Some of the local toughs. They were busy pushing eachother into the water when we arrived at the biggest beach that I've ever seen.

The ferocious MONITOR LIZARD!

Here is the hellish road that we took for several hours to get to the site of the world's longest underground river where a bunch of these shots were taken. We hired a van and were carted around like the imperial capitalist turds that we are. It was really convenient.

After the canoe day, i got myself a bit of food poisoning and slept for about 12 hours the next day. The following day we took a 9 hour bus ride through jungle on the shittiest roads I've ever been on to get to the city of Puerto Princesa. From Puerto we took the road in the following picture to the tiny town of Sabang where the outlet of the world's longest underground river is. We were able to take a tour of only 1.5 kilometers of the total 20 kilometer length.

The nex day we rented an outrigger canoe and paddled around for a while. Not as easy as a regular canoe, but a lot more stable.

The hard life of a snorkel captain. Aside from the fact that this guy probably makes about $1000 per year, it's a pretty easy life.

It's a strange experience to snorkel for the first time. For a landlubber like me, it's a bit disconcerting to be able to see sunken wrecks 30 feet down as you easily float by. Of course, it's mostly about looking cool.

Here's a picture of just one of the bazillion picturesque beaches in the Philippines. If your idea of a good time is lounging on an isolated beach, you could do worse than the island of Palawan.

We spent the next day snorkeling around Coron Town. It's pretty amazing that for $9 a day you can rent goggles and snorkel and a whole boat.

Here is Coron Town where we stayed for the first two days in Busuanga. Don't let the idyllic scene fool you, all we heard all day whas the buzz and clatter of ill kept engines, motorcycle, truck and boat.

Here is a little view of the town from the top of a nearby hill. This photo was taken from the base of a giant illuminated cross.

And this is the airport. We were greeted by 4 airport employees, 6 mangy dogs, 15 chickens and 1 pet monkey.

Here's where we touched down.

We flew from Manila to the small island of Busuanga on a 15 seater aircraft. The view was spectacular from the airplane. Turquoise waters and then all of a sudden a reef or a white beached island.

This is a view of the first morning in Manila. It's already damn hot outside and we have yet to figure out how to get where we're going. The garbage pickers we saw as we entered last night have cleared out and it's rather sterile around our hotel at this time.

I didn't really expect it, but it takes about 4 or 5 days to get back into the swing of things from a vacation. I showed up to work on monday and it was just one of those times when i thought, "Gee, what do I do next?" The whole week has kind of been like that. I mostly just show up. I started preparing my lesson for the girls highschool about an hour ago. With luck it won't suck, like other lessons that I've made. Usually I just steal ideas from Jennifer.
Today we're slogging through the dregs of what is hopefully the last typhoon of the season. It's not so bad, but it has dropped a good deal of rain on us for the past few days. Hopefully it will dry off for the weekend and I'll be able to do something fun outside again.
Sorry for the boring post, but pictures are coming soon, brace yourself.

We're back safe and sound from the Philippines. Yay.
The week was over in a flash and at the beginning I thought that I was going to be hating life to go back to Japan, but as it turns out, round about the time I got sick, I totally changed my tune. I don't know what it is, but I really get ripped up inside on vacations. It was on our trip to Europe a couple of years ago that I really first got the travellers revenge and it was the exact same thing this time. Fortunately, I had learned about the lovely power of Loperamide!! This is the drug most commonly found in anti-motility pills and about 3-6 milligrams will stop you up like you can only imagine. It's pretty amazing how quickly it returns you to the world of the living.
This time was trying because we happened to be on an all day boating expedidtion when I first started to get sick and the combination of extremely loud motor, bright sunshine, intense heat and choppy seas made for an uncomfortable time island hopping.

Aside from the subject of poo, the trip was really a good one. Travelling was quite easy, though it took a long damn time. Something that really amazed me was that there was no language barrier. Almost everyone spoke English and most people spoke it well enough to be conversational. It puts the Japanese to shame man, it really does. You could talk to the grubbiest of boat drivers quite as easily as the desk clerk at the hotel. Travel is slow mostly, i think due to the fact that there are a lot of damn island in the Philippines. I started counting, but I lost track at 2 bazillion. I think in the whole archipeligo there are like maybe 6 or 7 bazillion. Roads are also pretty shit out in the provinces. We spent almost all our time on the island of Palawan. It took us about 9 hours to drive 100 miles, much of that over crappy dirt roads and washed out bridges. It just takes forever.

This is running on, so I'll post more about the details when we develop the film.

It's official y'all, i've been in this country for exactly a year as of Monday. And what a year it's been. I can now speak a smattering of japanese words and phrases, i have eaten a great number of raw animals and I've not gagged on many. I've learned how to do the mighty telemark turn on skis, I've spent nights drinking under the cherry blossoms and gotten the wicked hangovers to prove it. I've been hit by a car and insulted by 13 year old girls. It's been real people, it's been real.

Thank god i'm leaving this country (if only temporarily) this Saturday. The Philippines will be a welcome respite from Japan. Not like i really hate the place, it's just that it's not as good as home in many ways. For instance, my job involves talking at ignorant highschool girls for 3 hours every week. I would rather shovel manure to be honest, if the pay were right.

I've been flexing a lot in the mirror lately and I believe that I saw a muscle the other day. I can't be sure, but i've got a hunch that rock climbing has had something to do with that.
This is the first time in my life that I've done an arm intensive sport. From that perspective, it's ridiculously hard, my poor little pencils are just dying out there. I went climbing outdoors with Jodi today, it was rather an exercise in unbridled expectations and biting off a little more than I can chew. I tried to lead a climb, that is to climb up and put in the protecting carabiners ahead of me, and flopped miserably. Of course I picked two that looked cool and were ridiculously difficult to do-idiot. Anyway, I'm getting better and the hubris finally wore off and I managed to lead a climb successfully at the end of day. No crashes, but my toes are just murdered. It seems that my shoes expand and contract at random intervals, today they were too big for my shoes and it just killed. With luck I won't leave my toenails behind like Jodi did upon buying her new shoes.

The astute may notice that in my sidebar links area, the link to Doug's defunct website is gone and Jude's new one has replaced it. Also, i have conveniently added the website of one of my favorite publishers, Velonews. Alf's website is on the out-list and if there aren't any posts in the next week or so, it's outtahere (got that Hickey?)
How's that for a cyber-ultimatum.