After racing through southern Thailand, we flew over to the Philippines on December 16 in time to spend the Christmas holiday with our friends who live in Manila and to begin preparing for our January wedding. Our bikes went directly into a storage room and stayed there for our entire stay in this island nation. This was not our original intent, but it is how things worked out.
Over the Christmas and New Year holidays, our friends treated us to a full tour of northern Luzon, the large island in the northwestern corner of the archipelago where the capital, Manila, sits. We spent two weeks with them driving around to the best sights the island has to offer. We drove up into the mountains near Baguio and Sagada, where we enjoyed a Christmas celebration amidst the cool, pine-scented air. It was such a treat to feel like we were suddenly transported back home in time for the holiday. Up in those mountains, you would never know that you’re on a tropical island. On the rest of the trip, we visited historic sites, drove through small towns crowded with jeepneys (converted WWII army jeeps now used for public transportation) and tricycles (motorcycle taxis). Our tour ended at the lovely beach town of Pagudpud on the northern coast of Luzon, where we took surfing lessons and rang in the New Year under the full moon.
Back in Manila, we spent too much time in the air-conditioned megamalls that sprout everywhere around the city. Even though we had been planning our wedding for over a year, we hadn’t actually done much of the actual preparation, so there were things to buy, vendors to meet, etc. After 8 months of living in fresh air and modest conditions with an equally modest amount of “stuff”, spending all this time walking around fabricated environments, acquiring a lot of stuff felt a little overwhelming. But, it had to be done, and it was worth it, as we were preparing for the apex of our trip: our wedding in paradise!
Finally ready to escape Manila, we took a 30-hour ferry ride down to the island of Palawan and then a 6-hour bus ride over to El Nido. El Nido is a small seaside town nestled in a cove surrounded by limestone cliffs. All around El Nido, the horizon is dotted with picturesque tropical islands: white sand, mangroves and palms back up to the limestone cliffs that form the island’s backbone. One of these idyllic islands provided the perfect setting for our beach wedding. We spent our first week in El Nido preparing for the wedding. In theory, we wanted to have a simple, no-fuss ceremony, but when it came time to execute all the details, we realized that our expectations were a bit higher than that. And, in a town like El Nido where there is not even an ATM, it was a bit challenging to find everything we wanted. But, luckily it all came together beautifully, with the help of serendipitous events, like meeting a woman who had a hillside full of tropical flowers and a knack for putting together gorgeous bouquets. In the end, our wedding was everything we wanted it to be and more. The ceremony was on a stunning island, under a wonderful mangrove tree with the sound of the waves crashing gently in the background. We feasted under the lights of a 100 candles and tiki torches; and that night, we all camped out on the beach, under the stars. During the following couple of weeks, we spent a couple of fun-filled weeks with family and friends; snorkeling and scuba diving on the beautiful coral reefs, island hopping and catching up with people we hadn’t seen since we left home (or longer). It was wonderful to have this special time with all of them. Sadly, this period, like all good times, had to come to an end and, once our last guests returned home, we carried on to see other parts of the Philippines.
Our “honeymoon” was spent exploring some of the underwater wonders of the Philippines We dove on WWII wrecks in Coron Bay, just north of Palawan, and then spent a week on tiny Apo Island, off the east coast of Negros. Apo Island boasts one of the most beautiful coral reefs we have ever seen. On each dive, we were amazed by the diversity of coral and marine life; from tiny shrimp to Hawksbill turtles. This underwater world was like the canvas of a mad artist where crazy, colorful creatures fill every blank space. To learn more about this world, we took a great day-long “Reef Teach” course that described the species of coral, fish and crustaceans that live on the reef, as well as some of the cool symbiotic relationships among organisms. One of our favorites is the relationship between hermit crabs and sea anemones: to provide protection and camouflage, a hermit crab picks up anemones and fixes them to his shell, carrying it around wherever he goes. In doing so, the crab helps the anemone populate new places, while the stinging anemone wards off would be predators.
After all this island time, we were ready to get back to cycling. But, that wouldn’t happen as quickly as we had hoped! We went back to Manila intending to spend a few days seeing what the city had to offer (besides its many shopping malls); and then fly back to SE Asia to continue cycling. But, Mario caught a nasty flu that laid him flat on his back for 5 days, so our stay had to extend. Fortunately, we were staying with our friends, so he had a very comfortable place to convalesce. Once he was better, we toured a bit around Manila. From a tourist perspective, Manila can seem quite unappealing at first. Unattractive modern buildings line the sides of wide boulevards, which hint at grand aspirations shattered by the hordes of jeepneys and taxis that clog the streets. But hidden behind all these modern atrocities are the ghosts of Manila’s glory days at the turn of the 20th century, when it was a modern city adorned by Spanish architecture. This Manila was leveled by American bombs during WWII, as they drove the Japanese occupiers out. Today, there are few visible signs of the old Manila, but there are plenty of reminders of the war that destroyed it. On a lighter note, we also saw a fascinating Chinese cemetery, which is more like a mini-suburb. In this cemetery, wealthy Chinese are laid to rest in mausoleums the size of a regular house. In fact, there were several two storied homes that would provide a comfortable life for a family of five!
We wrapped up our stay in the Philippines with a lot of regrouping and reorganizing. On this trip, we have found that every couple of months or so we need several days in a large city to regroup, doing the stuff that one normally does on a Saturday: buying toothpaste, washing clothes, sorting through stuff and reorganizing. And, with a wedding thrown into the mix, we had a large array of stuff to sort through and organize. Finally, after 2 ½ months in the Philippines, we made our way back to Thailand (by way of Malaysia) where the cycling would finally resume.