into the forest and swim, since it was going to be a cloudy, rainy day anyways.  It had been the right decision.  The van drove us through more rural parts of the island, which provided charming views and glimpses into various people's lives.  The guide would tell us interesting tidbits of information, and have the driver pull over to let us taste the different fruits being sold on the side of the road, or see the switchblades for sale.  "It's well-known in the Philippines that if you meet someone from this town, you don't mess with them.  They all have these switchblades, called "balisong," which are made here locally," he told us.

He also told us about how there are hundreds of different dialects spoken in the Philippines, and that's why everyone speaks English.  They all have such different languages, they use English to communicate!  No wonder every sign is in English, and we heard people using English, not just with us, but with each other much of the time!

The resort was amazing.  It was full of fantastic foliage...leaves that stood out hot pink against a green backdrop, exotic flowers, and huge trees whose roots grew out in giant wedges.  We also saw cocoa trees!  First we had lunch.  I ate some kind of cooked leaves on rice that reminded me of Indian food.  Then, we changed clothes and walked past the amazing swimming pools, some filled with cool spring water, and others with warm spring water (coming from two different springs), and down a path through the forest to the hidden waterfall.  Then we went back to the pools and swam in the pouring rain for a couple of hours. There's really nothing that feels better than being outdoors in the rain and it doesn't matter you're getting soaked.  It's incredible!  There's also something amazing about swimming in clean, clear water that is neither salty nor chlorinated.  Since the water is coming directly from natural springs, it is constantly flowing in and out of the pool, keeping it amazingly clean...and the temperatures were perfect!  One felt slightly cool, and the other one was like a bath!

Chocolate grows inside those big pods!

Hot pink leaves

Huge trees

Two of the pools

Kim got in the picture so you could see how huge this tree is!

Roots growing out in wedges

The "hidden" waterfall

While switching from the cool to the warm pools in the pouring rain, I clumsily slipped on the wet slate sidewalk like a cartoon on a banana peel, scraping my elbow and palms.  But I didn't care.  I let them bleed.

"Kim, we only got here yesterday...and we've seen so much crazy stuff!  Chinatown, a mall like in America, exotic plants and fruits, cathedrals, dungeon ruins--and now we're swimming in spring water pools in the rainforest?" I marveled.

"Yeah--we are ninjas!" she replied.

And we even made it to work on Monday--on time.