South Luzon and Tagaytay - A kinda family holiday

Because of the approaching Vesak day celebrated here in Singapore, there was a long weekend coming therefore I thought it would be good to explore a new bit of Asia. My Indian friend, Amit and I got invitation from Liv (PH) to visit the Philippines and we were already booking our budget airline ticket to go for the new adventure.

Liv's family lives in Manila and because of our visit, her extended family planned some common holidays for the very same time. I don’t know exactly how many of them were there, her mum, siblings, niece and some cousins were there when we arrived to the airport, gifted with the oddest ever fishermen hats ;-).

With a rented car we headed towards Subic, a place around two hours to the west from Clark. There we met Liv's mum's friend, some vip as he was with two drivers and 2-3 armed guards, too. From the first moment onwards we could experience the PH hospitality and reality: karaoke singing and endless eating! Gosh, I mean eating and eating and eating!!! After a bit of rest in the homey bungalow in Subic, we went to a seaside restaurant where we ended up consuming our third dinner that day :-P.

Next morning, we went to the local safari zoo where we fed a tiger cub, looked around the park from a caged van, we wandered around to see a small tribal performance and see dozens of crocodiles.

Later we headed to the Subic seaside where after some snacks and rest we did some kayaking, too. Though, with Amit it should be rather called :conscious & planned wavy floating" ;-) From here we went to a place where first time in my life I rode horses!!!! Huh! :-)

In the evening we ate and ate and then played some silly photo & coin games with the cousins.

The next day we targeted the Taal volcano. Even though it is a tiny one, hardly 300-400 m high, it is very active and apparently it could erupt any day in the next 2-3 years. Due to this "danger", Liv's family rather took us to the outside volcano lake where Liv’s mum’s friend welcomed us in his raft house! We spent the whole day in the middle of the lake, and here first time in my life I could jetski! It was amazing! I fell in love with it right away :-)...

Until dawn we were eating and eating (no surprise, ay ;-)?) and then went to Manila, Makati.

There we had a look at the Green Belt, ate dinner and looked at a few bars but after the tiring-nothing-to-do we deserved the alpha-beta.

Manila is a huge city and after having heard so much about it from friends, I did not have high expectations. At first we saw the business district, Makati and then the old quarter, the Intramuros, too! The later was very pretty.

We were browsing around the old Spanish parks and European-look-alike cathedral and with the help of Liv, we could learn a bit about the country’s history, too. In the harbour, we talked a bit and then we headed to the budget airport, two hours away from the city.

Traveling with Amit is an adventure itself. On the way to the airport he decided to embarrass me in one way or another and he somewhat succeeded, too. He made a scene at the check-in counter about which one of us should sit by the window (it is well known that I always get the window seat at the end ;-)), and then our paths separated thorough the immigration. A men couple were in front of me and tried sneaking at my passport to find out which unundestandable-language-speaking-country I am from. Then Amit decided to make them believe (without telling me) that he is my paid partner. Whilst he was supposed to buy some cookies, he stood by them and pretended to get a call. To the unknown, he loudly announced that his services were already over, we would even sit separately unless he would get paid more. Come on! What insane human would think of something like this? Of course, Amit :-P! On the place we ended up sitting separately so that story seemed even more real to those guys. Just for the sake of it, we continued the role play at the Singapore airport and slowly we accepted that the holiday was over ;-)... hehehehe....

For more photos, click here!