After arriving in Bohol we went via taxi and motorboat up a river to 'Nuts Huts', a typical backpacker place in the jungle, quite literally. We grabbed 1 of the 12 cottages by the river and proceeded to befriend the Belgium owners and other guests. The first activity was a swim in the river and to the waterfall nearby, followed by relaxing in the hammocks and enjoying the 30 degree heat, cold beers and yummy fusion food.
After a night on a comfy mattress -it really is just China alone that has awful mattresses- and without too many mosquitos, the next day beckoned as we cycled to the Tarsier Sanctuary, which is quoted as the 'smallest monkey in the world' -but it is not a monkey. It is small primate though, about the size of a small bird. It has massive eyes as it hunts in the dark and is quite cute, apart from when baring its teeth when one moves one's hand too close whilst trying to take a photo to compare the size of the hand with the Tarsier!
The little guys are adorable and thankfully expanding their population as their habitat is slowly regrowing after the forest's destruction (due to the increase in land needed for agricultural and limber trade). The bike ride continued via a beach through the countryside to the middle of a forest, before backtracking out of the forest (useless instructions!) to the main road and back to the 'Huts'.
The scenery in rural Philippines is not so different to the rest of South East Asia with plenty of rice paddies, jungle, adorable kids everywhere and so on. There are also a plethora of religious buildings such as churches, chapels and other religious sects's buildings (something inherited from the Americans I think when they ran the country for a few decades around the 2nd World War, building on the Spanish's Catholicism left over from Colonial times). Delighfully though the local's houses are built from 'nippa'. bamboo, wood etc which make them very pretty, environmentally friendly and apt for the environment. And, our buddies from coca-cola, have kept plenty of tiny stores stocked full -indeed, almost 1 house in 10 is also a micro-store!
Yesterday we motorbiked 150km or so up and down, primarily to see the 'chocolate hills', though in the current rainy season they are more green than chocolate colour -still pretty though... seeing hundreds of tiny 30m or so hills dotting the countryside. I also can declare that Philippino massages are nice and relaxing, comparing favourable with others across SE Asia.
Today we hiked up through the jungle, swam over 500m (impressive for me) in the river, chatted with some Peacecorps volunteers and relaxed in the huts. All that remains is to enjoy the stars and get up at 5am to get to the next place -on the beach, in time to spend New Years there. I am still getting over spending Christmas in the sun, let alone New Years on a beach!
p.s. if you are smiling wryly about the implications of the title of this post and my hairy arms... you are just immature, and succumbing to my ability to make a joke that everyone will get -so you are not clever!! Anyway, it might make you smirk as much as the rubbish joke in the Christmas cracker :)
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Unusual transport
After scraping onto our flight out of Hong Kong (since they moved the flight forward 20 minutes so we actualy arrived 10 minutes after check-in closed and had to depend on a kind lady from another desk to print us a ticket and take us through security, whilst abandoning penkinfes etc in order to get our backpacks on as hand luggage, as we could not check them in), me and Dad ended up in Cebu, the second biggest city in the philippines, on Xmas Day.
There is not much going for the city, apart from the interesting insight into Urban living with relativlely low quality housing in most of the city apart from some bad slum areas, and the gated 'beverley hills' area (it is actually called that!) above the city, for the rich to look down upon everyone else (or so it seemed). It was our first introduction to the 'Jeepney' a cross between a Jeep and a bus, which is highly decorated by their owners with all kinds of sporty/religious/crazy painted designs and other things stuck on them.
I did not what to expect from the Philippines, as it is hardly high up the list of visitors' destinations. I guess it is poorer than i imagined and Cebu is quite similar to many run-down chinese towns with some exceptions -like the bizarre lack of eating places in the Philippines and the dominance of English signage everywhere, even though most local people use their local dialect for every day conversations (their English tends to be quite good though). Coca-cola has definitely used its US history and brand to its advantage with Coke or Sprite seemingly taking up half of the area's consumer spending (along with beer)!
After a day in Cebu we jumped ship for the island of Bohol to a scene of even crazier transportation options; whose name i am not even sure of. Nonetheless they are fundamentally a motorbike with sidecar, though modified somewhat as the metal roof/windows look a bit like something from a military vehicle with small windows and the inevitable painted cusomization of the vehicles!
There is not much going for the city, apart from the interesting insight into Urban living with relativlely low quality housing in most of the city apart from some bad slum areas, and the gated 'beverley hills' area (it is actually called that!) above the city, for the rich to look down upon everyone else (or so it seemed). It was our first introduction to the 'Jeepney' a cross between a Jeep and a bus, which is highly decorated by their owners with all kinds of sporty/religious/crazy painted designs and other things stuck on them.
I did not what to expect from the Philippines, as it is hardly high up the list of visitors' destinations. I guess it is poorer than i imagined and Cebu is quite similar to many run-down chinese towns with some exceptions -like the bizarre lack of eating places in the Philippines and the dominance of English signage everywhere, even though most local people use their local dialect for every day conversations (their English tends to be quite good though). Coca-cola has definitely used its US history and brand to its advantage with Coke or Sprite seemingly taking up half of the area's consumer spending (along with beer)!
After a day in Cebu we jumped ship for the island of Bohol to a scene of even crazier transportation options; whose name i am not even sure of. Nonetheless they are fundamentally a motorbike with sidecar, though modified somewhat as the metal roof/windows look a bit like something from a military vehicle with small windows and the inevitable painted cusomization of the vehicles!
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
treasure, lost jobs and snow
2 weeks ago, after a night out at treasure island (nothing too hard core, but it is no secret the treasure is the Russian women on stage dancing) we failed to go skiing and ended up playing golf instead. Fortunately this was only at a driving range to save too much embarrassment since it was the first time I had ever picked up a golf club. Personally I think it was more fun, and much cheaper and easier, to just play golf on the Wii (although more tiring playing on the Wii!).
Last weekend we did manage to go skiing, since the night before we had a quiet one in, playing Risk; though actually it did get rather heated, and we contemplated filming it for youtube or a reality TV show! Despite choosing the closest ski resort to downtown Beijing, at only 45 minutes drive, it was actually incredibly good. The fake snow was top quality and they had several runs that allowed us to get some decent speed as well as plenty of ramps and moguls which were too demanding for me and most others that were attempting to go down them.
In fact, the observation was made, on reflection from looking at the photos, quite how i managed to move my arms and legs around so fast and so much whilst attempting to get 50cm in the air off of a jump. Well, I did, and it looked spectacular, if not elegant. It was, though, quite bizarre skiing on perfect white snow whilst all around was greyish-brown countryside and a few miles away the city of Miyun and some sort of smog/cloud enveloping it. Ironically it did then snow in Beijing the next day!
On the topic of skiing and the related issue of climate change (apparently the Scottish ski slopes are no longer in business any more, not that many Southerners, like me, ever considered them in business!), China is, as you are probably reading whilst the Bali UN negotiations take place at the center, along with the USA. Thus it will be interesting to see what China is forced to do... it has said it will not even consider trying to reduce its total carbon footprint until at least 2020 (its current promises are to be more energy efficient to emit less carbon)... but all of a sudden China is feeling the impact of climate change and might not be able to wait that long.
The latest (and hopefully last) update on the taxi incident is as follows:
-The story made it into the provincial newspaper
-The taxi company (or city taxi authority) sent me a 3 page apology by fax explaining that the taxi driver had lost his taxi license and been fined about 60 pounds
-The local TV station started a minor investigation into the issue of rip-off taxi drivers (it is not just us that got ripped off).
Now, on one hand we feel very bad for the taxi driver, since he did not do anything horrendously wrong (he just lied and then tried to ask for more money) and probably did not deserve to lose his job. On the other hand, the taxi drivers in Yulin are known to be unkind and an example needs to be set (even if they decide the 'foreign friend' should be the excuse needed to do it). Then i wondered what could i do to try to get him his job back, and figured... not much, since the taxi company would not do that, as it would lose face and it might have other knock-on effects. I mean, no-one ever thought this fiasco would arise in the first place, and i do not want it going on any longer or taking any other twists really!
Last weekend we did manage to go skiing, since the night before we had a quiet one in, playing Risk; though actually it did get rather heated, and we contemplated filming it for youtube or a reality TV show! Despite choosing the closest ski resort to downtown Beijing, at only 45 minutes drive, it was actually incredibly good. The fake snow was top quality and they had several runs that allowed us to get some decent speed as well as plenty of ramps and moguls which were too demanding for me and most others that were attempting to go down them.
In fact, the observation was made, on reflection from looking at the photos, quite how i managed to move my arms and legs around so fast and so much whilst attempting to get 50cm in the air off of a jump. Well, I did, and it looked spectacular, if not elegant. It was, though, quite bizarre skiing on perfect white snow whilst all around was greyish-brown countryside and a few miles away the city of Miyun and some sort of smog/cloud enveloping it. Ironically it did then snow in Beijing the next day!
On the topic of skiing and the related issue of climate change (apparently the Scottish ski slopes are no longer in business any more, not that many Southerners, like me, ever considered them in business!), China is, as you are probably reading whilst the Bali UN negotiations take place at the center, along with the USA. Thus it will be interesting to see what China is forced to do... it has said it will not even consider trying to reduce its total carbon footprint until at least 2020 (its current promises are to be more energy efficient to emit less carbon)... but all of a sudden China is feeling the impact of climate change and might not be able to wait that long.
The latest (and hopefully last) update on the taxi incident is as follows:
-The story made it into the provincial newspaper
-The taxi company (or city taxi authority) sent me a 3 page apology by fax explaining that the taxi driver had lost his taxi license and been fined about 60 pounds
-The local TV station started a minor investigation into the issue of rip-off taxi drivers (it is not just us that got ripped off).
Now, on one hand we feel very bad for the taxi driver, since he did not do anything horrendously wrong (he just lied and then tried to ask for more money) and probably did not deserve to lose his job. On the other hand, the taxi drivers in Yulin are known to be unkind and an example needs to be set (even if they decide the 'foreign friend' should be the excuse needed to do it). Then i wondered what could i do to try to get him his job back, and figured... not much, since the taxi company would not do that, as it would lose face and it might have other knock-on effects. I mean, no-one ever thought this fiasco would arise in the first place, and i do not want it going on any longer or taking any other twists really!
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