Photo post! - Philippines Edition

Sunset and my knees on White Beach

The boats lined up for the night, Tom reading, and some hipster.

In the middle is the most slatternly dish on the island - Wanton Noodles

A picture of other people taking pictures of the sunset!

The local rhum, which Tom assures me is good - 40 pesos = $1.20

The Hobbit House bar and restaurant. ALL of the staff are Little People. 

A blended mojito on the beach for dinner - yum!

Scorpion?

Icecream, Filipino-style. Mine were avocado (green) and yam (purple)

Tom's were melon (orange) and CHEESE! (yellow)

A little bit of NZ with Tom's breakfast!

A chubby with a Chubby - I've sent a few of these back home!

On Saturday, kids prowled the beach selling jewellery. It made me sad, but they were experts at being annoying.

Tom and I in a tricycle on the way to the airport - scary but awesome.

How Was Your Vacation? - Lesson 2

After 3 blissful nights at Baling Hai we moved a little closer to Boracay's White Beach and spent 5 nights at Frendz Resort. Frendz wasn't as shiny or quiet as Baling Hai but it was cheap and clean, the staff were friendly and amazingly helpful and it's a short walk to 'the Beach.'

White Beach is what Boracay's famous for. It's a 4 kilometre long stretch of white sand lined with resorts, restaurants, masseuses and hawkers selling sunglasses, pearls, tattoos and boat trips. It's touristy as all hell but it's gorgeous. Postcard gorgeous. Pinch yourself gorgeous. Heartbreak gorgeous. Okay, I'll stop typing and let the pictures speak for themselves:

The resort provided some beach chairs and for most of our 6 day stay we sat on the shore, sipping fresh pineapple juice, reading and swimming. The temperature was between 25 and 30 degrees and it was about right, I'd say. The water was a stunning blue and so clear, it reminded me a little of Kai Iwi Lakes. If I closed my eyes I could almost pretend I was in Pataua.

My wonky immune system wouldn't let me completely slip into a holiday coma, and I got some form of horrible strep throat lurgy thing (Tom got it too). The awesome staff at Frendz recommended a doctor and for 1300 pesos ($38 NZD) I got to listen to another tourist talk about his bowel movements for 15 minutes before getting treatment, awesome! I think we ate our way through about 30 bucks worth of paracetamol and I briefly missed Korea's super cheap medical system. Fortunately I had some godawful allergic reaction right before we left the 'pines so I got to go straight back to the doctor when we returned to Korea.

The weather was consistently warm but intermittently sunny so we took refuge from the showers by shopping and eating. Everywhere you walk there are people selling something, so we got hour-long massages and some sweet sunglasses for 350 pesos each ($10) and as promised to Lauren before we left Korea, we drank out of coconuts for 100 pesos ($3):

One of the things I really enjoyed was going to Lemoni Cafe in D'Mall, Boracay's shopping and dining district. It's like Cuba Mall but there's sand and palm trees instead of bricks and bucket fountains. I've missed a lot of things about New Zealand since being in Korea, but on Sundays I miss Wellington's cafe culture, when Tom, Cara and I used to go to Sweet Mothers' or Kiallas and get something delicious to eat. Lemoni filled that void, serving up great coffee, french toast, eggs benny and smoothies. The best thing about the place was it's dessert cabinet. Tom ate about 5 of their lemon tarts, and I fell for the tiramisu - almost every day we'd get dessert to go, and sit on the beach and eat it. It was fantastic.

I hope I've made you sufficiently jealous!

I've got a few more pictures to post but I'll let Tom write about some of the other things we did in between swims - diving, and visiting the fish market.

How Was Your Vacation? - Lesson 1

We're back to the grind but for 10 relatively blissful days we were laxing on the beautiful island of Boracay in the Philippines.

Before we left, Buan reminded us of why we were actually leaving - it snowed like crazy, blanketing the town in 40 centimetres of fresh powder. When we flew out of Seoul it was minus 5 degrees.

To get to Boracay, we flew into Manila, transferred to Kalibo and then took a bus for an hour and a half to Caticlan port. From Caticlan, we took a boat to the island and then a truck to our accommodation. Fortunately we were too zoned out from getting up at 5:30 to notice how much extra travelling that really is. Plus the landscape is so different from Korea (and New Zealand, for that matter) that I spent most of my time gawping at people and taking pictures.

Fierce.

The first place we stayed was Baling Hai Beach Resort, a little boutique-y hotel out in the 'wops' - if a place as small as Boracay can have wops. Boracay's teeny-tiny, only 7 kilometres long and a kilometre wide at the narrowest point. The resort has 7 different houses, all built into a steep hill, looking over a private bay. I found Baling Hai on TripAdvisor, my travel bible, and was utterly smitten then utterly gutted as I realised that it was booked our for the duration of our trip. A couple of days later I was showing one of my students what I'd missed out on (a lesson about the past tense) when I saw there was a cancellation. I quickly taught my student about the future tense, and about tone and repetition ('Oh my god! I'm so excited! I'm so excited!') and we were sorted. My god, it was worth it:

It was so beautiful, it literally made me sick. But more on that later.

My favourite thing, aside from the room service, view, being woken up by sunshine and being lulled to sleep by the waves on the shore, watching geckos skuttle across the roof, reading... was the veranda pictured above. But more specifically, those two sweet couches. After four months of sitting on the abomination in our living room that Koreans call a couch (the very thought makes bile rise in my throat! I hate our 'couch.'), these things were heaven on earth. I napped and ate and read many books in the three days I was permitted to use these couches, and it was amazing.

Boracay is apparently party central on New Years Eve, but we spent the night drinking beer on the veranda, eating cheap and delicious food from the bar and relaxing. Baling Hai has a small restaurant (seating 30 people, maximum) right on the beach. The kitchen is up on the top of the hill, and food is lowered to the restaurant in a woven flax basket using a pulley system.

And it was good food! My favourite was the fruit-filled pancake, a bargain at 110 pesos (about $3.50)

When we weren't eating or reading, we went swimming. Balinghai Beach is small and sheltered and very private. There are two wooden pontoons anchored in the bay, so Tom and I swam out to them and sunbathed, and then jumped off into the postcard-perfect water. It was wonderful!

On our last night, we ordered a seafood platter and we were treated to a candlelit dinner on the beach. I'm terrible at taking pictures, but here are some of them:

Our table

Prawns, calimari, grilled fish and rice!

In the middle of dinner, our waitress screamed and ran across the beach. Here I must ask my Nana to look away and get Mum or someone nearby to scroll down.

A sea snake had been swept onto the beach - I think it's a banded sea krait and they're deadly, which explains why my waitress freaked out and then stared at me as I took pictures.

After 3 blissful days we said goodbye to Baling Hai and moved on to Frendz Resort, near Boracay's infamous White Beach. More on that in the next post.