Manila Jan 2009

And so onto Manila. The capital of the Philippines - it is like any other big city in the developing world a city of contrasts. Slums sit not far away from shiny shopping malls. Gucci next to garbage. It suffered a lot during WW2, and seems to have suffered occupation at every turn - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila. The Spanish heritage is evdident in the names of roads and people. And the TV stations sounded like Channel 9 from the Fast Show - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taglish

A poorer area of town. But cheap rum and music are available.

Attach your own prefix....

Manila Cathedral

Jeepney. Local minubus transport. Cheap as chips and they look like Steve Perry might have made them.

We got this one to who knows where.

Building in the Intramuros area - old Manila

The entrance to Intramuros

New Years Day in Rizal Park

Jose Rizal. The national hero, executed by the Spanish. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Rizal

His last words

More Boracay

We went at the same time as the Shadbolts - and had a great time with them

Half price happy hour cocktails. Tip top

Our mission was to uncover this log. Then we discovered it was absurdly long and we had no shovels. Next time.....

Happy Christmas!

Red Horse beer. Genius. Let the horse be untethered at all times....

Aytun and Jill, Christmas Day.

Boracay December 2008

We went to Boracay island in the Philippines for Christmas 08. The journey was interestting. We flew in from Xiamen to Manila into a shed of an airport and had fun pushing Chinese people around. Then we transferred to the domestic airport, which was much nicer, for our flight to Catlican. This was on a much smaller plane. From Catlican we had to get to Boracay. We got a motor tricycle, then a boat, then a minbus to the hotel. 

The view from our evening Christmas dinner

Killer coconuts. Watch your head.

Evening on white sand beach

Puka beach. Indeed, it is pukka...

A man with a big gun told Aytun not to lie on these ones, but to lie on others. He had a gun so she did. He was actually the hotel security guard and I have no idea what he might shoot.

Aytun's fish

Xiamen December 2008

Xiamen 2008.

We headed there en route to the Phillipines. It's an hours flight from Shanghai but a big rise in temperature at this time of year. It has a colonial history so the older architecture is an interesting mix. A bit like Qingdao and Macau and the Bund in Shanghai. Xiamen used to be known as Amoy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoy.

We had a couple of days there. One of the smaller islands has a nice hill to walk up and the waterway looked a bit like the Bosphorous. If you squinted quite hard...

Downtown Xiamen as seen from one of the smaller islands

Coutyard of house on island

The hill. Can't remember the name, but it is part of a funny story about Aytun's fish. I bought Aytun a couple of freaky headed fish for her birthday in November and we couldn't find anyone to look after them before going away. So, on the morning we travelled I phoned up Pepo - a Chinese speaking friend (who's from Ecuador - the plot thickens) - and got him to speak to the women in our local store to see if she would look after them for two weeks. After a few strange looks she agreed. As far as I am aware she is from Xiamen so I thought it would be nice to send her a postcard from 'home' so duly did. But, as the address was rather unclear and written in pinyin we weren't sure it would get there. It did - the Chinese postal service so tip top. And the fish were fine!

Traditional tea house

A modern junk. Not a piece of junk, but a type of boat.