Ironwulf.net: En Route – The Philippines, Travel, Photography Blog

Stepping into a foreign land can be intimidating and exciting. Expect some degree of culture shock as one learns the rope of a place. The ease of getting used to a foreign land depends on one’s first few steps are. In my case, I can get by with mid-range to budget hostels and inns when I travel, much like Motherland Inn when I went to Burma. They were so friendly and helpful on a personal level that I quickly adjusted. But for the Philippines who’s not really accustomed to hostels, sleeping at dorms with strangers, communal bathrooms, I was glad to learn that there is already a growing number of backpacker friendly hostels and one of them is Our Melting Pot Hostel in Makati.

It’s one of those trips that I just said yes without knowing exactly where I was going. I was yearning for a downtime after a somewhat busy week that I was ready to escape anywhere. It was an invitation to check out a resort in Batangas but I only knew of the details that day when I got into the car onto a road trip down south. We were going to Balayan, a town virtually out of the radar among four of us in the car. So following a crudely drawn map, a series of instructions and some pictures landmark as puzzles, we rolled on with a sense of adventure to find the resort named Blue Dolphin.

Ongpin was filled to the brim. People were flooding in all corners, drumbeats pounding in different directions, dragons dancing on top of the crowd and fireworks call their attention. I could really feel the festive atmosphere here. It was 2 years ago when I last visited Binondo on a Chinese New Year and it certainly wasn’t like this before. Perhaps because from now on, the first day of the Chinese New Year would be a holiday to the delight of everyone, Chinese or not. We met with some of our fellow photographer friends who attended our previous Backpack Photography Photo Tours to enjoy and capture the revelry in China Town.

Captivating. Dazzling. It’s really an experience watching the Ayala Triangle Symphony of Lights. I brought some of my relatives there and I was amused seeing the awe-filled look on their faces. This is another thing I like about Christmas, a lot of free entertainment for everyone like this light and music show and it’s becoming a new tradition in the likes of the COD Christmas display decades ago. And technology indeed has caught up in capturing the light spectacle. While I enjoyed shooting the lights, I also enjoyed looking at the people watching them.

First let me greet you all a blessed Christmas. It’s been a crazy year with a lot of highs and lows. But Christmas is here to remind us to count our blessings instead and see the world in a different perspective. I can’t say that things have all been good seeing the tragedy that happened to our brothers in Mindanao. But it shows that there is hope for humanity seeing the great outpour of support from people giving what little they can offer. This season, I revisit Simbang Gabi on some of the popular churches in Manila to capture a Filipino tradition.

I try not to travel around during the holiday seasons as the vehicular and human traffic is horrendous at this time of the year. But I decided to make an exception on the 17^th of December 2011 to witness this year’s Ligligan Parul 2011 or the Giant Lantern Festival in San Fernando, Pampanga. It’s a grand annual lights and music spectacle featuring the Filipino’s traditional Parol (Christmas Lantern) showcased in a gigantic scale. This year, 10 baranggays (villages) take turns to display their sophisticated light design display on their Giant Lanterns in-sync with their choice of music to give us audiences a feast to our senses.

There are no direct flights to Yangon, Myanmar from the Philippines so I had to make a couple of flights to get there. First step was to get Bangkok, the closest possible airport to Yangon. I was lucky to get a cheap flight there through an introductory promo fare from Seair/Tiger Airways from Clark. On the rainy morning of November 2, 2011, I made my way to Megamall which is only 15 minutes from home. The Philtranco Bus (P400) headed to Clark was ready for its 7am departure. It’s been a while since I travelled by my lonesome and that familiar feeling of fear and excitement crept in. I don’t know what to expect of Myanmar except that I would be cut-off from the rest of the world for two weeks.