Something I’ve always wanted to do is learn how to scuba dive. Imagine my delight when I found out that not only does my cousin dive, but she was willing to take us out somewhere to go on an intro dive. We drove out to Anilao in Batangas to a small resort. When I arrived, [...]
Living in Japan, I often heard people ask me, “how can we Japanese learn English?” or “How come the Koreans/Chinese/Filipinos/Singaporeans speak English better than us?” It was kind of an odd question that I couldn’t really answer before, but coming back to the Philippines the answer seems so obvious: you learn English by using it. [...]
While in the Philippines, my cousins and uncles have been trying endlessly to gross out Hugh with “exotic” Filipino food. I think this is a pretty common practice around the world, where rather than be embarassed about some local delicacies, most people consider Americans (and its usually Americans who are so grossed out by foreign [...]
After the wedding, we went with my cousins to Baguio, a mountain-top city which serves as a summer retreat for Manilans. I was told that it was very rural and provincial, but I guess after backpacking through rural Laos I had a completely different idea of what that would be. While it was certainly quite [...]
We officially arrived in the Philippines on the 26th, worn-out and suffering from food poisoning (well, me at least.) However, after a few days of rest we were able to attend my cousin’s wedding. Although I’m ethnically Filipino, I was born and raised in the United States and had only attended one Filipino wedding prior [...]
I love Bangkok. I know a lot of tourists dislike it, and I often heard people on the tourist trail exchanging stories and saying how much they disliked it–but I think if people would take the time to step out of Khao San (the backpacker ghetto) or Patpong (the girlie show ghetto) then they might [...]
Four Phrases that Describe It… Crowded. Touristy. Dirty. Bangkok-On-The-Beach. The last place we stayed in Phuket was Patong Beach, pretty much the tourist epicenter of Phuket and dear lord does it show. While there’s lots more shops and restaurants to choose from, there’s very little charm. The beach was incredibly crowded and the water quality [...]
One of the more fun/frustrating things about traveling in SE Asia is the need to haggle for things like transportation. There’s always rumors about the so-called “Tuk-Tuk Mafia” that supposedly do everything from price fixing to making sure tourists can’t rent motorcycles, but those have always been brushed off as rumors by locals. However, here [...]
Four Phrases That Describe It… Family-oriented. Club Med. Pretty. Expensive. For our next beach, we decided to head down south from Karon to Kata beach. The difference between the two is pretty stark, despite being only a few minute drive from the other. Kata felt much more developed, but at the same time not in [...]
Every tourist has to do certain things in Thailand, and I think one of those is to experience their world-famous kathooey (ladyboys, basically transvestites/transsexuals–the Thai’s don’t seem to differentiate, they’re just all kathooey) in some way or another. For some fairly obvious reasons, we decided that the best way to experience it would be to [...]
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