Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

The highlight is the underground river tour, which is known as one of the 7 new natural wonders of the world. It's a 2H+ van ride to Sabang, where we then wait in line to take a boat to another nearer location where you finally take the paddle boat to the cave.

We then stayed around Sabang, and saw some water monitors:

tree snake

They had a long zipline over the water, which sounded cool, but the idiots set it up wrong, and sent us all backwards, making the arrival dicey. Sadly Jennifer arrived backwards and hit her neck on the tires supposed to slow her down :(

we all ended up backwards

that's where Jennifer got hurt, being sent backwards

After taking Jennifer to the ER to get her checked out and get her pain and anti inflamatory drugs. Thankfully the drugs did wonders and she mostly recovered by the next morning. That evening we did make phone calls to our doctor to get his suggestions and making sure we took the best steps for her. Due to the time difference, we had to wait until 23:00 though, so while she rested in the room, I went to the firefly watching tour that Arturo had already booked. Taking pictures outside of the sunset was almost impossible though, small dots of light from a moving boat is kind of mission impossible:

wonderful pictures of fireflies...

The next morning, Jennifer was doing a lot better, so we went on a city tour. Puerto Princesa is full of tricycles that can actually take up to 5 people (although not in comfort). Some are quite nicely decorated:

they had packed vans acting as busses

and those tricycles were everywhere

We went to a local cathedral:

We then went to a couple of WWII sites, where general McArthur came back and liberated the country from the Japanese. Sadly the Japanese killed untold people on their way out, including faking an air raid, having the POW go in a trench, and then setting the trench on fire, shooting people who jumped out :(

this photo is a bit funny because it had to be staged twice (i.e. it's entirely fake)

And that was it for Puerto Princesa, we then went back to our hotel to board our liveaboard.

Since we were going to the philippines for diving, we started with a few days in Manila, our port of entry to the country.

Our hotel was adjacent to a casino and was in a really pretty building. The breakfast and dinner they had were both fantastic, however they made us go through a metal checker and bag search every single time we got back to the hotel, which was a giant pain in the ass (they claim it was for the security of the casino, but that's a bad excuse IMO).

After arriving, we had a visit of the Google buildings, and went to see the nearby Mind Museum and Ayala Museum:

From the google buildings, we were able to get a few skyline pictures:

cute

The next day we went to see:

then, let's go to random pictures taken in Manila. The US Army sold all their transport jeeps for $1 each when they left the country as a temporary solution for the transport infrastructure that had been destroyed. Sadly, that solution is still in place today, although the vehicles look cool :)

cabs can have TV inside to break the boredom of horrible traffic

We saw a bunch of museums, most have their own page, but here are a few left over pictures:

from the japanese occupation

Arturo and I walked through Luneta Park, between our hotel and the state museums:

How Rizal, the Filipino (manufactured) Hero, was executed

small Chinese garden

On Monday, we were supposed to go to Corregidor Island, but sadly the boat broke down and our tour was cancelled. We ended up substituting this for Hiking Taal Volcano (on its own page).

On Tuesday, we started with the Manila Presidential Museum and Library

On the 3rd and 4th days, we went to Intramuros, the old town contained within the city walls. We started with St Agustin:

Next, we walked to Manila Cathedral and onto Fort Santiago:

Part of the tour was with the walk this way tour, which was given by a local, and quite fun. He gave his colored version of history, which definitely was interesting.

There was a shrine to Rizal, a local marthyr who was shot for campaigning against the Spanish occupation and power of the catholic church. Others claim that he was manufactured as a local hero/marthyr by the Americans during their occupation (in the process they also introduced some dollars that looked surprisingly familiar, a national holiday on July 4th, and some other US "stuff").

We then walked around the city walls back towards the Natural History Museum:

The natural history museum was last inside the city: Manila Natural History Museum

That was it for Manila, after that we were off to Puerto Princesa, a quick 1.5H flight away.

I tried a new buffet:

Then time to go back to Bellagio to see their current displays:

Gordon Ramsay burger was a mistake, took 45mn+ to get the burger and it wasn't bad, but not that special either: