Salamat

One part rice, two parts San Miguel Pilsner, a dollop of tricycle taxis, a few handfuls of white sand, a quart of the saltiest sea water, a dash of balut, and a pinch of tropical fish.  Mix well and let it sit out in the sun for 7 days.  Before presentation add a 50/50 mixture of Underground river and sugar cane rum glaze.  Viola!  Our Philippine Vacation.

Satisfied?  No?!  Alright then, we have been avoiding doing a proper blog post for some time now.  I suppose we can give you a little more about our week long mini vacation.

After a sleepless night in busses, airports, and airplanes, we arrive in Puerto Princessa City....If you can call it a city.  With a respectable population of 253,000 people you would think it would feel a little larger.  Bamboo huts, roadside vendors, shoeless children and not a building taller than 3 stories.  Our kind hosts at the hostel boasted with Filipino pride that there were many parts of the city worth seeing.  It is supposed to be the cleanest city in the Phillipines, and the island of Palawan is one of the greenest (both in environmental impact and actual color).  We took a city tour on the ubiquitous tricycles that are the filipino version of a taxi.  A motorbike with a home-made frame attached that acts like a side car.  Our Guide Rolly ended up taking us on a well worn tourist path of a Crocodile Rescue and Conservation Farm (that serves crocodile meat- explain that!), Bakers Hill which sells traditional baked goods amongst disney statues, an outlook over the picturesque city and Honda Bay, quick pit stop to patch the flat tire of the side car, a native women's art and weaving center, and finally the bay walk along the waterfront of PPC.  Altogether.....meh.  We were kept busy for the day, but failed in trying to escape the safe tourist highlights of the city.

Lets move on.  On monday we left PPC for a 6 hour van ride through unpaved mountain roads, a driver that handles the van in a way that would make even popeye a little queezy, and 3 hungover frenchmen that reek to high heaven (scratch that- New Caledonian men.....just google it).

Arrive in El Nido.  Dodge the pestering tricycle drivers that await the unsuspecting beach seekers.  Walk into town.  We immediately find that a simple beach walk exposes the many beachfront options for accomodation.  Our little place was a humble beachfront cottage.  In need of a little love, a new toilet, and perhaps a little tacky with the leftover Christmas decorations- but hey, 10 steps and your feet are in the bath water that is the South China Sea.  Also it was about $15 a night :)

We decided to deviate from the tourist trail a little by not taking the island hopping tours with the rest of the foreigners.  Instead we spent our days kayaking to the nearest archipelago, doing drop off/pick up tours to specific beaches, snorkeling, and generally enjoying the sun and no pressure to do.....well anything.  We were lucky enough to make some good friends on our second day there.  We Kayaked up to a little lagoon and found two friendly Swedish couples and an guy from Kansas having a pic-nic/snorkel/beach party.  We ended up spending the rest of the week with them.

I'm sure you don't want to hear the boring details of the insanely warm water, gorgeous coral and tropical fish, untouched white sand beaches, and delicious coconut juice picked right from the tree.  Don't worry, we aren't going to tell you about that.

We will tell you about two crazy foods that we tried.  One was Balut.   Balut is a fertilized duck egg that is incubated for anywhere from 6-18 days and then boiled for hours.  It is then eaten as a hard boiled egg with vinegar and a little salt.  It wasn't so bad.  The egg white turned into the texture of a rubber bouncy ball, but the yolk and the embryo tasted just like a regular egg.  We'd try it again.  The second strange food that we ate was Tamiloc- a worm that lives in the driftwood of mangrove trees.  Yes we ate them.  No they weren't squirming around.  They were garnished with vinegar and spices and resembled raw oysters in texture but not in flavor.  We will post the videos and pictures taken in both instances on facebook or here.

After an equally stimulating ride back over the mountains to the PPC side of the island, we spent our last day traveling to the famous Underground River- one of the New 7 Wonders of the World....whatever that means.  It was beautiful and vast and we thoroughly enjoyed the stalactite and stalagmite formations inside.

We are now home safe and sound and refreshed.  We both have the feeling that the next few months will be a tough stretch for us being away from home for the holidays and such.  It was great to have some time off in a gorgeous location.  Now we both have to lesson plan for this evening.  Lots of love and skype us soon!

Hal and Siri