Back in Manilla now.

We've been in the Philippines for a week - longest stop yet - but it hasn't seemed that long. The first three days were in Manilla, the next four were down south in the closest adjacent island, and now we're back in Manilla, leaving for Hong Kong via Kl tomorrow.

The first three days in Manilla were very tame. Amy was still sick, and I was a little exahusted too. (Lesson learned - pace yourself when you go backpacking... We really overdid it the first two weeks). We did a bit of sightseeing around their tourist/foreign district and around the Intramuro (the old walled city), but mostly stayed at the hotel resting, watching TV, and eating Congee at the Chinese restauruant across the street.

We both felt much better a few days later, and so we took a taxi, bus, and boat down to White beach - a smaller resort village thingy a few km east of Peurto Galera - the closest beach resort area to Manilla. It was a very different beach experience from our previous one, on Phi Phi Island off the coast of Thailand, and I can't say that it compared well. However, the water was very blue, and there was a refreshing lack of foreigners at the beach. On the flip side, it was pretty crowded with local tourists, and the general upkeep of the whole area was pretty bad (trash everywhere), as well as many of the facilities. On the third day, we took a Jeepney (their public transport - old converted US Army jeeps) to the other side of Peurto Galero to the more westernized Sabang beach.

The town there was much larger, much more geared towards westerners, but there was very little beach to speak of. It's main draws are the coral in the region leading to fantastic diving, and an "active" nightlife scene. We spend the day hanging out on the beach, and wading in looking at the fish, coral, and other random sealife. That night we had dinner, and started poking our heads around the scene there, not really intending to participate. Sabang was infested with a phenomenom seen in many other places in SE Asia, and particularly in Thailand - old very ugly very fat white men who tow around one or more very young, very scantily clad local women, generally making fools of themselves. I've reached some kind of breaking point, and this is really starting to annoy me observing this phenomenom, and the attititude these old white guys take - at best it's arrogant and pathetic, at it's worst it's racist, neo-imperialist and degrading. I could rant on for hours, and will take the opportunity at a later date, but will end my digression here.

In any case, I made great entertainment by taking pictures of these odd couples. Later on that night, while stopped at a karaoke bar, we met back up with two british backpackers we had met earlier in the day on the Jeepney to Sabang. They had befriended several young weekend-vacationers from Manilla, and we all ended up hanging out, first embarasing ourselves in front of the karaoke mike, and later dancing the night away at the local disco. Our new found british friends were way-cool, and I have several pictures on my camera to document the evening.

This morning, we woke up early, and had to make the decision to either go diving, or to leave the island earlier in order to travel to a volcano crater near Manilla and do some additional sightseeing before we leave tomorrow. We decided on the latter, and caught an early boat going back to the main island of Luzon. Unfortunately though, not only did transportation take an extremely long time, but by the time we made our stop to transfer busses to go to the volcano crater, it was raining something crazy, as if the heavens themselves were trying to smother the earth. At that point, we decided rather than to suck it up and go anyways, we would just go ahead and go back into Manilla.

Manilla is a huge city - one of a handful of cities in the world with over 10 million people - so there's stil stuff for us to see here. We spent most our time today after we got back exploring and eating our way through Manilla's Chinatown.

Anyways, Amy just finished using her internet, and her staring bored eyes are willing me to wrap this up - so KL tomorrow, HK the day after to attend a wedding, and eat lots of food.