Philippines (part 2)

We planned our trip so that the first half was action packed and the second half relaxing and calm. So after we finished swimming with the whale sharks, we traveled to Naga to go hiking at the base of Mt. Isarog in order to see some hot springs and water falls. Unfortunately we were horribly misguided by lonely planet and ended up in the wrong place. So our water falls ended up being a creek about 2 meters wide and then someone built these concrete swimming pools on the side of the creek. They then filled the pools with water from the creek. The hot springs were better, but we didn't know there was a dress code that required you to wear shorts and shirts, so we couldn't go swimming.

After our day of wandering pointlessly around the mountain (although there were some pretty views and it was nice to get out and walk) we caught the night bus from hell to go to our final destination, Puerto Galera. We wanted to take a night bus so we didn't waste a day traveling. Traveling by bus in the Philippines was an interesting experience. They try to cram as many people into the bus as possible before you leave. You think a van is supposed to seat 12 (because that's how many seats there are), that's a joke, you can easily fit 16 in that van. Squash them in! We anticipated that we would have our own seats like a coach bus and be able to get some sleep. Nope, it was a vinyl covered bench seat. Not too uncomfortable, you could definitely sleep on it sitting up, the problem was the driver and the fact that there aren't any highways in the Philippines, so everything is a winding two lane country road. I think we were late for something, because the guy was driving down this road at what felt like 500km an hour. Aaron and I were literally sliding back and forth on our bench seat. I would grab onto the bench to try to stay in one spot and he would hold onto the headrest. That's how we slept, if you can call it sleep! I couldn't decide if I was more scared that we would crash into an oncomming car or flipping as we barreled around one of the turns. It was insane. But we survived!

We finally arrived in the town of Puerto Galera after that awful bus ride (and I'm not exaggerating at all) and a boat ride. The town of Puerto Galera isn't anything to write home about. There are beaches, but the restaurants and hotels have been built right up to the water and there are so many hawkers. Our favourites were the guys selling pool ques. Hmm, that's exactly what I want to buy when on a dive/beach vacation - my own personalized pool que. The people selling necklaces, sun glasses, fruit, shells - that made sense, but a pool que?? That is what we call a bad investment.

We chose Puerto Galera for the scuba diving. The diving was nice. We saw a white tip reef shark, turtles, flounder, angel fish, nudibrachs, a wide variety of soft coral. The water was chilly for diving 27C/80F, but we enjoyed it. When we weren't diving we read either on the balcony of our room or on the beach.

So that was our trip. Not incredibly exciting, but we enjoyed it. It was nice to get away from cold Suzhou and be able to see the sun for two weeks. I don't know if we'll go back to the Philippines, but we enjoyed ourselves.

(I wanted to add more pictures, but couldn't get them to upload.)

Milburn in the Philippines (part 1)

So, Kristy and I are spending our Christmas holiday in the Philippines. Originally, we had planned to go to Beijing for the vacation, but I forgot that Beijing is around -10 Celsius right now.... So that plan got scrapped. Instead, an article in one of the expat magazines inspired us to come to the Philippines. After a bit of research, a travel guide supplied by Kristy's mother when she came to visit, and some debate we settled on going to two different areas. The first one: Lagaspi. Lagaspi is not home to much, except the Philippines most active volcano.
MOUNT DOOM!!!

Woo hoo!! Ooops... that's the wrong picture...





So, the real volcano is Mount Mayon. As I am typing this, however, it IS getting ready to erupt for real. It was currently erupting a little bit when we landed. Here's what it looked like from the airport where we landed.


We didn't stay in Legaspi for long, though. We were there long enough to grab some food and some pictures before heading to Donsol for some Whale Shark watching. I wish we had some pictures of the actual whale sharks, but this will have to do.

The visibility was not good when we went, so we were very close to the sharks. These guys get up to 2 busses in length (we saw three, ranging from 5 to 9 meters in length). They eat krill, just like humpback whales, so they are very safe to be near. However, you are not supposed to scuba dive with them, because it can spook them. So, we went snorkeling. That really is good enough. We were very close, and the things were ENORMOUS. They were very cool.

Public Toilets

So it's about time that we discuss relieving oneself in China. There are two styles of toilets. The one the Chinese are most familiar with is the squat toilet. This can exist in many forms. There is the literal hole in the ground, the trough (women have trough toilets too) and the porcelain one. (Here is a link to Wikipedia in case you want to see the different styles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet) The second style of toilet is the regular sitting toilet that most Western countries are familiar with. Now you cannot throw your toilet paper in the toilet, you must throw it into the little trash can next to the toilet - that is if you're lucky enough to have toilet paper in your stall. Most of the time you need to bring it with you. Also, very rarely will there be soap or towels at the sink for after you have finished. The miracles of hand sanitizer.

Now it is perfectly acceptable to relieve oneself wherever you happen to be. For instance, we have seen cars and tuk tuks driving down the street and then pull over. The driver or passenger gets out of the car, walks into the bushes and about a minute or so later comes back out and gets back into the car. We have also seen a little girl come running out of her house, pull down her pants and just pee all over the sidewalk. While sitting in a cafe along one of the canals, a 5 year old little boy came, pulled down his pants and then urinated into the canal. Unfortunately about 10 minutes later a woman came and washed her clothes in the canal! This past weekend our friends went to Taihu lake to eat the Hairy Crab. After they had finished lunch and were taking a tour of the island, they saw the wait staff cleaning the dishes and fresh produce for the next meal in the lake. The very same lake that the hole in the ground toilet empties directly into! Mmmm, yummy!

I now need to pause and take a moment to describe the split-bottom pant to you. These are for babies through potty-training age. Babies don't wear diapers here. I don't know why. I like this only in that there aren't a bunch of diapers going to sit in a landfill forever, plus the kids get potty-trained much faster. I don't like this because babies are constantly exposed and quite frankly I don't need to see that (Aaron agrees). Split bottom pants are just that, split. Instead of a seam it is just wide open so if the kid needs to relieve itself you just pull its legs into a squat position and voila. So with this bit of knowledge, I must tell you about our favourite public excrement experience. We're at the brand new mall. It's rather upscale with a variety of Western stores like H&M, Zara, Quicksilver, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and a variety of others I don't remember. We see this woman holding her 18 month old over the trash can on the second floor at the bottom of the escalator. We start discussing - What is she doing? She's been standing there for like 5 minutes. And then it dawns on us - her child is taking a dump in the trash can in the middle of the mall!!!!!!

Ah China.

So at this point, when we step into our elevator and there's a puddle on the floor we avoid it. If it isn't raining and the concrete is wet, we walk around it. If it smells like someone's just taken a dump, they probably have. At least it's rather liberating - need to go to the bathroom and can't find one? No problem, just stand behind this tree, everyone else does!

P.S. When you come to our house you are required to take your shoes off and leave them by the front door!

The Insect Market

So, Kristy and I went to Shanghai twice over my last break. The first time was interesting, spent largely at the Shanghai Museum learning about Chinese artifacts. The second time, we went a little farther afield. We followed the Lonely Planet guide loosely, and found ourselves looking for the insect, bird, and flower market.


This market sells animals, birds, fish, plants, and insects. We have on here in Suzhou as well, but it is much more of an animal/bird market, with only one vendor selling crickets. The place in Shanghai was FULL of crickets. Crickets of every kind. Crickets in earthenware containers, and crickets in large, plastic jars. The Chinese even have little food and water dishes for their crickets, and little scoops for dishing out the "cricket food".

The market is alive with the sounds of the insects, and the Chinese sticking tiny little shovels into the cages to feed the bugs or prod them into some kind of battle-fury. I couldn't really tell which it was.The insect market sold LOTS of mealworms. I assume these are for bird food, but who really knows? I hear they have a pretty good, nutty taste.

The market also had a ton of fish, which weren't really very interesting, birds, turtles, dogs, cats, hampsters, gerbils, squirrels (YES, squirrels). Let me take a moment here: I have seen ZERO wild squirrels since we've been here. I haven't really seen much in the way of birds, either. The ONLY squirrels I've seen have been at these markets in cages. Why would someone want a squirrel as a pet?





Lots of birds, like this guy here. They had nicer cages then most of the other animals (such as those poor squirrels). The Chinese really like their ornate cages, though. The birds ranged from parakeets, parrots and cockatoos, to mynah birds and doves.

There were also bunches of turtles. They didn't look like the ones we see at the grocery store, though. Those are mostly soft-shell turtles. These were mostly water turtles and snapping turtles. I didn't see anyone actually buy any of them, but I have heard that the snapping turtles are pretty tasty.

Life update

I've been amazed at the weather. We were told that July and August were going to be hot and humid. September and October would be really nice and pleasant and then the weather would turn cold. Based on my experience living in Virginia, I expected the hot and humid to last much longer than just August, but on September 1 the humidity disappeared. On October 1 the temperature dropped probably 10 degrees (think Fahrenheit) to the 70s. On October 3 the clouds cleared and we saw a clear blue sunny sky for the first time in 6 weeks. Prior to that we'd see the sun once in a while throughout the day and only for a few minutes, but it was basically just cloudy, overcast and lots of air pollution. We're not 100% sure what to expect for winter. I've heard it feels very cold because the air is very damp and humid. The temperatures I gather are around freezing, it doesn't actually snow (and if it does, EVERYTHING grinds to a halt - in fact when it did snow, they thought that if they sprayed the streets with water that would help get rid of the snow - hehehe), but the humidity makes you feel cold all the time. There's a Chinese woman who spent some time in Canada and a Swedish woman I met on the trip to Lily Island and both told me independently of each other, that the winters here are colder than in those countries respectively. The winter sounds similar to that of Virginia, but the difference is that back home we have the shelter of our cars and we don't actually spend a lot of time outside! Needless to say, I'm worried and Aaron can't wait!

We're doing well. Aaron had a one week vacation at the beginning of October for the Chinese National Day on October 1 (celebrating 60 years) and then the Mid Autumn festival celebration on October 3. Everything mostly shut down until October 8. We thought about traveling, but when the Chinese have holiday everyone travels, so trains, planes, hotels, etc are just booked solid. So we decided to stay in Suzhou, do some touristy things here and go to Shanghai for a couple of days. We learned how to buy train tickets and out of town bus tickets, both of which involve charades. We also found some cool walking areas in Suzhou. We liked Shanghai. It's a city and it feels like it. We live in a city (6 million people), but it doesn't feel like a city. We haven't done a whole lot in Shanghai because we expect to go back frequently. We went to the Yuyuan gardens and the Shanghai museum (thanks for the recommendation Natalia and Roman). We also wandered around the fish, insect, animal and plant market, the "antiques" market, which maybe had one or two antiques years ago, but now just has a lot of items made recently in the local factory (ie: junk). Our favorite is the way the sales person insists it's from the Ming dynasty - sure it is, that's why you have 50 of them! We also came across a market for everyday goods, it had clocks, shoes, purses, clothes, electronics and so much else. This is where we bought Aaron a new beard trimmer. We got it for 130RMB, which is about $20. We could have bargained harder, but Aaron felt bad and all the other ones that we had found in stores were 300RMB. So now he doesn't look like a mountain man anymore!

Other than that things are going well. I've been substitute teaching a bit at Aaron's school and have 4 more days lined up next week because the principal has to go to a conference. I also started Chinese class this week, which I'm really excited about. In mid-November Aaron has a conference in Shenzen, which is located in mainland China right across from Hong Kong. So we're going to go a couple of days early so we can check out Hong Kong.

A note to those of you who were wondering: I don't know if I made it on TV because we haven't paid for television. We have a tv set, but it just acts as a monitor for dvds.

VIP for a day

Today I went on my first outing with other gainfully unemployed women in Suzhou and the odd spouse or two. We went to Lily Island which is in the middle of Yangcheng Lake. Yangcheng Lake is a big lake that is just to the east of us. We can actually see it from our apartment and the street we live on is called Yangcheng Lake Road. It's famous because every year in September and October the "hairy crab" makes it's migration through the lake and it's a very popular local food. Unfortunately I'm allergic to crab so we won't be having any.



Getting back to the trip: Apparently this island has never had so many Western tourists as they did yesterday and the woman who helped organize things at the Suzhou tourist office alerted the media. We became celebrities, the VIP guests, and had our own paparazzi following us, as we "fished" for what are called water chestnuts and made zhongzi (pronounced jongse). So these water chestnuts grow on the underside of this plant in the lake. We were forced to wear these awful fluorescent orange life jackets, because it would be awful if the VIP westerners fell overboard! We were divided into these small fishing boats and then taken out onto the lake. You pick the plant out of the water and then pluck the pod holding the nut off. You then cook the pod, shell it and then eat the nut inside. The nut is similar to a water chestnut hence its English name, but isn't exactly the same.





Then we were taken back to the island where we made zhongzi. This involves taking bamboo leaves and folding them in a way to fill it with uncooked sticky rice. The trick is to fold it tightly enough so the rice doesn't start falling out at the corners. Once you have filled the cavity you have made, you then fold the leaves down and tie it with rope. These then get cooked for something like 7 hours. When they're finished you unwrap the very sticky rice from the bamboo leaves and just eat the rice. It's actually quite good. While we didn't eat our own, they had made some for us. At this point the media decided they had had enough and stopped following us around. They had tried to interview a bunch of us, but they were a bit disappointed when out of a group of 45, maybe 2 of us spoke enough Chinese to converse with. They'll be airing it on the local Chinese news station for the next few days, so we're going to try and go to a friends house to watch it because we don't have TV. It was quite bizarre to have all those video cameras and reporters following us around.

Fireworks

So I expected to hear a lot of noise pollution from the car horn. There's some, don't get me wrong and I will definitely describe this soon, but nothing compared to the firework. The Chinese LOVE their fireworks - as they should - they developed this technology back during the Tang dynasty (between 589-907AD). The Chinese used this technology to blow things up and make pretty designs in the sky, the Mongolians took this same technology (aka: gunpowder) and used it to conquer the Chinese! Hmmm. So 1500 years later, the Chinese still love their fireworks. They go off every day, literally every day. They go off in the morning, mid-day and especially at night. When we first arrived, we though they were doing demolition at 7 in the morning, turns out, people are just really excited to set off their fireworks. They set them off in the courtyard of our apartment complex, at the hotel across the street and then off in the distance. We're not sure why they set them off - maybe because it's 10am on a Thursday or lunch time "yay fireworks" - because you can see them so well when it's light outside?!?! Um are you confused yet, because we are. We've been able to determine why fireworks went off on 2 occasions out of the hundreds we've heard. One was because a nightclub was opening just down the street another was because of a conference at a hotel. The thing we find the most puzzling is that fireworks are expensive, so why are they being shot off morning, noon and night? Aaron is so frustrated with them at this point. It drives him nuts. I don't particularly mind them. So just another one of the weird quirks of China!