scabs, scars, and scurvey!

The first one Jason has, the second he will get soon enough, and the third may result from our rice-intensive Asian diet.

I suppose we owe you a blog. We are in the beautiful, tropical, cloudy Philippines. Here is what we've been up to:

Our purpose for coming here was to swim with the biggest fish in the sea. We flew in to Clark, took a two hour bus to Manila, then 20 minutes and 6 doughnuts (for dinner!) later, we hopped on a 12 hour overnight bus to a town called Legazpi.

We awoke to the reality of the Philippines... it's a pretty gritty place. Sometime in the night someone had thrown a rock at our bus and smashed the window. Apparently this is a common phenomenon. After Legazpi, we took a mini-van to Donsol (our destination).

After nearly 20 hours of traveling by land, it took about 20 minutes at sea to find the big fish. Corinne was beside herself with excitement while we swam above and beside 8 meter-long whale sharks! Five times! it was really cool. We must admit that we didn't scuba with them, which would be cooler, but snorkeling with them was plenty cool.

So, two days into our three week Philippine adventure, our primary objective was accomplished. Now what? We talked with other people, weighed our options, and decided to stay at a nice remote beach for a while. We're just not resort people (or are we?)

We traveled along a nice rugged jeepney-tricycle-ferry-jeepney combo, spanning some very rough roads. (If you're wondering what a jeepney is, we suggest you google it. Or picture this: what if a school bus mated with a jeep, and the rebellious offspring got itself many chrome tattoos and flashy paint, with a variety of decals, and painted its name on its forehead? It would be a jeepney.)

Anyway.... we got to a really rugged little beach called Puraran beach. We rented a nice little cottage (it had a bed, a roof, and a hammock, but it lacked hot water, a sink, a shower, a mirror, and a toilet seat). We got this steal of a deal for around $6 per day. And they cooked for us! oh the food! it was the best food we've had in a while. It was generally delicious fresh fish, but the lobster night was a standout. Our only complaint? No sun, and lots of rain, for the duration of our stay.

On our second day, we decided to go surfing with some locals. We borrowed surf boards, hired a local fishing boat, and headed for the waves! We learned some startling new math. Consider this equation:

Jason + surf board + coral bottom + 6 foot waves = blood. lots of blood.

Corinne emerged unscathed. She's a good paddler. Jason is convinced that he lost enough skin on his shin to see his fatty underlayer. After some hydrogen peroxide and iodine, his healing is now progressing nicely.

After five days of relaxing in the rain and cool breeze, and lots of reading (and eating delicious food) we decided it was time to move on.

We shimmied over to a nice little volcano named Taal. Taal is sitting in the middle of a lake, and, interestingly, also has a lake in it. We boated over to the volcano island and hiked up to the crater (about an hour). The volcano was still active, and we could see some hissing and steam, and could feel the heat from the ground, but there was nothing resembling lava. So, for now, Volcan Pacaya remains our favourite volcano. (We climbed that one on our massive roadtrip to Guatemala; it had flowing lava and everything!).

So, a week left and what to do? We're sick of buses (jeepneys are still cool) but the thought of more nausiating ferry rides or arduous bus rides are starting to grow tiresome (and we're running out of motion-sickness/sleeping pills). So we decided to stay in the same area.

We took a crowded jeepney and a SHORT bus ride and a SHORT ferry ride to the island called Mindano. We are now in a little resort town called Sabang (near Puerto Gallera). Remember when we asked if we were resort people? A week ago... No. Today... Yes.

We splurged and got a sweet place with hot water, a sink, cable tv, air conditioning, a mini fridge, and a toilet seat! get this... we didn't even need to ask for toilet paper. and there was a spare roll! wow! We are living the life of luxury now!

So, for the next five days (which is most of our time in the Philippines) we will likely be doing one or more of the following activities at any given time: snorkelling, swimming, drinking beer and/or rum, playing pool, sitting on the beach, eating fried rice (after the accomodation splurge, food is the first thing to be affected by our budgetary constraints), chatting up our nice new toothless fruit lady, hanging out on the floating bar, dancing at the disco (which may turn out to be a strip-club/brothel... we'll keep you posted), sleeping, or taking long, luxurious, warm showers.

Also... Jason got a sweet new tank top with flourecent writing. He plans to get a sweet tank-top tan to accompany it. He will vohemently encourage D to do the same when the two long-lost buddies are finally reunited in Thailand.

Enough computers... we've got fried rice to eat and rum to drink!

-Jason and Corinne