MMMiii!

We went to El Nido from Puerto Princesa via a shuttle. Or a van. Either way, it’s an airconditioned vehicle that is twice the price of the regular bus but almost twice as fast. If we took the bus, it was only worth P300 but it would take approximately 10 hours to get to El Nido. If we take the shuttle, it will only take 6 hours or so.

We booked with Fort Wally Shuttle Service. I highly suggest booking in advance but not TOO too early because they’ll probably lose your reservation.

We stayed in Marina Garden Beach Resort which was by the shore in the heart of El Nido. From there, we had the tours A and C arranged by the resort. It was a bit pricier than most. When we walked around there were available tours that was P100 cheaper than what Marina had arranged for us. But the first day of our tour, there was only the three of us so it looked like we were on a private tour.

For the first day, we had Tour C because the weather was perfect for it. We went to the Hidden Beach and the Secret beach and some other beaches. We each ate a whole Maya-maya or Red Snapper for lunch.

The second day of the tour, we had Tour A, but there were other people in the tour which was just fine. It was still just 2 groups. The more, the merrier. But it was kind of uncomfortable other people seeing my flab. I really need to get in shape (I KNOW, CIRCLE IS A SHAPE) and get diet pills that work coupled in with regular exercise. But I’m already expecting to be broke so… never mind.

We had dinner at Squidos on our first night. Scott had butter-lemon crab and he loved it. He said it was better than the crabs we ate in Singapore. It was only P150 for 2 crabs (Around $4.00). I had their specialty which was the Stuffed Squid. It was mighty good.

The second night, we ate at Balay Tubay where there was this “Live Performance” with us as the only audience he had and the singer sang depressing songs. The servings were huge. We learned our lesson to ask first how many people can eat one serving of their food. I had the Pancit Bihon.

For the third night, we ate at Marbers where we had the beach as our scenery. I ordered Pancit Palabok which was good. Loraine liked my food better than her Pesto Pasta.

We woke up early on our 4th day there to go back to Puerto Princesa and hop on our plane back to Manila in the evening. The shuttles only run in the morning because the roads are too dangerous to travel on at night. We did our last minute pasalubong shopping in the market and hung out at Itoy’s for the airconditioning and coffee.

THE BEACHES WERE BETTER IN EL NIDO. If you’re going to go to Palawan, might as well go to El Nido and/or Coron (Although I haven’t been there as of writing this).

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I NEED TO PACK!!! Loraine gave me a list of items to bring. As of the moment, I’m not yet done packing because I forgot to inform my brother Iks that today is the flight and I’ll be borrowing his backpack. I’m waiting for him as I type. Anyway, this is Lori’s email for me because she knows how stupid I can be when it comes to traveling. AND this IS technically my first beach trip.

PACKING TIPS

1. Pack smart. Pack light. Pack what YOU can carry yourself. If you cannot carry it yourself, leave some stuff behind. I think you know this already.
2. Duffel bag or Backpack.
3. Bring a plastic bag/ eco bag for pasalubongs.
4. Bring baryadong pera. Don’t bring all Php 1,000 with you. Bring enough cash.

ON CLOTHES:

1. Swimsuit of course. We have three swimming days. you can recycle swimsuits para lighter ang dala nyo.
2. Sarong. For protection to Haring Araw, as banig.

THINGS TO BRING:

1. Goggles/Snorkeling gear if you don’t want to rent. Php 100-150 ang rent ng snorkel.
2. Aqua shoes. Not really that necessary. We can rent. Same rate as snorkeling gear I think.
3. Comfy footwear.
4. Cameras. I’m bringing both my point-and-shoot camera and underwater camera. At kukunan nyo ako ng pictures.
5. Camera charger
6. Cellphone charger
7. SUNBLOCK. Utang na loob.
8. Sunblock with the anti-jellyfish feature
9. Plastic bag for dirty clothes
10. Plastic bag for wet clothes
11. Bitbit na bag. Dito ilalagay ang towel, extra clothes, camera, food, water, at kung anu-ano while we tour. Expect it will get wet. Ilagay sa loob ng plastic bag ang mga gamit kung hindi waterproof ang bag.
12. Ziplock bags for money. Pwede na din normal na maliit na plastic bag.
13. Off Lotion. I buy the sachets para mas tipid.
14. Normal Lotion or petroleum jelly. Baka mag-dry ang skin. Apply bago matulog.
15. Sunglasses
16. Hat/Cap/Sunvisors/Bandana.
17. Towel. I pack a light towel para hindi mabigat at hindi mahirap patuyuin.
18. Medicines - for ALLERGIES, headaches, biyahilo meds
19. Toiletries: soap, shampoo, tootpaste, toothbrush, conditioner, deodorant, kikay stuff
20. Umbrella. Pero sana hindi magamit.
21. Cards/Books.
22. Water during travel. 2 liters ay pwede na.
23. Snacks. Mga kutkutin sa bus and resort. I prefer to bring my own. Baka may patong na kasi pagdating dun.
24. Ipod with a cool playlist - for the long van ride.
25. Flashlight. For night walks.
26. Hard bread for fish feeding - Skyflakes/Breadpan/Prima

NOTES:
El Nido has rationed electricity 8pm to 6pm I think. But it can be erratic at times.
I will be collecting Php 100-200/pax for common fund. We will probably be tipping some of the good guides there.

Do let em know if you have any concerns.

I’m not even including anymore the womens vitamins. Right now since I just really went through the list NOW to italicize the non-English words, I’m looking for the waterproof cards that I won’t feel bad if it gets lost in the sand. I really want to try playing cards on the sand. Well, off to pack and look for the cards!

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Oh my oh my! I turn 26 on this day. I wonder if people in Malaysia had issues about mesothelioma life expectancy. I’ve heard about it in the Philippines ONLY a tiny little bit, but in the US, apparently there are TV ads about it.

Today we met up with another online friend named Mai. She’s from CyberJaya, a bit far from Petaling Jaya where we’re staying at. We took a teksi to the train station Taman Bahagia of the Kelana Jaya line. It cost less than RM8. Then we took the train to KL Sentral which was RM2 each. Then we changed lines to the KLIA Transit line to Putrajaya & Cyberjaya which was RM9.50. We then took a cab to the Cyberia bus station via coupon system so we were charged a flat rate of RM13.

We went to where our friend was working, which was Kyros Kebab. I had the Chicken Chop meal and later on, the Black Pepper Spaghetti. Scott had the lamb wrap and the mixed wrap.

We went around The Street Mall to check out the bazaar type shops and I bought some earrings and a vest. Scott bought a book. lol.

Before leaving, Mai gave me a gift. It was a g-clef pendant necklace with matching earrings. It was really nice. I know where she bought it but somehow I didn’t notice it when I was looking around.

We then went to Midvalley Megamall to meet up with another irc friend, Moe-tan. Terin couldn’t meet up with us which was sad. We went to a Hailam Kopitiam and I had tom yum dry noodles. IT WAS GOOD!

Scott decided that he was going to reschedule the flight back. We’re supposed to be going back home tomorrow, but he felt that we hadn’t seen anything of Kuala Lumpur. We went home hoping to get back before midnight so we could make these changes but the taxi driver got lost and we went around and around. From Taman Desa to Petaling Jaya, it shouldn’t have cost RM30. I swear we were near our place when the meter ticked 10 or 15, but the taxi driver played stupid. It was annoying. Had to call Terin to get us home.

So… we extended our stay in Malaysia for a week and we’ll be going home on the 26th! Actually the flight is on the 27th, but it’s at 1am so we’ll need to leave the condo around 9pm.

Overall, it was a good day for my birthday!

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I’ll start with Day 1 even if the first day was actually on the 13th and we got back in KL in the evening of the 16th. Technically this would be Day 3.

We slept late in the evening of what was supposed to be yesterday, so we got up late. Past 11am. After Scott took a shower, he realized that he was out of clean clothes, so we decided to go to our friend’s salon and use the washer and drier there. My friend owns the salon, and Mondays are her days off. The salon is closed on Mondays, so when we went there, there wasn’t anyone there.

We popped in the clothes in the washer and went out to eat lunch at DucKing. We had the 4-combo meal which consisted of Roasted Duck, Barbecued Fatty pork, deep fried sliced pork belly, and my favorite that time–CHILI JELLYFISH! For our rice, we had fried rice with some kind of sauce under it and a fried egg on top. It was a good lunch, then because they were starting to clean and the smell of Lysol was bothering our friend already, we went back to the Salon.

While waiting for the clothes, Terin, the friend we’re staying with, started playing with Scott’s (long) hair, she found out that it was cut unevenly. Terin, being a hairdresser, itched to fix it. So she trimmed here and there, and after some time of wrinkling her nose and throwing Scott’s hair around, she finally voiced her complaints about his hair.

So she decided to do a treatment on it. She rebonded his hair. Malaysian hair rebonding is so good! Not like the generally crappy rebonded hair in the Philippines that I see. His hair looked so naturally straight and not sticking out like a broom.

The laundry was about done after the 2nd step of the process and so we were just waiting for the dryer to finish completing its job. Terin couldn’t sit still though. She was pacing around in her office furniture until she couldn’t take it and said she wanted to put highlights on my hair. I ended up having to choose, and I chose red. After mixing the dye, and inspected my hair, she said she will need to trim it a bit to show off the dye better.

Her trim became a session of hairstyling! And basic study of hairstyle and face shapes. She fixed it so my hair looked a bit slimmer instead of rounder.

The laundry finished drying just about after Scott getting his hair dried and the treatment completed. We went to eat dinner somewhere and had curry fish cake (which was really fish), chili frog, homemade tofu salad, and shrimp and some kind of beans…. IT was all good.

What I’ve noticed about Singapore Food and Malaysian food…. i don’t know which one anymore is indonesian, malay, singaporean, whatever…. they’re too … mixed. lol.

So that’s how my first Day in KL went. I would never exchange this day with a day of sightseeing.

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We tried to wake up early, but it was just so difficult. Panda sent a message asking if we agreed to meet on 10:30am. We actually agreed to 10am… but since we were such slugs, I said that we agreed to 10:30am. We had to check out and bring our bags to wherever we were going to meet because we didn’t want to meet up, have lunch, then come back just to pick up our stuff. It was a waste of time.

Before leaving, Ozeki, one of the people I chat with on IRC too, said he was going to meet up. I was surprised too because this was the guy who professed not wanting to mix real life with online life that’s why he wasn’t meeting anyone from online who’s also in Singapore, but he said he would meet up with me. Panda kept changing her mind about where to meet up so good thing I had Ozeki’s number.

We checked out around 9:45am and we thought it was going to take a long time. It was done in a moment. We then started walking to Lavender station which was maybe about 10 minutes walk from the hotel. Boy! Our bags were heavy!

And Panda was late a bit. She said she missed the bus or something so she took a cab and was stuck in traffic. She wasn’t that late though. She arrived around 10:45am. We then headed on our way to Harbourfront station. (where she decided to have the picnic instead) When we got to the rooftop… it looked hot, so we just ate at the foodcourt. I just sent Ozeki a message that we were inside.

When he arrived, he said, “Who thought of that idea to have a picnic on the rooftop in this kind of weather!?” (it was really hot). Panda said it was her. lol.

I ate Nasi Lemak with Singaporean fish cake and curry chicken. It was goooood! The rice had coconut milk or something. While eating, Ozeki said we still had time to visit Sentosa. I said, even if we did, it will be tiring carrying our bags around. We decided to just walk around in the mall.

We saw a place that was selling handbags for only S$10 !!! I was so happy! I wanted to buy 2 but Scott might get mad at me again. I was surprised to see the Aeroline ticketing center just beside that place! I asked if we could leave the bags, and they said that we could. So we quickly left our luggage and went to Sentosa to look around and take pictures.

I bought a keychain and took pictures of the Universal Studios entrance though I didn’t really go inside. LOL. We also walked along the beach, and Ozeki said that it was a fake beach. The sand was imported. I just found that funny. Oh well…

We went back just in time for us to board the bus back to Malaysia. Too bad I wasn’t able to meet up with Kanitha, also someone from IRC that I wanted to meet too (because she’s really pretty) but she got my message late and I got her reply late so that didn’t work out as well.

I would like to go back to Singapore one day!

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While we were in Chinatown, we went to an Indian temple and it says there that we’d need to pay S$3 to register our camera if we want to take pictures. No way, no thank you.

After buying souvenirs, we went to Lim Chee Guan jerky place and bought jerky. She said everytime she went there, she asks for free taste just for fun. While wondering what to do next, Scott sent a message to Panda saying that he lost a lot in the Casino and wanted to meet up already. So we gave him instructions on where to meet up and waited for him at the Chinatown train station. He arrived after about 30+ minutes.

We then went to somewhere… I don’t know which mall it was. But Panda was supposed to take us to a good but cheaper Chili Crab place in Singapore… but she didn’t know how to get there. We ended up waiting for her friend Lenny to get us to the right place. While waiting, we looked around too and bought bread from BreadTalk (Panda’s bribe to Lenny for passing the tourguide duties to her) and I checked out a bookstore. Scott said he prefers getting Amazon books because he can get secondhand books for a cheaper price. Oh well, so much for that then.

We went to the rooftop of the Esplanade to see the durian spike shaped roof. We were going to go to the Merlion afterwards, but after seeing that there’s TOO MANY people around it, I said nevermind and that I’ll just take a picture of it from afar. We then decided to just walk towards Clark Quay instead of taking a train. Lenny said it was only about 20 minutes by foot to get there.

There was a dragonboat competition on the way but we didn’t see anyone rowing, just hundreds of people around. I saw the bird statue with the bunghole.

We passed by many restaurants selling seafood, with their seacreatures still alive on display. After debating, we just decided to go to the place that serves THE Chili Crab of Singapore, which is Jumbo Seafood. We tried the Chili crab and the Pepper crab. I personally like the Pepper crab better. It brings out the taste of crab better. We also ordered cereal prawn and it was delicious. My favorite there was the cereal prawn, next was the pepper crab, and then … well, the chili crab was alright. Scott said it was the best crab he has eaten in his whole life. I think it’s just about the same as the chili crab I had at Dampa in the Philippines before.

After eating, we walked around some more at Clark Quay, taking pictures and just looking at the sites. There were the giant airconditioners that looked like penuses from behind. (Image c/o Scott’s perverted mind).

Lenny left afterwards but Scott and Panda were still hungry so we decided to have some dessert. On the way, there was sushi on sale (past 8pm) for really cheap, so we got some of those. We went for desserts at this famous dessert place. We had to line up for some time because there were a LOT of people waiting. While eating, we decided what to do for the next day. Panda suggested we go back to the rooftop of the Esplanade and have a picnic there and eat the sushi we bought.

We called it a night, and we went home via the MRT. We got off at the Lavender station and walked back to our hotel. Somehow, we ended up eating our sushi though. We figured we could just face Panda’s wrath tomorrow when we tell her that the picnic food was eaten.

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We arrived in Singapore after a 5-hour bus ride from Petaling Jaya (near Kuala Lumpur) via Aeroline around 2pm just in time to check in.

The bus ride from Malaysia to Singapore was comfortable. I thought trains would be faster but everyone I knew said it was better to take the bus. I found it weird that the bus would be faster than the train but I took their word anyway. I wasn’t disappointed. Our bus served a bottle of water at the start of the trip, a 6-inch ham thingie from Subway, and a choice of hot tea, hot chocolate, or hot coffee. I chose hot chocolate. I really can’t remember what was the Sub that was served. It wasn’t that interesting but it was filling anyway. It was probably the Sub of the Day.

We took a cab from the bus station to our hotel which was, according to my friend, surprisingly cheap (I wanted to kick him in the face) and it (only, for him) cost S$9.00. He said he expected S$19.00. That was from Harbourfront Station to a little past the Lavender Station.

After resting for a bit, we looked for noodles and we found a 24-hour food court near our place, which is near the Jalan Besar Stadium. Me, being the noodle freak, bought noodles. It was pretty ordinary, I think, but to me it was awesome. I loved it. It was really just noodles with sauce and dumpling topping. Scott had roasted duck topping which was also good. Because we were so hungry, we forgot to take pictures.

Scott slept. Ozeki gave a lot of suggestions on what we could do for that evening so as not to waste our time in Singapore but he was sleeping so never mind. By late evening I was hungry but he was still asleep so I went to the food court by myself to get noodles again. I went by a different route just to see something different and … well… it wasn’t really much different, except that I discovered about the stadium nearby.

Panda/Ikki/Irene called (we had bought a SIM card from the Harbourfront station because Scott said wanted to call some people) and we agreed to meet tomorrow at 9am at the Lavender station.

Just wondering… if people here know about or use hgh sprays. The shorter people seem shorter around the bigger people. go figure.

I still think it was a good day even though I didn’t do much. Just a day with a meal of noodles will always make it a good day.

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Finally back in the Philippines. Hong Kong was fun. We were able to go to so many places. I took so many pictures. We went to the usual tourist spot like the Lantau Island’s Buddha, Ocean Park, ate noodles, and so many other things.

The only two things that we weren’t able to do that I regret is not going to Disneyland and not seeing a race horse match. It would’ve been cool to see men riding horses in their breeches.

Overall, it was a good experience. I enjoyed the foodtrips the most. I would really love to come back some day.

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Today… The day before we leave for Hong Kong. I’m not yet ready. I’m not yet ready…

It’s already past noon and we’re still doing the laundry. I’m still waiting for the clothes to dry. I had my alarm set at 6am, and kept snoozing it. It snoozes for 9 minutes. We had it snoozing until past 8am. We got up and it was almost 9 before we started doing the laundry.

We haven’t started packing. We can’t start packing yet because the clothes are still not yet completely dry.

I know I should write up a list on what to bring in the luggage and what to bring in the personal bag, and then I was advised that I should have a carry-on bag too. I’m getting confused with all of this! AAAAAHHHHH!!!!

I also need to write a list of what I want to buy in Hong Kong. Consumer electronics? Toys? Clothes might be out of the question, although since horseracing is a thing there, I considered equestrian apparel just for souvenir. At the time of writing I have less than 12 hours to get ready. >_<

I don’t want to think about it at the moment. I’m going to shut down myself for a bit.

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We arrived in Manila at almost 5am. Slightly off the expected 3:30 because of the unexpected delay at the bus station in Bontoc. We were dropped off at Aurora, Cubao so we weren’t really that far from home. We could have taken a jeepney but I was too tired and sleepy. My side hurts from the cave.

The cab ride didn’t even reach P70. When we arrived, we just removed our shoes, moved stuff around, and slept. I think Yu played some games too before falling asleep. Throughout the day I was in and out of consciousness. Although I think relatively we slept well during our days in Sagada, I still felt so sleepy. It was like I damaged my whole face from the trip from eyebags, sunburn, and what not. Not so much though as to warrant me to look for the best eye cream for wrinkles. I don’t think I developed any wrinkles for this trip. Maybe something for my heart since climbing up the stairs was really torture.

I shouldn’t really call this Day 5, since most likely after midnight we were far away from the Mountain Province already. But since this day still felt like we were still on the trip. And to be honest, I don’t really remember much of this day. I really spent most of it asleep. I knew at the back of my head that we need to prepare a bit for the Corregidor trip in 2 days, I didn’t care. I wanted to sleep and sleep.

And so… that’s how our Sagada trip ended.

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