Climbing a Volcano...on horseback.

We went to Tagaytay city, which is just an hour outside of Manila. The volcano has a lake and is within a lake...i know really confusing, but its something like that. Anyway, so Dave and I went to my grandmothers old house in Tagaytay, spent the night, and the next day went to Taal Volcano.

you have to take a boat across the lake to get to the volcano.


thats the volcano there, a volcano within a lake...its like a babushka doll with more lake and volcano within it. its hard to explain!


we found out later that couldve gone up another path that where we wouldn't have to use horses, but the horses were fun anyway.


the mouth of the volcano.






i'm actually in cambodia right now, and i'm going to try to post more pictures, but the internet is like interNOT here...so keep checking, i'm having an incredible time...too amazing to even begin to describe.

i'll let my pictures speak. EVERYONE NEEDS TO DO THIS IN THEIR LIFETIME!

Imelda Marcos

We saw Imelda Marcos after dinner one day, she has such a presence. We were with my aunt and they were chatting it up a little and Dave took a quick picture with her.

8th wonder of the world.

Check it out....


Banaue has really amazing rice terraces, world famous, and sadly most filipinos never even go there because its too much of a trek to get there from Manila. See them there in the background? I'm supposed to give Dave credit for pictures...so anything that you see thats extraordinarily good, is his doing.


such a cute foreigner.

see how narrow these paths are? i was talking about how dangerous it is and how it would be really easy to fall and then i fell. i believe as i fell i said, "AAAH LIKE THIS!" i was just lucky to fall at a portion of the path where the drop wouldnt' have been so long...but yes, Dave was very glad i was laughing because i think it looked painful.

Tribes Peeps

We went to Banaue from Sagada although I couldn't find a good map that showed both Sagada and Banaue, so just know that they're about 2 hours away from each other, which is virtually nothing on a map.

For those who don't know, Banaue is famous for its rice terraces, which i'll blog about later. But the lesser known thing about Banaue is that it was the home of the Ifugao tribe, who were (gasp) headhunters!!!


According to one of the men that we found there, they stopped head hunting in the 1950's because they became Christian (those damn Christians ruin EVERYTHING hahah). But Dave was reading something that said that in the 70's, an Ifugao man was run over by a bus and when the government didn't do anything about it, the tribes people went after the bus driver and beheaded him. Nice.


Anyway, so when we were in Banaue, we went to go and see the tribal huts. We got a tricycle guy to show us around. Tricycles in the Philippines are made for Filipino sized people...which we are not. Dave had to ride behind the driver...and Martine and I squished inside the passenger cab.

This is an Ifugao hut. The man who maintains it says that it was his grandfathers.
all sorts of animal skulls around the huts, human heads too, but i can't find that picture.
shrunken human heads...hahaha, they're monkeys. i hope.
the huts were raised, as you can tell.
this particular hut houses a lot of artifacts that they sell to collectors. Kinda sad that they'd do that, but these people need money.

Tigertooth necklace.
That headpiece is made of wood and snake spine, and the armbands were made of bones too. The ifugao men gave this headpiece to their wives during the dances. They would sometimes wear it too.
Dave day dreaming about being a ninja. The man told me that the sword Dave is holding was an actual weapon used to behead people. eek!
This man told me that the tradition of the Ifugao people is to put their dead out in the mountains for 3 years then after those 3 years, collect their remains. He showed us his grandfathers bones. See below. And everytime they open up the material and show the bones they have to make a sacrifice of a chicken (which the unsuspecting tourist has to pay for, although he did offer to cook it up for us and have us all eat with him which I wasn't in the mood for so I said no).


Very adventurous day. Our hotel, didn't have any stars. We had a pet lizard on our wall, he was cute.

Hanging onto bat poop for dear life...

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On Sunday night, Dave, Martine and I got on a bus that was all too cold and seven hours later, we arrived in Baguio. The next morning, we left for Sagada Mountain Province. We left at 8:30 am and arrived in this little town on top of a hill at around mmmm 3pm...thats not the worst of it...we sat on some makeshift seats in the center aisle. I sat next to a man who had three inches of curly hair growing out of his giant mole....

you think i'm joking right? check this out.
yeah not that funny. actually, it was. there were also chickens in the backseat of the bus. mind you, i've never travelled like this anywhere, but hey, you only live once.
there were women that sold vegetables everytime we stopped....they just kinda did it through the windows.
really though? 7 hours is really too much, as you can tell from my very happy expression...


However, we were on our way to Sagada, i've never been there before. Its this little town FAR FAR FAR up the mountains and its really clean there and not that many people go there. They're famous for caves and their hanging coffins that is a tradition that they learned from the Indonesians that populated the area before...but some people there still practice that tradition....check it out.

So anyhoo...when we first got there, we wanted to go and check out the caves right away, so we got a tour guide (not sure what his name was but his shorts said jacob) . Jacob spoke almost perfect English, had all of 5 teeth and a wonderful set of 12 fingers...nice! He was amazing though, and he was really really knowledgeable about the caves. We walked for 45 mins seeing some rice terraces and some hanging coffins before getting to the caves.

Now...you walk into the caves expecting the most glorious things in the world, and you hear loud squeeks...bats...you look up, bats...you smell around bat poop...it was so disgusting..and yes, its incredibly slippery and dark and yes i held a shit load of bat shit to save my life. The cave was pitch black and the only thing guiding our path was a gas lamp which you're praying doesn't break.

Then...just when you dont really remember who the hell conned you into going into this guano infested cave, you reach the mecca....


the most gloriously beautiful unreal waterfalls, raw marble floors, cool refreshing water the most amazing place i've ever seen in my life and i've been to the taj mahal!!! you walk around and do the rest of the path barefoot since its easier to grip..and martine and i got down and dirty in our bathing suits...

no joke, we had to do some indiana jones ass stuff...ie climing up waterfalls with the water splashing in your face, using ropes to climb down walls, crawling through crevices...turning and spinning gripping on small rocks to move through the cave, every five minutes was another challenge that you swear you can't do, but then you finish it all, and you feel so accomplished.

i'd do it again!
thats our only light source!!!

oh yeah...

the injuries suffered:
i fell into a small pool when i asked dave to push my ass up a waterfall.
martine's ass got burned by the lantern HAHAHHAHA
martine's boob was exposed for dave and jacob to see...dave was trying to help her up against the current of a waterfall and a little nipslip happened. HAHHAHAHA

i have a lot more from this past few days, but i'll post tomorrow or something..it might be overload.

Homeland wedding!

So fast forward a few years. I'm too late to catch up the rest of my europe trip...basically my sisters and niece and mom followed. i went to belgium and germany and italy. ok another time..buuuuut...

i actually had a stopover in taipei, but it was too much effort.

Pearl Farm, Davao. For those who don't know, Davao is in Mindanao. There are 3 major islands in the Philippines (there are actually like 7,100, but there are 3 main ones) Luzon at the North, Visayas in the middle and Mindanao in th every South. The very south (is North, South, East and West capitalized? i dont know) is predominantly Muslim (Mindanao is Muslim) and they've been trying to get their independance from the rest of the country, so sometimes, they do so in violent ways...not to mention Osama Bin Laden has one of his wives living in the south. Anyway, why is this relevant? My older sister, Cathy had her wedding there this past weekend. It was stunning. gosh, my family keeps topping each other when it comes to weddings...i've decided mine will be in India. start saving up peeps.


So we took a flight from Manila to Davao...

Sam and Martine...i can't tell who has a more womanly figure...Sam is my niece...and she has just recently blossomed into this like woman girl, its so strange. she's only turning 11!

Xavier (pronounced Have-ee-yer), my nephew, when we landed at Pearl Farm Resort.

And this is Amelia, my niece that i just met...thats my hat she's wearing. unfortunately less than an hour after this picture was taken, that hat blew off my head and into the pacific ocean.

loading the boat.

oh my hat. it was a 1 hour boat ride to the island resort...i was scared i'd get seasick.

thats denise, my sister who lives in jakarta (indonesia peeps)

on top of the boat...Amelia was giving us a little dance routine and it made the hour go by much faster.

i lost my hat. =(

on the island...from the left, my sister Cathy (the bride), mama dearest, and my sister Martine. We were walking to our villas....there are 7 villas each tucked away in the forest...some with the ocean as their view, and others jungle...it was amazing.i miss my hat.

our villa was EFFING FAR!

Cocktail Partay!!!

Amelia and I collected giant leaves for everyone to use as fans.

and then we drew on the floor..she was my cocktail party date.

Le Wedding!!!

my sisters. some of them at least.

immediate family of the bride. i'll draw the chart and post it another time. its too complicated to try to explain at 2am Manila time.

it was so hot, we went back to our room and changed.

Day After...

proof that i can get a little color!

I'll post more about this weekend. we actually went scuba diving and stuff but i still have to get the photos from the underwater camera developed and junk..and draw the chart of the family and post the videos...so stay tuned.