Poutine and Green Curry

Two more millennials who quit their jobs to travel

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In search of a pool

After the massive adventure day, we recovered and took a ferry back the following morning. Ferries are shit house. It's always crazy to see the people get jammed into these things and then you get blasted by wind for a couple hours to get back to Cebu but I honestly enjoyed it. If you can get past the chaos, you get to see some beautiful scenery and flying fish on the way. In the port, the chaos continues. You walk a ways til you get outside then you have to find a way home. This might seem like a broken record at this point but get an uber. The cabs want to charge you a metric fuckload to get anywhere. Uber was less than half the price for an hour long ride. That night, I slept through an earthquake. Apparently it shook the place a little but was more severe further down the coast where it originated. Kind of crazy. It is a little odd to be occasionally reminded that natural disasters are part of life over here and the effects can be much more severe. We are pretty interested to see what happens during the rainy season. Being in Chiang Mai, we are far from the ocean so it's more insulated but down by Phuket, things can get interesting. We had another meal at Jollibee, the Philippine McDonald's. Which is extra weird because they actually have McDonalds. Somehow, McDonald's has become a high end luxury brand here, serving the same lovable garbage we have at home. It's super surreal. It seems to have been bumped up the ladder by sheer name recognition and some fancy black paint. While we were at Jolibee, their big ridiculous bee in a chefs hat mascot came around giving high fives and terrifying children. He was creepy beyond belief. Danced up on everybody. Weird. Also in the mall, were security guards with legit military grade shotguns. Who thought this was necessary? They are guarding the cheapest stuff ever. This mall has no high end anything. A little bit of overkill, I'd say. Walking back to the apartment, we were noticed by a small kid who looked up at me and said, "you are our lord." My Jesus look has not gone unnoticed here. I'm kind of a big deal. We also decided to check out one of the resorts, where you can pay to spend the day at their pool enjoying the place. We tried out Sandbar. Mistake. Big, wall to wall full of people, type of mistake. There wasn't more than a foot of space free anywhere and they wanted to charge us 1800 peso each despite it saying 300 peso each online. We said fuck it and left. Found a tiny place that offered the same but it was deserted. They only charged 250 and 75 of that went towards food. It wasn't fancy. The bathrooms were not enjoyable. That said though, the pools were clean and we had plenty of space to ourselves. Much nicer. Tomorrow, we take a flight back home and get back to cheap loving Thai food and the comforts of our new home.

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Bohol Island and Burning Ass Cheeks

While Graeme went on a scuba dive, my parents and I went on a tour around Bohol island discovering old churches damaged by past earthquakes, the beautiful countryside, exotic animals and tarsiers, chocolate hills, and a lunch cruise! I have to admit, I didn’t take a lot of notes or gave a lot of fucks about this tour solely because I was full lobster from the day before. My entire backside was well cooked and my body was in a permanent state of overheating. Also, my ass cheeks hurt so much that I a. felt like my pants were going to incinerate and b. sitting hurt like a [insert your favourite raunchy swearword].  I’ll tell you about the four favourite stops.  We drove uphill through jungle like terrain until the forrest opened up and we were presented with the most beautiful countryside. Rice fields on both sides, absolutely gorgeous. You could see little houses in places where the ground heaved to create little jungle hills, and white cranes walking through fields. Oxen stood on the side of the road or laid in the mud under a tree. Farming communities spread out in little sections along the road.  Along the scenic drive we got to stop to see and learn about exotic animals like butterflies (totally animals) and how they evolve from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly. We also got to play with some burmese pythons (also totally animals) which, as you can see in the photos, totally tried to kill me. We also saw some tarsiers, which are basically just little furry frogs with large eyes that just sit in trees and look like they’re nursing a hangover. Apparently they are nocturnal, but at the time we saw them they were very underwhelming.  Derailment: If there’s one thing I learned from the Philippines it’s that nothing is like what it looks like in the photos, ever. You see a photo of someone on a white beach with beautiful blue water but what you didn’t get to see is them swimming through garbage (jus sayin).  Another stop we made were the “Chocolate Hills”, which are giant little hills that look like little chocolate pralines in the fall time. Very interesting and beautiful to see!  Our driver asked us if we wanted to make a spontaneous stop at the bamboo hanging bridges which the locals used to cross the Loboc river. It was a bridge made out of rope and bamboo and it was very wobbly and fun to cross. On the other side my heat stroke got the best of me and I downed a full coconut and ate two bags of sweet dried banana chips. All hydrated and full of chips, our last stop was a lunch cruise on the Loboc river. The jungle river side was incredible and shortly into the cruise it started to thunder and pour. The rainy jungle experience was definitely worth having and a beautiful sight.  We wrapped up our tour with a stop at the local bakery and headed home to eat buns and pastries. Graeme and I surely bathed in coconut oil and aloe vera and crashed to recover as we were surely BBQd local Filipino style, burnt to crisp ;)

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Balicasag Island Diving

I ducked out for the day to go scuba diving while Maggie and her folks went on a tour of the island. I grabbed a motorcycle taxi dude and headed to Pata Negra Dive Shop where I met Jules, my guide for the day. Turns out our dive would be just me and him. This was a welcome change. When it's a 2 man dive, you see a lot more and move much faster than with a group. We took a truck over to the beach and met the French divers we would be sharing the boat out with. It seemed like Jules and I were the only English speakers for the day so we kept to ourselves mostly. Balicasag island is a protected area about a 30 minute boat ride from Bohol. Only 300 dives per day are allowed and each must be registered with the government to keep the area from being overly disturbed by people. I don't think I could have been happier. The water was clearer than I have ever seen. We had 40 meter visibility so you could see clear to the bottom at all times. We were set for three dives in the day and we started at an area known as "The Black Forest." It was amazing. I've never seen so much sea life. My eyes were damn near bugging out of my head. We came across giant sea turtle right away. These gorgeous, graceful creatures were everywhere. They were also so comfortable with people and didn't give two shits about us. The walls of fish on either side were almost overwhelming. On this cliff dive we even came across a moray eel chilling out in a cave. After the first dive, we took a little break and had some food. It dawned on me how much easier it is to dive here. First, only a wetsuit. As anyone who has gone diving in Canada would know, we dry suit dive because it's cold as fuck. Our water, year round is 6 degrees. Jules couldn't understand that number. We dove in 26 degree water and he said that was the coldest water he dives in. Anything colder and he stays home. Lucky bastard. Second, Jules did all my set up for me. I felt spoiled and a little guilty. I've never had somebody carry all my shit everywhere and set it for me before so I couldn't help laying back a little and letting it happen. Magical. The next dive we hit was "the Cathedral" and it was intense. You're under an overhanging part of the island for most of the dive, so it's very different but with the visibility we could still see everything. Here, we even got to settle right next to a massive turtle chilling out eating lunch. It was surreal. He almost looked fake, I've never seen eyes like that up close. I loved it. After another quick break, we hit the last spot "Diver's Heaven." This was a slope dive on the side of the island and it was another incredible area. We saw more turtles as well as some Frog fish among a ton of others. Some of the more camouflaged fish were more present here and the way they blended in was crazy to see close up. Jules was amazing at spotting these things and cheerfully pointed them out for me. I couldn't have asked for a better guide. I managed to add to my lobster tan while in a wetsuit by burning the fuck out of my hands as well. Lovely souvenir. Back at the shop afterwards, they gave me a free shirt to commemorate the day. Wonderful people. I got back just before dinner and met Maggie and her folks to hear about their adventures. More on those tomorrow

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The neighborhood kiddies

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Bohol and the lobster incident

Before leaving for Bohol Island, we went to see a local attraction. This happened to be at the pier outside Lapu Lapu. I thought I had seen crazy traffic before. I was basically Jon Snow. I knew nothing. It was wall to wall the whole way there. Philippines wall to wall, meaning people were parked in the road for no reason, there were u-turns being pulled all over the place. Shit was crazy. Our trike driver Ti-Ting was a champ and got us there in one piece. From there, while Juliet tried to get us in the queue for a pier restaurant, we went to see the "10 thousand roses" at the end of the pier. What this actually amounted to was 10 thousand (probably) light up, electric flowers on sticks. The more impressive spectacle was the 10 thousand selfies being taken around them. I've never seen such self indulgence and I don't think a single photo was taken in the area without the photographers own face being included. We left quickly and waited with Juliet. We enjoyed our dinner sitting right by the water and the Filipino meal we had was actually pretty tasty. The next day we took taxis to the ferry terminal to get on our way to Bohol. Every taxi we have been in so far here has listened to religious radio, except this guy. He listened to talk radio and the general style is to repeat the radio station name every 30-45 seconds, which the guy literally yelled. BRIGADA BALITA! The ride was almost an hour. It took me nearly the rest of the day to get that sound out of my head. The ferry ride was actually pretty cool. We could see flying fish gliding across the water the whole way. Extremely interesting to see up close. The ferry we took was a "Super Cat". I know that because they made a stupid music video and an even stupider song about it and played it on repeat for a good chunk of the ride. We did get a free muffin and some water, which was a nice surprise. The first attraction we hit on the island was Alona beach. It was gorgeous. Fairly full of people but gorgeous. We went a little further down and sorted a spot just before the private beach started so we ended up not being so jam packed in as people near the main entrance. We found a dive shop to rent us some snorkelling gear and Maggie, Maggie's dad and I hit the water. The amount of sea life was incredible. Clownfish and tons of other colourful fish everywhere. The real shock was the sheer number of sea urchins. They are everywhere. If you ever walk into the water out here without shoes of some kind, I mourn for you. You're basically fucked immediately if you're not paying attention. They were gorgeous though. We were kept busy out there for a few hours and we loved every minute of it. After our day at the beach, we and Maggie's parents tried to find a restaurant with food that was either edible or somewhat tasty, since we'd had endless bad food experiences thus far. We did find a restaurant with an upstairs patio, and relatively to our experience (pier restaurant mentioned above excluded) and in our beach day ecstasy, we declared it the best restaurant in the Philippines. Three of us had mediocre spaghetti and Maria had a coconut soup, but damn it felt like the best food we'd ever had. Our major mistake became apparent when we got home. Lobsters. We are lobsters now. Our backs and the back of our legs, fucked. Straight fucked. The worst victim being Maggie's poor butt. I blame it's buoyant nature. We had to go to a Korean market and find some aloe vera to survive the night. Dark times, my friends. Dark, painful, super red times. Tomorrow, Maggie and her folks go on a tourist adventure and I go scuba diving on a nearby island

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Jurassic World and Magellan

Our first real taste of a day here was interesting. We learned a lot about what's cheaper here and what isn't. Getting around is cheap. The trikes here which can seat up to 7+ the driver somehow only charge 7 peso (20 cents) to go places. But you can also pay 50 peso for a "special ride", which means it's just you and they take you wherever it is you want to go. They have big malls like those at home, pricey and fancy. Smaller malls are more local style, ghetto and cheap. Clothes tend to be a little pricier than Thailand and food is as well. Not by a ton but noticeable. The big difference was the quality of food. Pretty much everything was bland and sometimes just plain bad. The only things that could be good were generally things you cooked yourself. Everything else was pretty rough and, after being spoiled by amazing and cheap Thai food, it was a rude awakening. Pretty much everything is super loud here as well. Taxis honk constantly as they warn other drivers about the terrible things they are about to do. The only volume for music is full blast and it's usually from a karaoke machine you can hear three blocks away with terrible singers just yelling each lyric. It's an adventure. Juliet took Maggie and I to a "local beach" and it was intense. First we drove through the ghetto and then stopped at a broken down gate with a guard who we needed to bribe to get in. 20 peso each local price because of Juliet, otherwise 100 each for whiteys. We drove through a weird rough dirt trail through half finished buildings that had been sitting empty for 20 years. The beach itself looked like it was beautiful when they made it but had since fallen into serious disrepair. It had a little cliff to one side that the local kids were jumping off of into the water. A big "no trespassing" sign was right in the middle and nobody gave a single fuck. It was also littered with trash. But besides that the water was a beautiful light turquoise and the beach sand was light and covered in washed up corral and shells. According to Juliet, the company who was building a resort at this beach 20 years ago found out half way that they actually didn't own the land. Turns out they had "bought" the land from someone who actually didn't own it. So they did not own the land. They packed up and left, leaving an eerily empty half finished resort. The real owner is Japanese and just left it all too. Very strange. So it now looks like something out of Jurassic World and one crooked guard let's the locals come in and enjoy some beach time every day. Weird but cool. We also learned that a lot of people here have no idea how to swim. I have a hard time understanding how island people don't learn to swim but that's how it is for most here. The water was beautiful and clear. We did some cliff diving. Even coaxed Maggie into it after a long work up. Afterwards, we headed back for more tuna on the BBQ. They brought around Red Horse, the local super heavy beer. Basically Wildcat; moose piss of the highest order. They also roasted up some "hot dogs" which are actually meat here. Real pork. I could hardly believe it but there they were, no raccoon meat or shoe leather to be found. The local kids here have really enjoyed my Jesus look and took a bunch of pictures with me. My Jesus face is getting famous all over south east Asia now. I'm kind of a big deal. One day as we walked home from the mall a small child sitting on the side of the dirt road says to me "you are our lord". Before bed, we learned a little local history. Lapu Lapu was a tribal leader here and he was the man to kill Magellan. Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe so it was pretty cool to know that this was the location of his end. Next, we head to Bohol and do some diving

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Lapu Lapu and Maggie's Fam

We were up for our breakfast at 8 am so we didn't starve on the plane. It became clear pretty quickly that Tune Hotel is owned by Asia Air because the whole place was full of their employees ready to head off for flights. The little restaurant had limited options for food and when we got down there and ordered a muffin, we were told that the muffin guy had already left. Apparently 8 am is late in Malaysia because it was ridiculous that I was even asking about muffins at this late hour. Fuck me for not being there at a more airline friendly hour. We then tried a croissant and they were out of those too. Definitely a top shelf establishment. So we walked around to the back of the building and looked over the fence into, what I am fairly sure, was the exact yard they used to film Jurassic Park. Thankfully, Maggie is smarter than me and had squirrelled away half a pastry from the day before that could keep us alive til we got to the airport. We got to the airport via the shuttle and breezed through security. Nobody even looked me in the eye. Didn't have to empty my pockets. Just throw your bag through the thing nobody is looking at and walk through the beeping metal detector that no one is paying attention to and walk on. The food court was a welcome surprise. Plenty of options and not overly expensive for what airports often have. The shock came shortly after when we had about 10 minutes to go before our plane was boarding. Surprise security number two. You crafty Malaysian bastards. Thankfully we made it through the line fairly quickly and are well practiced at emptying and packing our bags again quickly and we made our plane in time. The flight was pretty easy and we ended up in Cebu pretty quickly. Upon landing, in one of our customs line ups we have become so fond of, we saw a ton of ads for JPark. I assume this is the theme park version of J-Date. I don't know why the Jewish people chose the Philippines to find love, but best of luck. Maggie's mom and aunt Juliet came to meet us at the airport and to escort us back to Lapu Lapu City where her uncle Peter and Juliet live half the year. Juliet is from the Philippines and she is lovely. She navigates most conversations with the locals for us to make sure we pay the real prices and get where we need to go. She has been an absolute saint and without her it would be a bit of a challenge despite the impressive amount of English everyone here speaks. Maggie's uncle Peter is a wonderful man. Really warm and welcoming and forced me right away to work on my German, which I really appreciate. He has had a really interesting life. Four years in the German navy as a navigator when he was young. Despite all of the crazy things he saw during his time, the biggest change in his life happened when he was back home after his tour had ended. At 24, he was hit by a drunk driver and spent his next five years in hospital. He spent three months in a coma and his early prognosis was not great but thankfully he is now walking and speaking with a wonderful sense of humour about life. He does have some lingering challenges due to paralysis on his left side but I've never once heard him complain. His wonderful wife Juliet seems to be a perfect balance in his life as she is incredible at knowing when to assist and when to let him do his thing. It was their influence that brought us here for this visit and it had been wonderful getting to know them. When we arrived, we learned that it's basically the ghetto here in Lapu Lapu so they live in a little gated building with 24 hour guard. That said, the guard is this lovely little dude named Goldan who sleeps in a hammock here during the day and hangs out with you while listening to gangster rap on his phone at night. Stellar dude. You can also get most things brought to you by Goldan at the little front room of the building. Including beer and 78 peso big bottles of Rum. That's roughly $2. Good god. The drinking. So much cheap drinking here. Magic. I've already become famous with the neighbourhood kids. They think I'm Jesus and I've had to pose for plenty of photos now. I'm kind of a big deal. We are basically exhibits in a zoo here as the evenings are spent hanging out drinking in the front area next to the fence separating us from the neighbourhood. It also happens to be the only lights on at night here so the kids all hang out on the other side of the fence playing and looking at us. It's a little weird. The only basketball hoop is over a patch of dirt across the street too, so our place is basically the entertainment hub of the area. For dinner Goldan and Juliet worked up some BBQ tuna fresh from the market. 180 peso ($4.50) for a full size tuna and some rice. The Philippine people aren't much for seasoning meat, it's usually some dipping sauce if anything and that's it. If you can just grab a fresh fish and BBQ it up, that is usually your best bet. Tomorrow, we go check out a little local beach and get our first proper day.

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One night in Kuala Lumpur

We took a flight to Kuala Lumpur. What a fucking adventure. The first happening was simple, we wanted food. On the plane, they only offered food for purchase. Totally fine. The prices however were hilarious as compared to what we got but what are you going to do? Literally a hungry, captive audience. So we did what we had to do and bought our expensive curry and continued to survive for a while longer. It wasn't a horrendous length flight, about five hours to get down there. We didn't end up landing until about 7 so it would give us ample time to find our hotel and relax for the night before heading the rest of the way to Cebu. The real oddity for me was the announcements before landing, warning us of the dangers of drugs and human trafficking. It was a little surreal. Not something you expect during the standard speech about local weather and what not but it is definitely a legit problem here. They also took the opportunity to spray the whole cabin with this terrible axe body spray spelling garbage for some reason too. Not a pleasant surprise. Going through customs we went through the biometric scanners and had our finger prints taken. All of the agents were little ladies with headscarves. Very polite and friendly with us, which was a welcome approach. We grabbed some dinner in the airport before leaving, knowing it would probably be our last chance at a meal that night and it turned out to be exactly that. We were staying the night at Tune Hotel Sepang, just off airport property. A helpful information guy told us we could grab a shuttle from the Tune Airport Hotel. We headed over and found out it had a fare which could only be paid in Malaysian money. I had to sweet talk a hotel reception lady to help us change enough Thai baht to get us there and back in the morning. Once we finally made it to our hotel, we settled in for some sleep just in time to be reminded that people are idiots with our first Malaysian fire alarm. Some giggling girls on the floor up from us made us feel like it probably wasn't legit and thankfully we didn't have to get all the way out of the hotel before it was turned off and we could head back to bed. Our room itself was about 2-3 feet wider than our bed on all sides but clean and good enough. Up in a few hours for the next plane. Next time, we actually hit The Philippines and get to try some life in a country one economic level down from Thailand.

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Wats and Parks

Today we took a tour to a few out of town Wats that we hadn't had a chance to visit yet. Uber is not my favourite company but as long as they keep offering me free rides, it's tough not to take advantage. On the back of that, most of our day was free. We went to the first Wat outside town, Wat Umong. It was a drastic change from other Wats due to the building style and location. It was out in the middle of nowhere, originally surrounded by jungle. They built the main part of the Wat as a series of tunnels. They didn't seem to know the reason for the design or what it was to protect them from but the end result was gorgeous, dimly lit tunnels with golden Buddha's on all sides. There was also a building towards the entrance full of artwork displaying teachings from many religions. The monk who was tending this building invited us in and explained that there was much to be learned from all religions. The second Wat, Ram Poeng, was very beautiful and everyone was busy with spring cleaning and tending to the garden. Everything was very luscious and the temples were very well taken care of. It also seemed to be focused around meditation retreats. We have seen this at Doi Suthep previously but this had a different vibe. At Doi Suthep, their retreats were between 4 and 20 days and they were silent. No speaking for the duration. At Wat Ram Poeng, people were chatting and carrying on. We even saw two of them sitting around flirting with each other. The point of a mediation retreat is to learn mindful or concentration meditation and to become less attached to materialism and become less controlled by your emotions and perceptions. I don't think I could survive a silent retreat but if you are going to do it, why not do it right? If you're going through the exercise, why half ass it? Once we moved on, we went to the Royal Park, which I assumed would be another Wat. It was not. It was basically a flower theme park. Super weird. Basically empty, beautiful displays but a weird vibe. When we were leaving we discovered that Uber's aren't in this area. We were left with Songthaews, who wanted to charge us 6 times what we paid to get there or download the Grab app. We went for Grab. It still cost us 190 baht to get home instead of the 75 we would have paid with Uber but it was still better than paying double that for the songthaew. Despite the fact that everything here is cheap, your view gets skewed quickly. Now, I will haggle something for $1.50 down to $1.30 and feel accomplished about it. Walking away from it if they won't. What have I become? Once we were back home, we grabbed some dinner at the market across the moat. Maggie has actually started wanting to come here more often since she discovered one of the vendors keeps a pet pig. It's her new best friend. I must admit, the thing is pretty adorable and just flops down on its side for pets anytime we come close to it. It's little tail wagging like crazy. Pretty cute for food. We also watched a car get booted in the first parking rule enforcement we have seen since entering Thailand. This dude was driving around with a police scooter balancing a pile of car boots on the back. He pulled up and booted this car in seconds. A white lady ran out of the coffee shop and they had a heated chat while probably exchanging basically no information. The cop had no interest in explaining himself, he waved off her concerns and money bribes and left. It was interesting to see as we have seen pretty interesting park jobs everywhere. People parking on sidewalks, middle of the road, and half into shops. It's a war zone out here. That concluded our excitement. Tomorrow, we hop a plane and head to Malaysia for a night before heading out to the Philippines the next day. Should be fun.