There is one thing that ticks me off when I travel, and that is being asked the never ending question of why I am alone (except, of course, when I travel with Ron, then WE suffer the question: “how long have you guys been dating?” Ugh!). Sometimes, people get clever and would ask me if I am meeting a friend when I get to my destination. I open a can of worms the moment I answer, “No.” Then follows the question of my civil status; of why, at my age, …

Make me moan, Caramoan…
~Santi Obcena

Fresh from the trip to Ilo-Ilo a week before, Ron and I decided to bring Jeff to Caramoan Islands. Together with Santi, we huddled at terminal 3 an hour before departure. As always, Ron had to be late… We had to do unbelievable stunts to keep the counters open till Ron arrived. And he did, in the nick of time…
After a short plane ride to Naga Airport, we hit the road and immediately looked for a place to eat.

Kinunot, stewed shark and stingray meat.

Pinangat, taro leaves …

Filled with loathsome La Paz Batchoy soup, we decided to move along to get to our next destination, the Beach. Finally…
We hopped on a cab to take us to the bus terminal in Jaro and labored about 2 and a half hours of sweltering bus ride to the isolated town of Concepcion. We unfortunately planted ourselves beside the window so that when we went down the bus, the skin color of our left arms are nowhere near our right’s. We were dropped off at the wet market where our contact …

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots and spring rain.
~t.s. eliot, the waste land

It was late afternoon in 1991, when I noticed that the window in my room is covered with what seemed to be like a thin layer of flour. I went out to find out what’s happening. It was like snowing, but the falling specks was dry and not cold. I also noticed that the car parked outside was covered with what looked like confectioner sugar. I wiped a …

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place.  ~Lance Armstrong
 As I approached Panar Laban, my feet gave in and I fell a few steps before I reached the door.I did not resist the fall. I sat down for minutes thinking it was a well deserved rest. Finally, I picked myself up and dragged my painful body inside the hut to sleep. 45 minutes later, Ron arrived and we started to …

OK, now that the biggest Philippine soap is over (READ: Elections), We’re back to our regular programming:
… We sat in silence as we drowned ourselves with fresh mountain air. We rested our bodies and stretched our limbs and savored every moment of being on top of Mt. Kinabalu. As much as we wanted to spread our arms and scream on the top of our lungs–“I’m the king of the world!” it’s too cliché, not gonna happen, we were also just too tired and the air is too cold it felt like it …

I said to my soul, be still and wait… So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing… ~T.S. Eliot

I never realized I’d be able to survive the 7-hour climb to Laban Rata. Unlike Ron, I never vowed to quit smoking but decided to swear off mountain climbing for the rest of my life. The agony was unspeakable as I approached Waras Hut, the first sign of a good night sleep. I moved closer to the hotel and went straight to the dining hall to gorge on …

You might think that it was a typo. You might think Ron and I developed another liking to weird things (ok, maybe not weird, just unconventional [ok, maybe conventional, but not many people would admit to liking it]). You might even think that we gave in to Bangkok’s glitter. I have to correct myself when I said that Lub’d was the only highlight of our trip. It was Lub’d AND the PORN house. Yes, you read that right, the PORN house. Feast your eyes on this…
with the porn chicks
Remember when …

The sun baked our skins as we made our way out of the Grand Palace feeling bitter and shunned by everything Thai. We wanted to turn our lucks by walking towards nowhere thinking we’d probably stumble upon something interesting, like a drag queen who looks like Lady Gaga. A tuktuk driver spider-sensed that we were confused and disoriented and approached us with a plan. “I’ll take you to two temples for free if you can drop by to this tailor shop that I know,” he said. Too tired to argue, …

After our anticlimactic Muay Thai momentus-interruptus and we finally convinced ourselves that watching two amateur fighters throwing bravado on each other is too high a price, we headed of the most beaten path in Bangkok.

Upon entrance in the grand palace, Monette rented a mothball smelling cover-up. Apparently, we were entering the most sacred temple in Bangkok and her tank top was too revealing that monks may get an unwanted wood works.
hor phra monthian dharma
It was mid-day and it seemed like clouds were not so popular in Thailand. It was too hot …