First Verdict: Philippines

It's awesome. So far, so good. I flew in here on Thursday and thought to myself this place looks a lot like Mexico and India put together. It's tropical and has a lot of Spanish influence, but still has a very interesting atmosphere to it. I met up with my friend, Matt (who I know from back home), and another couple (Jason and Lilly) he was traveling with. That in itself is a funny story: they had been traveling together in Thailand and Matt had been filling their ear about the Philippines. They were literally in a taxi heading for the bus station to go to Cambodia, turned the cab around to the airport and jumped on a flight to the Philippines, running into Matt on the streets of Manila. We've all been traveling together the past few days.

The past few days have been great. On Friday and with time to kill between our flight to Coron on Monday, we decided to head up to see Mt. Pinatubo, a big volcano that erupted about twenty years ago, one of the biggest in recent history. It was a grueling day to get to the town we wanted to base out of (I can't remember the name because we didn't even make it there), filled with multiple bus rides. The first stop was Angeles, where while waiting for a bus had a crazy old Philippino lady telling us we "should go have some nice Philippino girls over there", that "Alec Baldwin had been to her house" and that she "didn't have Herpes". All the while the other Philippino's on the street are killing themselves laughing.



We arrived in the town of Tarac, a tiny crossroads town with a mobile McDonald's truck, and found a hotel that was able to set us up with a 4x4 to Mt. Pinatubo the next day. We got an early 6am start to the mountain, arriving at the trail head around 10:00, after registering and paying for the tour. From there we hiked for a couple hours up a wide ravine that would have been better suited for flip flops instead of hiking shoes. Needless to say the way up and down left my feet swimming. The crater itself is beautiful. It's hard to tell it's actually a volcano, it looks more like a picturesque mountain lake that anything. We had a quick swim and laughed at Lily for wearing Thai fishing pants that were see through when wet, making the Philippino viewed exit from the water hilarious. The only bad part of the day was the fact that I sunburned the shit out of my head. Note to self: sunscreen on a bald head is essential.

Now we're back in Manila, heading to Coron in the morning. I'm pumped to go out to the islands and hit the beach. Hopefully the people there are as nice as they have been so far. I've been pleased with that, Philippino people are incredibly friendly, polite, and English savvy, a stark contrast to the hard society of China.