How good to stop off and set out again

How good to stop off and set out again,
How good to settle like that without being turbid,
Yesterday has passed; your sayings have passed with it,
How good to find a new saying for a new day
Ancient Sufi poetry

With this proverb in my head we left Istanbul. How good to set out again! How good to open the guide book for the place you are heading to and from unfamiliar, strange and distant reading to make an adventure and a friend! To fill it with experiences, faces, emotions and life!

And as if we never left we are back in South East Asia. It’s a bit strange to think back one and half years ago (I myself find it hard to realise this, while I write it!) when we first arrived in stinky sweaty and exciting Bangkok in January 2007 not really sure what to expect, whether we packed right, how is all this going to work out. Our arrival in Manila was very very different, now we knew it will be hot and humid, that even if we forgot something chances are we can buy whatever we need, and cheaper ;) we knew people will be friendly and helpful, there will be good food and exciting scenery.

The stop over in Qatar was an adventure in its own with the prospect of spending 14 hours at the airport taking a lucky turn and leading us to a comfortable hotel bed a very interesting drive through a new millennium city coming right from the dessert and a white heat I had never experienced before.

Manila was hot and humid a strange mixture of American culture and Asian under-development. A combination of a Spanish colonial heritage manifesting itself in beautiful churches, some old casas a few remaining plazas and the ubiquitous Catholic Church. This was followed by the attempted “benevolent assimilation” by the Americans, which ended officially in 1902 but continued for many years after and left a significant impact in the way the country and the business are run, the food the language and the way of life. Life mostly revolves around the air-conditioned shopping Mall and you can find all kinds of American pop-culture around (including ice cream with marshmallows!!!). But the people remained Asian, they are friendly, ready to help you (one even offered to borrow us money!!!!) and smile those big smiles carrying the warmth of the sun the instant you look at them ☺

We set forth to the beach, but it was going to take a while. From Manila we headed down towards the famous Taal Lake and Volcano. It was a beautiful hike in the burning sun (after with some difficulty we managed to shake off the horses, guides and kids) that took us to the crater of the still active volcano, smoking its anger away.
In the evening a massive rainstorm reminded us what rainy season in the tropics is all about with hundreds of thousands of litters of rain poured on us.

We travelled the next couple of hundred km. in a tricycle, jeepney (the coolest piece of driving machinery that uses some cars left after WWII by the Americans) and a bus to a town called Legazpi. On the way the scenery was just amazing, the sea was showing itself with a wonderful coast line covered in palms, beaches, islands and islets in between hills and mountains covered in palm trees with idyllic but very poor life passing by us.

From Legazpi (which is nothing very spectacular as most towns in the Philippines go) we headed to the small fishing village of Donsol, where we enjoyed a wonderful sunset and unfortunately not much more, as the beach there is noting special and the reason for going there was seeing the whale sharks but they had already left ☹

So from there we continued further south where we were told there would be a ferry to the next island, Masbate. The two-hour ride was great with beautiful small islands lone beaches and fishermen. Masbate did not impress us with its beach facilities, although the scenery was once again world-class in its beauty, so we decided to move on to the next island of Cebu. There are approximately 7 000 islands in the Philippines so ferryboats and island hopping is very popular and rather inevitable.

Somehow it turned out that getting information was more difficult than we expected and we ended up on a ferry boat that was going to take us overnight a few hundred km further than we planned, but what could we do, we were already on the boat and whether one island or another for us did not make that big of a difference ;) so we ended up in Cebu city and from there took another ferry and another tricycle to finally end on the small island of Panglao, near Bohol on Alona beach with Genesis divers. All this took about five days hundreds of kilometers, more hundreds of sea miles more different modes of transport and all this in the sweltering tropical heat! We were happy to crash on the beach, where we will be lazing until tomorrow, when we have to start doing serious work once again as we start the Advanced Open Water diving course!