Thursday, August 23, 2007

BORA!



after all the intense traveling, dave and i decided to go to a little island called Boracay. its actually really famous for its incredible white sand. its incredibly beautiful. unfortunately, the weather was a bit intense and we were in the middle of a storm.

usually its filled with people partying their hearts out.



the sand is sooo fine, its like talcum powder


i have more pictures from REEF WALKING! those are the soopa doopa spectacula picties but i still need to get them scanned since they were taken with an underwater camera.

Soopah Model.

ok so this story, i told alli...and she wanted me to post it because she thought it was funny.

unfortunately, i dont have any picties to accompany it. so in the homeland, sometimes its easier for girlies who don't look so filipino to get commercials and stuff. and my cousins are in commercials, my mom and my older sister did them...its not super uncommon. anyway, but they pay you a decent amount of dough. so my younger sister and i went for a vtr which is like a screen test.

so they do your make up for you. mind you its usually god awful. and when they did my make up, they put a GLOB of sooopah doooopah sticky lipgloss. i had about half an inch of lip gloss coating my lucious lips. anyway, so i go for this screen test. and they tell me to do all this cheesy stuff. so i just do it, talk about how my hair is so bouncy and blah blah blah.

then the ask me to face with my back towards the camera and swoosh my hair around and look over my shoulder and smile. simple enough. but I first of all am not that coordinated, so when i swoosh, i ended up looking a bit like jan brady. and then when i looked over my shoulder to give them my killer smile. i swooshed a little too much...and all my hair stuck to my lucious lippy lip gloss. mmmm. and there i was smiling like a monkey.

"umm lets try that again" says the guy behind the camera.
"and this time, try to get your face out of your hair so that we can see your pretty smile" says the lady.
in my head. ok lets do it again.

same thing.

"how about the other shoulder?" says camera man.

same thing.

"we'll call you."

damn.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Back to Manila...

The worlds worst plane ride. We had turbulence a good 99% of the flight back, we went through a storm (for those plan on traveling to southeast asia, dont go during monsoon season, it was really dumb of me to do that). Our plane dropped, and my palms were dripping sweat, i was crying. it was the worst feeling of my life. i thought we were going to die.

But its a good thing we didn't, because had we died, we would've missed out on a good time at Cuisine bar in Manila





this was martine trying to take a picture with this local celeb Sam Milby....she was trying to get a picture with him all evening but do you see the lil goofball behind there... he thought he was sooooooo clever.



AND WHEN I WASN'T LOOKING...loook at these hussies!



Friday, August 17, 2007

More Bangkok

So despite my smack talking with people that try to take you for a ride in Bangkok, we did get suckered into buying a suit. Dave was charged a lot more than he would for a regular suit in Bangkok, but still much cheaper than in the US and a really nice suit..

check it out.





as many of you know, i'm already back stateside, but i'm barely getting these pics up because dave had them..

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Bangkok, Thailand

We left Cambodia and went to Bangkok. This leg of the trip was really dedicated to shopping. however, we soon found out this was NOT as easy as one would think.

Ok let me start from the top...i'll be as brief as I can. We got to Bangkok and we had no hotel, so we just did the package deal at the airport. Fine. The guy asked if we wanted to do a tour, there was one complimentary tour...we chose the palace. We chose the royal palace.

The nicest thing ever about Thai people is that they are SO incredibly loyal to their king. They really trust him and have a very personal attachment to him. They call him "my king" and they even put pictures of him in their cabs. Our tour guide told us a story about a civil war going on in Bangkok and when the king told them to stop, they just did. It was so amazing to see a country in such harmony with their leader. Definitely something i'm NOT used to.

This is their royal palace, which is now only used for ceremonies, but the king used to live here. Now he prefers to live near the beach.







This elaborate palace is constantly being restored. Everywhere we turned, people were replacing mirrors, painting murals and polishing the place up. Seeing them at work constantly was pretty amazing.


Making a wish.







Ok well, thats the best part we saw about Bangkok before EVERY SINGLE CAB DRIVER, TRICYCLE, TUK TUK, and BUS DRIVER tried to FOOL US INTO GOING WITH THEM TO SHOPPING AREAS AND RESTAURANTS WHERE THEY WOULD GET COMMISSION! It was the absolutely most annoying thing in the entire world. ARGH! I always take it for granted when I ask a cab driver to take me somewhere, i never expect them to take me somewhere else first. IT WAS SO FRUSTRATING!

The most beautiful faces in the world.

Following the blog before this, I thought it might be nice to share the really amazing portraits dave took of some people during our travels.


Banaue, Philippines


Think they're cute? these scoundrels looked up my skirt shortly after this picture was taken. Dave was proud of them.


This little one was climbing down the steps towards the rice terraces.



And these boys were playing with some grains from the rice terraces and they were swinging it close to Dave's camera, saying "ulo" which means a head, not really sure what they found so amusing about that word, but they were laughing hysterically.





Intramuros, Philippines


This is a little friend i made. His name is gatito. Dave and I were roaming around this Spanish colonial house turned museum when this little runt hissed at me. I saw him and he had a bum leg and he was SOOO skinny. I was on a quest to find him some milk. Dave bought me a $2USD glass of milk (keep in mind that $2USD is a whole meal for a person) for my new friend who hissed and scared the bajeesus out of me, but appreciated our present anyway.

he was so nervous, he was hiding behind some potted plants.



i know you think i'm crazy. i don't care. it made me happy.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

most of these were taken at temples.

don't you just love this man's face? i really really did. shortly after this was taken, dave and i climbed up and did a little buddha loving with him.




i wanted to take this little one home.

these cute little kiddies were playing a game where everyone sits in a circle and one person's eyes are covered while putting one hand out. then another person in the circle goes up to them and slaps their hand and runs back to their spot. the object of the game is to correctly guess who slapped your hand. dave an i were able to infiltrate their game a little and played with them.

these two girls were playing too, but they were more interested in the camera and wanted to see how their photographs turned out. hehe. cuties.

Floating Village

On our last day in Siem Reap, Dave and I went to the floating village. Its a small community of people that live and work on a river.




There are houses, stores, mechanics, numerous schools, hospitals, police departments, and recreational centers all floating on this body of water. On one side are Cambodians, and on the opposite side are Vietnamese people.


Young boys toured us around while women came up close to our boat hoping to sell us soda or snacks...



Dave and I asked our tourguides where their toilet waste goes, and the boy smiled and said, "into water." I looked to one side and saw a woman bathing, and the other side where I saw young boys swimming....MMMMM....yummm.

I cried my eyes out after seeing this place. Cried because many of these kids will never have the opportunity to make the most of themselves. I cried thinking about how those children might've persuded medicine to discover the cure for aids, studied politics to run their country better, countless ways that these kids could somehow make our world a better place, but we'll probably never know because they just don't have the chance to.



I wanted to take them all home, become Angelina Jolie without the publicity, give them a "better life," but Dave reminded me that they were really happy in this floating village and it was really presumptuous of me to assume that my life is better than theirs. They really did smile a lot, more than people smile when they're walking into starbucks, roaming around their college campuses and eating fast food.




Anyway, i'm sorry for depressing anyone, but this country just had such an impact on me. Overall, Cambodia is my new favorite country in the world.