Back to Manila, sprawling city with lots of people. Friendly people! With really great English (one of the PI's national languages). I learned a few phrases of Tagalog but even Tagalog is only one of the many languages and is not spoken everywhere.
Sewer wanted.
Vegetarian food was kind of hard to come by in PI (most of the food is very meaty). However, one place we found was the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital cafeteria. A weird place to eat on vacation, I know, and kinda hard to find, but I was really happy once we did. The entire cafeteria is vegetarian, and included many veg versions of local dishes. Score!
We decided to try Boracay, from reading the tourism bureau's recommendations as the place that locals favor. We arrived to find that this is decidedly a resort island, with a few grand hotels and lots of touristy restaurants. While some (not all) parts of the island were sanitized and resort-y, I did appreciate the availability of food options.
An aside: I don't like pretending that I'm not a tourist when I am. When I'm traveling I try to give my money to people who will notice it and use it in their local economy, just like I do at home. I try not to use big international chains especially when I travel. But I am still a tourist and a stranger and someone who is not fluent in the language and culture. I try hard to be thoughtful and have a low impact and considerate of others and mindful of my surroundings, but the fact remains that I am a relatively privileged person with the means to travel. I know there is a pretentious notion against being a tourist, of being a "traveler" instead and hating on other people who have the gall to visit some secret place that the traveler feels they are the first outsider to have ever visited. Suck it up. If you don't actually live there, if you are not from a place, if you are visiting not because of work but because you have the relative freedom and money to travel to somewhere you don't live, you are a damn tourist. Fine, don't be a loud obnoxious person in Tevas and Bermuda shorts, but you are not a special snowflake. Be kind and learn things and get over yourselves.
Boracay is just beautiful. Beaches, sand, a few restaurants, a few moto-taxis, but it's not over the top. There are plenty of places to get away with just a short taxi ride.
All I wanted to do was drink calamansi juice.
Lots of boats on the clear water.
Grilled vegetable sandwich at one of the cafes in town.
Beach treasures
Toilets are euphemistically known as "comfort rooms" in the PI.
It occurs to me that I never talked about my trip to the Philippines. I think because it was the fall of 2010, and I didn't get around to sorting the pictures right away, then the holidays, then the earthquake, and then we were all pretty busy for awhile.
The Philippines in kind of in our neighborhood out here. It's another archipelago in this neck of the ocean generally, and you could just about island hop down there from here. In fact, the very bottom of Japan is only a couple hundred miles from the very top of the Philippines. If you could drive across the ocean, you could do it in less than a day. If you count all the tiny islands (and whether you do depends on who you talk to), it's about 240 miles between the two countries. That's less than from the top to the bottom of Oregon.
Here in Japan, we get a lot of our tropical fruit from the Philippines. Some stuff is grown down in Okinawa, but it's really common to see stuff like bananas and pineapples and mango with PI labels. Stuff that in the States comes from Mexico, in Japan comes from PI.
It turns out that because it's so close, air tickets there are relatively inexpensive. I regularly see deals going for around ¥30,000 ($300). It also means that the cost in miles is pretty cheap. A intra-Asia ticket costs the same as a domestic US ticket at about 20,000 miles.
For the first hotel night too, I was able to book a place using some miles rattling around in a different account for an airline I never use. Not enough for an air ticket and about to expire.
The hotel was fine. I almost never stay in big chain hotels like that unless someone else is footing the bill. I'd rather spend my money elsewhere but also I don't have enough money to give it to places like that.
The next night, we moved to a pension in Malate. The building was beautiful, old dark wood, with friendly staff and in a pretty, if gentrified, neighborhood. There are a lot of small businesses and lots of street life, night life. Big grand old churches.
Food is kind of hard for vegetarians in Manila I think. Seems like a very meat-centric cuisine, but Manila also has an international streak and I managed to find stuff to eat. Most of it was not very traditional. Something I did manage to get though were these cassava fries. Delicious.
Took a walk by the ocean.
Took in a free concert in the park. Pinoys love music, people are doing karaoke and jamming all over the place.
Love this sign.
Next stop: beach. This is a country made up of over 7,000 islands. We have to visit at least one of them.
The station masters give out these little cards when the train is significantly delayed (more than a few minutes) so you can give them to your boss or fuming boyfriend to prove you're not lying about the train being late.
My dear Oregon is a dream for hiking, so when my sis proposed a hike out to Mirror Lake, where I hadn't yet been, I was game.
Photo courtesy of Cassandra, taken by some friendly hiker ladies we met along the way.
About an hour east of Portland on the I-26, Mirror Lake is a gentle hike that leads to the pretty lake reflecting Mount Hood.
photo by Melvin
We also managed to find a geocache along the way, Melvin's first.
photo by Melvin
This would be a pretty place for a swim in the summer. I got stuck in a bog and had mud up to mid calf. That's what happens when you wander off the path.
My sis wanted to take all of our child-friends to the pumpkin patch (she's a very cool fake aunt) so I found a groupon to Lee Farms and off we went.
It was a fine fall day.
There were lots of things to entertain the kiddos in addition to squash, so as they powered from hay maze to barn slide I snacked on a caramel apple and listened to a bard doing Jake Johnson and Bob Marley covers out of the corner of my ear.
The pumpkins were a bit expensive, and while I truly want to support small farms, 10x the price of the grocery store is a little hard to swallow. Still, a good time was had. (Faux) country living!
On my way to the U.S. for a visit with the fam-and-friends, I had the honor of escorting this little fella to his new and forever home.
Miller, a Cavalier King Charles (CKC), was down in the Ozato pound on the gas line in Okinawa when Doggies Inc. uploaded his pic to their site. A CKC lover noticed him and alerted a CKC fan club, which quickly mobilized to raise money to get him pulled from the center, vetted, fostered, and transported to the west coast for rehoming. All the fine details on the Japan side were carried out by Doggies.
When they posted that they were looking for transport, I immediately vounteered as I was planning to visit the States in a few weeks. Since his final destination was Seattle and mine was Portland, it was a fairly convenient arrangement and I called the airline (Delta) to book his passage.
Upon arrival at the airport, I met the lovely Lisa who had been fostering Miller until his departure. She helped me get him checked in and paid his transport fee.
Unfortunately, there was a snafu after I got to the boarding gate. Despite making my reservation for Miller weeks in advance, confirming it a few days in advance, and breezing through the check in process, it was discovered when trying to load Miller onto the plane that he was not actually allowed on the plane. A gate agent called me shortly before boarding to tell me we would not be allowed on the flight.
After some scrambling and confusion, we were rerouted through Minneapolis. The agent who had been dealing with my case gave me the gate number and told me to run, as boarding was in process. Nobody told me why we had been ejected.
Upon finally reaching Minneapolis, I encountered another roadblock when I couldn't find Miller in the baggage area. I asked a baggage clerk - he had no idea. Asked a Delta rep hanging around the area - she had no idea. Asked another baggage handler - no clue. Finally one of the immigration agents went to look for him and brought him out to me, then escorted me to the front of the line. I have to say that the immigration person was exceedingly kind.
Unfortunately, after all the rigamarole, there was not enough time to take Miller out of the airport, as it would have involved going out of security and then having to go through the whole process again to get back in. I had less than an hour to make my connection at this point. There is nowhere at MSP to take a dog to relieve himself during transit. Poor Miller had to endure another leg of the journey without leaving his crate. We had originally expected that he would be in the crate for 10-12 hours, as the flight from NRT to PDX is 9 hours. By the time we reached PDX, he had been enclosed for more than 20 hours.
But reach Portland we finally did, where his new mama was waiting.
And his new siblings.
Miller's name is now Bowie, and he lives in Seattle. Yay Bowie!
Here's a video made by someone in the CKC group that helped raise money and spread the word.
On our last day on the island, we had the rental til the mid afternoon and the flight took off in the early evening. Time for a shop and a stroll and a lingering lunch.
Noah Style is in a residental area near Shuri Castle, up a hill in a modest neighborhood. In fact, the cafe is a pretty converted house.
Inside, there is a tiny clothing store with things made from soft natural and organic cotton, and another area selling organic vegetables and other goodies like house-made sweets and enviromentally friendly laundry soap.
The menu offers a few carefully crafted options - soups, sandwiches, plate lunches chock full of color, and the daily special, which we got. It had 11 kinds of food, with brown rice and organic coffee. Such vegetables as beets, urizun-mame (winged beans), and hijiki seaweed. It was all followed with a tiny lovely sliver of cake made from brown sugar and nut butter.
N was inspired by this lunch and bought some kuruma-fu as soon as we got home and made a stunning dinner for us.
Out the back patio, we found several bedraggled bunnies hopping around the garden, and a large tortoise in repose under the deck.
A definite recommendation for people who love delicious wholesome food, lovingly prepared and artfully presented.
Sorry for the silence! I've been hanging out on the couch, going to brunch, taking walks among the pine trees, listening to the geese everywhere, and chilling with the beagles.
My uncle just posted this picture of my grandpa with my mom and her siblings, I love it. It was taken in Buenos Aires when they were stationed there.
Shuzenji is a temple and hot springs town in the middle of the Izu peninsula. It's a pretty little town with a graceful old temple, its claim to fame that a Minamoto (Noriyori) was held prisoner here many many (Heian period) years ago. I liked this grouchy fat guy. Piles of tiles. And one million soba restaurants, including this soba shack. Wait, shack is too grand a name for this structure. How about soba fort? There was also a public foot bath, which is always cool. Gave my tootsies a good soak in the super hot hot water. Everyone else had little washcloths to dry off their feet. I'm such a bad J-resident. Though I own a million little washcloths, I only manage to be a proper hand-towel toting lady a small percentage of the time. This was not one of those times. I let 'em air dry.
This is Joren Falls, one of the many waterfalls in the area. Have you ever wondered what a wasabi field looks like? I hadn't, but if you had asked me, I woulda kinda thought that it was a mountain-y, forest-y kind of plant. Which I guess it is, but I never thought it would grow in a marsh. Like this. And expensive, damn. One plant, a root about the size of a fist, was going for about a thousand yen. I like me some wasabi, but at that price... maybe I'll stick with the stuff in the tube.
I liked this grouchy fat guy.
Piles of tiles.
And one million soba restaurants, including this soba shack. Wait, shack is too grand a name for this structure. How about soba fort?
There was also a public foot bath, which is always cool. Gave my tootsies a good soak in the super hot hot water. Everyone else had little washcloths to dry off their feet. I'm such a bad J-resident. Though I own a million little washcloths, I only manage to be a proper hand-towel toting lady a small percentage of the time. This was not one of those times.
Have you ever wondered what a wasabi field looks like? I hadn't, but if you had asked me, I woulda kinda thought that it was a mountain-y, forest-y kind of plant. Which I guess it is, but I never thought it would grow in a marsh. Like this.
And expensive, damn. One plant, a root about the size of a fist, was going for about a thousand yen. I like me some wasabi, but at that price... maybe I'll stick with the stuff in the tube.
