Philippine Adventure - Day 7. Going back in time

It only took us 7 hours to get from Manila to Dallas! Ok, not really. But we did leave Manila on Tuesday at 9am and land in Dallas at 4pm on the same day. Crazy how time flies when you're.. flying.

We got up and enjoyed a lovely breakfast in the Manila Marriott hotel (including a honeycomb dripping honey for your toast), got to the airport and checked in and through all the security. Interestingly they had separate gender lines for the x-ray machines. Flew to Tokyo and settle in at the Admiral's Club which was quite nice. We had a 3.5 hour layover which provided me time to work on some schoolwork, read some of my book, and eat a few little treats. When it was time, we flew (on a new AA 777!) straight from Tokyo to DFW. I took a Zzzquil and slept for most of the 11hr flight. Landed, cleared immigrations pretty easily, and got our luggage. Sadly, that was when we had to separate our little travel party and Dad and Jeremy went on to find their connections for Amarillo and Denver. I had a friend pick me up and we went directly to SMU to our mutual Tuesday night class.

My favorite part of the day - we left Tokyo at 6pm and landed DFW at 4:30pm the same day. We flew back in time. :)

And thus ends our Philippine adventure. Overall thought consistent throughout the week: I love how friendly all the Philippines we met were!

~Elizabeth

Fresh honey for breakfast

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Philippine Adventure - Day 6. The 5 minute lobster.

Today was another great day in the Philippines!

We woke up to a pleasant breeze from the ocean and our open 'Swiss Family Robinson' style treehouse hotel room and we sat watching the sun and enjoying the breeze. Finally, we made our way to a lovely breakfast buffet with fresh fruit and juices. Because we were able to connect to the internet in the main restaurant, I was able to do some school work (side note: it's difficult to work on a project with other people who are on the other side of the world! I empathize with international business people now...)

After I worked for a bit (with low battery and annoyingly slow and unreliable internet connection), we decided to sit by the pool / beach and read for a while so I quickly changed into my swimsuit in the bathroom of the main hotel area. However, when I came back out, I couldn't locate the guys! And they had carried my laptop, kindle, phone, and sunscreen with them as well! I decided to just sit by the pool for a minute and wait for them. When they finally returned (they had hiked up to the room to change into their suits), they said they were going to go for a kayak and snorkel adventure. I  was finally convinced that this would be better than reading a book and joined them in lathering ourselves in sun screen for the trip and headed off.

We kayaked for a while seeing lovely white sand beaches and little ocean huts and many boats when we finally arrived at our destination. Our guide was going to take us to see giant clams! Well, that sounds pretty synonymically balmy! (clammy / balmy get it? hahahahha I crack myself up). Our guide had ropes along his banca that we could hold on to while he drove slowly and we looked at the underwater paradise. We saw so many corals and life that is wholly unknown to the oxygen loving life that we're used to. We went for a while and then the boat stopped, I came up for air and to see why we stopped and dad asked, with an excited smile if I had seem the clams! Well.. nope, I missed them as I had been watching the other underwater life that was at the spot - no, not fish but rather other scuba divers. Harumph. So we turned the boat around and dad pointed at the clams and they were astounding. They could've eaten me! Well, at least my foot. But still amazing. We snorkeled a little bit more and loved the beauty for a while.

Our guide told us of a cave you could swim underwater to get to and we, of course, had to check it out. So he drove us in the boat (we didn't want to chance missing our ferry to get back to Batangas later in the day) and we came up to this secret cave. First we climbed in from above since we didn't know where the water entrance was located. We climbed through little tunnels to get the cavern and then swam around looking at the cave fish for a while and then decided to swim out under the rock into the open ocean. It's kinda scary to be under water with rock keeping you from the air but we made it through (with a swallowfull of saltwater on my part). So fun! We swam back and forth a couple times under the rock and I swallowed a little more saltwater that was in my snorkel and also hit my leg on the rock but all in all it was quite a success. We boated back to the kayaks and got back to our resort.

We packed quickly and made our way down to lunch and a few other quick activities (to be told in person if anyone is curious :) then got on a banca for the island's port where we transferred to a bigger ferry and headed off back to Batangas. We arrived and many men tried to help us with our bags. Dad had grown quite tired of this and authoritatively told the guy trying to help him 'no'. I completely understood because no one likes being offered something so nice as to be helped with luggage only to be told later that you had to pay them for their troubles. Our driver - who had previously driven us from Tagaytay to Batangas - met us at the port and drove us to Manila. We were all pretty exhausted and took little snoozes on the way.

We arrived in Manila and were greeted with a wonderful site. A Marriott. With air conditioning. Now, don't get me wrong. I can be a tough girl when needed and I had gotten pretty used to the heat and knowing that I was going to sweat through anything I was wearing even if I stayed in the shade and didn't move. However, it does wear on you after a while.. and walking into the air conditioned lobby of the Manila Marriott (after the car being bomb-dog sniffed and going through an x-ray machine) was absolutely wonderful. Literally, a breath of fresh air.

We enjoyed the executive lounge with petit-fours and desserts and Dad and I headed down to eat a little dinner (I was going to work on some school papers and needed sustenance if I was going to stay up any later) After a little exploration and smiling a few hotel employee's saying, 'good evening sir, ma'am'', we found the buffet. And what a buffet it was. Smoked salmon, dragon fruit, dim sum, scallops and whole crabs, pasta station, and rotisserie duck. Not a bad dinner. We had to call Jeremy to join us and we ate little samples of dishes. "There is no more perfect food than smoked salmon" was Jeremy's response as he closed his eyes and savored the deliciousness of the late night snack.

After dinner, I grabbed my laptop and headed back to the executive lounge and worked for a couple of hours. I must say, if I ever become an international business traveler, I'm definitely becoming a member of whatever hotel / airline special services they offer. It's amazing how much an hour in the Admiral's Club vs. regular airport lobby can do to your sense of peace.

So where, you ask, did the title of this blog (The 5 minute lobster) come from? Those 5 little minutes that I sat by the pool waiting on the disappeared guys to rejoin me. And I'm a lobster. It's amazing how much of a difference being closer to the equator will do to pale skin in 5 little short minutes.

~Elizabeth

Saying goodbye to our jungle resort

Aahhhh, smoked salmon in airconditioned hotel

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Philippine Adventure - Day 5. Our private 'yacht'

Today, we woke up early to grab a quick breakfast and then headed to the sea city of Batangas so that we could take a ferry to Puerto Galera which is on the island of Mindoro. We were in search of a beach as we had our fill of mountains from the previous day.

Jeremy (his blog is great..) googled a reservation for a night stay on a beach resort and we courageously made our way there. Once arriving at the port in Batangas, some 'helpful' guys (10 to be exact) grabbed our luggage and told us they had a private boat for us to take us to our beach resort. Everything was moving so quickly and they told us it'd be faster than the public ferry so somehow we agreed and followed the guys with our bags. And followed them to a really (I mean, really) sketch door. Not the official port entrance. No. This was the side metal door in the wall to protect against pirates I'm guessing. It was bolted with a padlock. But once one of the 10 guys got the key, we followed the men with our bags along a narrow ledge with some poor huts. Our 'private boat' turned out to be a sketchy banca (small boat of the Philippino nature - narrow with side balancing beams).

Soon we were on our way to (hopefully) Puerto Galera and our beach house of Coco Beach Island Resort. We moved at a very quick pace of about 10-15 mph on the open ocean basically. Thankfully we had some sunscreen because we didn't have a tarp covering the boat (most of these bancas have such). During the 1.5 hr trip, we saw some dolphins and flying fish which was a real treat!! Interestingly, Dad, Jeremy and I all thought of what we would do if the two boaters decided to overpower us and take our stuff.. You'll have to read Jeremy's blog for his decision - mine was that I would have no problem punching the guys (I assume that I can throw a mean punch... ha) and knocking them out.

We finally reached our little beach resort and discovered a real treat. Not too crowded, everyone was so nice, and an excellent view. All the structures are made from natural materials and looks very native. Our room overlooked the ocean and with the palm trees and other vegetation, made it quite a wonderful sight. We were truly living like island royalty (including a service family that lived there to 'serve' our room and another), everything was perfect - except perhaps the lack of air conditioning. Yikes. But in the night, the fans and breeze made it bearable under the mosquito netting (this was probably my favorite part - you always see netting in movies but I actually used one!! lol)

After settling in and eating lunch, we took a scuba diving lesson and the pool and headed to the reef. After falling back from the boat, we proceeded to see some wonderful sea grass that was promised us, and then low and behold, giant sea turtles!! They were 3 ft at least and swam along and right in front of me swam to the surface. Amazing. We proceeded to dive and saw beautiful fish and coral. Words cannot describe really but it was beautiful. Dad says it was better than Hawaii. (I'll have to check on that myself later this summer) My favorite underwater creature was the purple starfish.

We returned to the beach and read our books by the pool, watched the sun set on the beach, ate dinner, and participated in a frog race (which we lost). We were so tired that we just went to bed in our mosquito netting (again, so cool - I felt like ). Thus ended our day.

~Elizabeth

Our private boat

Dad and the sea turtle

Sitting on the beach for sunset

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Philippine Adventure - Day 4. An exploding Situation

Today we ventured into the mouth of an active volcano! Well, it wasn’t quite as dramatic as that. We got a driver from our hotel and drove down the mountain we were on to the lakefront (the original volcano now is a lake, with the active volcano in the middle, with a lake within that).

Once we got to the land of the volcano, we were herded onto horses that we had hired to carry us up the dusty volcanic mountainside. Dad's horse was the island's race champion until last year so he was constantly trying to race mine... interesting situations did occur. Some pictures were taken (and later tried to get us to buy the printed and photo-shopped copies) and we continued to jog up the volcano. We bounced and joggled our way up until we reached the top. Our guides helped us off and left us to figure out what to do. So we located some steps and decided that was probably the way to go. (something I have found here is that there isn’t much direction given unless you ask for it)

Once reaching the top, we saw the beautiful crater lake with a little island in the middle. It was beautiful. However, it was not the volcano we thought we were going to. All the pictures of Tagaytay’s Taal volcano are of this little mountain thing that really does look like a volcano but it isn’t the real volcano.

Anyway, we looked around, took pictures of volcanic steam, and trotted our way back down the mountain and took the boat back to the mainland and made our way back to our hotel. We were beat and after lunch we took naps and read books for the afternoon. Quite peaceful. We ate dinner at a wonderful place across the street – and despite what I said about my food looking back at me, I ordered a whole fish..

And so ends the journey into the heart of a volcano.

~Elizabeth 

climbing our way up the volcano

lake within a volcano within a lake that was a volcano

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Philippine Adventure - Day 3. Got puzzles?

Today was another great day on the other side of the world!

Dad gave his speech to the Microbiology conference and they all laughed and took photos and ooh'ed and ahh'ed and absolutely loved him. Apparently (multiple accounts confirm this), dad is a rock star in the Philippines and one guy from Korea said he was famous in all of the microbiologists in Asia! He was humbled and thrilled at the same time.

After dad spoke, he was a judge on some panels and other conference stuff (being famous, everyone wanted his signature) and Jeremy and I decided to brave the world and venture out on our own. This resulted in a little adventure with the end destination of a puzzle mansion. And no, not just your average  any day ol' puzzle mansion. This was the Guinness Book of World Records holding puzzle mansion! We kept following the signs saying the puzzle mansion straight ahead and kept walking.. and walking.. and walking.. Along the way we ate an egg roll from a street vendor (cost an enormous 15 cents!), and took alot of pictures. We walked off the main road a little and saw some beautiful views also.

Thankfully, a few miles down the main road, the puzzle signs said to go left, so we headed left and kept walking.. and walking.. we came upon a church with people singing so we went and said hello, chatted for a while, and took a couple of photos. I love seeing fellow Christians in other countries. After that we kept walking.

Finally made it to the puzzle mansion and looked around. Apparently this was a hobby of this lady (still alive) for the last 27 years or so. She just loves puzzles! We were hot and a cold drink was nice also. After looking around, we walked back about half-way (and grabbed some meat on a stick from a vendor that was fabulous and also a little bit of ice cream) and then grabbed public transportation back to the hotel - a jeepney: jeeps from WWII transformed into transportation vehicles still used in mass today. Kinda cool!

After jumping into a deliciously cool pool, we met up with dad, ate dinner with conference people (tried but failed to eat the salmon head soup... because when I looked at it, it looked back at me), and I crashed on the bed (it didn't help my energy level that I got a little sunburned) And so ended our day 3.

~Elizabeth

Looking out over the lake near Tagaytay

The repetitive encouragement we were going the right way

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Philippines Adventure - Day 2. I'm not jet-lagged, just really sleepy.

This morning we woke up and had some breakfast of soup, chicken, some sort of porridge with a consistency of snotty oatmeal, and sardines. Though I do like to try new foods while in foreign lands, the granola and banana made my tummy quite happy.

Interestingly, the security at Narita Airport was not that intense - I didn’t even have to take off my shoes!! (say what?!) Yup, crazy business. Also, I was able to take advantage of a 'Japanese style' toilet (a hole in the floor) which was quite an experience. The flight from Tokyo to Manila was 4 hours on a double decker jumbo jet. The airline obviously lost money on that specific flight, as it was quite empty but ended up being nice for us to get good service and have some peace and quiet.

After standing in line at immigration and talking to a cute 7-year-old in front of me who was trying to speak English, we got our bags which happily arrived, and found our way to our driver. It was like we were in the movies – a man with our last name on a sign was there to pick us up. :) We drove 1.5 hours through the city and south to our hotel in Tagaytay. I'll talk more about pineapples later.

Dad is famous. In this Microbiology community, he is the absolute rock star! Immediately after we arrived, at least 4 people came scurrying up to dad to gleefully take their picture with him. They were so excited to meet the author of their Microbiology textbook! It's so cute. Unfortunately, there was a lack of communication on the conference side which, in combination of our long flight delay, resulted in us actually missing the entire first day of conference. This was upsetting but not the end of the world. Dad’s speech was switched with another speaker and he will give his talk tomorrow.

We ate some food and I started to work on school and promptly took a nap, followed shortly by the guys. We joined a ‘fellowship’ for the conference – which is basically a social event – ate a little more food and Jeremy and I moved our laptops over to the neighboring Starbucks and here I am writing. Achem, I mean, ‘here I am doing schoolwork’.

It’s 9am in Dallas while it’s 10pm on the same day here in Tagaytay. I’m not jetlagged… not in the least. I’m just really, really sleepy.

~Elizabeth 


"A person's a person, no matter how small." ~Dr. Seuss

The sardine for breakfast with udon noodle soup and a good ol' banana.

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Travel: Philippines Adventure - Day 1. A day lost in time

Good morning, everyone in Texas! I hope you have a wonderful April 17th - I sure did and now it's over and time for bed. (10:07 pm here in Tokyo)

Today was a travel day - and I suppose it also included yesterday when we left Dallas.. #InternationalTimelineConfusion. Nothing much of interest on travel days. This was no different.. except for an American Airlines nationwide computer system outage resulting in a couple of hours delay - causing us to miss our connecting flight in Tokyo to Manila. Happy news for me though! I get a Japanese stamp in my passport! Woohoo! I get to add this to my list of places visited! (oh hush, even if it's just to a hotel, it still counts)

Other things to note:

• Apple computer power cords are able to be used without converters. quite handy.
• Japanese hotels have bidets.
• Soft serve ice cream is way cooler here.

That's all folks. Oh - check out my bro's blog too. Apparently he's the clever one. 

~Elizabeth

"Not all who wander are lost." J.R.R. Tolkien

Where new days begin

Arriving in Tokyo

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Travels: Philippines Adventure Day -1. Before it all begins

Very excited about the opportunity to travel to the Philippines tomorrow! (officially it's the Republic of the Philippines)..  It'll be a relatively quick trip of one week visiting Manila and Tagaytay.

Why, you ask, am I going to the Philippines? Excellent question - my father is a microbiology professor and textbook author and was invited to be the plenary speaker at a microbiology conference in the Philippines. Not wanting to go alone, he invited my brother and me to join him. How could we refuse?!

This won't be an easy trip considering that I'm taking off a week of school near finals. I have prepared for this, however, and have read material for the rest of the mod, worked on cases and write-ups so that I will not be behind. Lots of work, but worth it to visit to a country I probably will never visit again.

I'll be posting our day's adventures on this blog as well as a favorite picture or two.

~Elizabeth

"Experience is the teacher of all things" - Julius Caesar




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