Stories of Places, People and Photography in the Philippines and Beyond
The groove to go Island Hopping is back on our fourth day in El Nido. We’re going again with Islanen Outdoors Tours since they have a very good slightly customized package and price (of P650) on Tour C which includes several sites in Matinloc Island and few stops on our way back. We had to wait a few minutes before they got everything ready. We had a smaller white boat this time highlighted by MMDA colors of pink and blue but it seems real solid and capable to handle the seas.
My good friend Oggie of Lagalog.com and I were conceptualizing for some time on how a photography workshop would be set apart from the numerous workshops being offered right now. One, we don’t want to have the usual classroom setting. We want participants to be out there on the field where most of the photography would happen and learn on the spot. Second, we want the participants to experience the place and the culture. Getting postcard pretty pictures is one thing but getting good pictures with relevance is another. So Backpack Photography Workshop is born sharing our style of shooting.
When at sea, jelly fishes creeps me out. When beach waters are populated by these I’m hesitant to swim through. Imagine getting scars, itchiness and even fatal wounds from them. Last thing I want is getting myself pee-ed on just to neutralize the poison, or so I heard. I know I try to avoid them when I see them but I also can’t help but be fascinated by them as well. These semi-transparent sea creatures are very graceful dancers of the sea. And I find them even more fascinating when I saw a lot of them in Manila Ocean Park’s separate exhibit, Jellies, Dancing Sea Faeries.
I know we came to Singapore for BEP but we’ll not ignore the last act of the night Beyonce. It took two hours of waiting under a new DJ spinning some house music. But this lady just entranced the audience the minute she appeared on the stage. She’s just an amazing performer and I really got a kick when she did a cover of Alanis Morrisette’s You Oughta know in between her song “If I Were A Boy”. Her tribute to Michael Jackson was also moving. Of course she capped off the set with her famous “Single Ladies” with all the youtube videos of people doing their own versions at the start to lead to her actual performance.
Department of Tourism Philippines and MTV Asia has a joint project soon to be launched first thing in October. We were fortunate enough to get an exclusive preview of their collaboration with renowned Filipino-American Apl.de.ap (Allan Pineda Lindo) of Black Eyed Peas called “Take Me to the Philippines”
Coming from the Petronas Skybridge we went down the basement level of KLCC Suriya Mall and headed to a long pedestrian tunnel going to the Concourse level of Kuala Lumpur Convention Center to visit the Aquaria KLCC. I’m excited to see this and see how different it is from our very own Manila Ocean Park.
I was swatting mosquitoes while sitting on the Northern Bus Station in Vientiane. It was 7:30pm, 30 minutes before my boarding time and I started applying a mosquito cream lotion on my exposed skin. There were several buses online and I wondered which one would be the VIP bus I would be taking. I saw other foreigners starting to move on to the last bus on the right. Yep it was our bus, “Luang Prabang” as the sign says. I placed my large pack at the lower storage and hopped in.
