Phil free to visit

After nearly two years spent in South-East Asia and plenty of travels in the region, I consider I've been pretty spoiled with paradise islands, beautiful unspoiled nature, charming little remote villages, fancy jungle treks, you name it. However none of all those great landmarks can compete with Philippines!

Our trip started with an overnight layover in Metro Manila, where Ines was kind enough to show us around and bring us to the very friendly and casual Penguin Bar in Malate, Remedios Circle area. We also had a chance to hang out in Intramuros, where we really appreciated the relatively quite atmosphere compared to the rest of the city. The Rizzal Memorial Park is a real green haven in an ocean of concrete and smoky jeepneys... But we didn't stick too long in the capital since we felt the urge for nature.



Our next hop lead us to Palawan Island, aka The Last Frontier. Believe me, Palawan is totally worthy of this nickname. After few days visiting Puerto Princessa, the capital of the Island, and its surroundings like Honda Bay, or the Subterranean River in Sabang, we headed up North to El Nido. El Nido is a place you got to deserve: we got there by bus from Puerto Princessa. It's only a 250 km journey, but it took more than 9 hours! Indeed, the only road that crosses the island is only paved about half-way, then it gets really rough. The bus was already full long before we reached the departure bus station, so the driver offered us to seat on the roof. After few seconds hesitating, we seized the opportunity to benefit from a perfect view point all along the way. That's only once the bus left that we realized how stressful it is: many power lines or branches are just slightly higher than the roof of the bus, and passengers heads could have gotten chopped off several time. In order to prevent such thing from happening a bus attendant seats on the roof as well: he yells whenever he sees a wire or a branch approaching, in order to make sure everyone bends over... A couple of times, the powerlines were so low that the attendant actually made the driver stop the bus and go very slowly while the first row of roof's passengers grabbed the powerline above their heads and handed it over to the second row, etc... I decided not to imagine what could happened if the isolating coating was worn out. Security standards are not the same in the Philippines...


We eventually made it to El Nido totally exhausted, but with our heads still attached! And that's when we realized that it is totally worth the ride: think of beautiful limestones archipelago like Ha Long Bay in Vietnam or Krabi in Thailand, and remove all the pollution and the tourism infrastructure. Replace the muddy waters with crystal clear turquoise water and the resorts with fisherman stilts villages. That's El Nido. This is pure heaven.


One fun thing about El Nido is that there is not enough electricity for the whole village, so they round robin different streets of the village. One street can be "the place to be" one night, and be dark and gloomy the next night... Disorientating! We chilled out few days in El Nido, island hoping or motorbike riding. This is a really remote area, pretty much untouched and preserved from tourism industry. Believe it or not, Marie and I managed to find a 4 km long perfect beach just for us! Well, by just for us, I mean no tourist at all, but we spend most of the afternoon playing with a group of young kids. One thing struck us is that they weren't begging for money: as a westerner tourist in Manila or any city in Philippines, you get used to being target number one for beggars, especially for children. But at no point those kids ever asked for money. They were first curious and shy to see foreigners, and then really, sincerely happy to play with us. They saw Marie collect some shells, so they mimicked her and brought her several fistful of it!! They built sand castles with Marie, they taught us some Tagalog words, we taught them some English, asked them about life in the village, school, what they wanna do later etc... A true meaningful exchange. And that shows how untouched Northern Palawan is from the tourism: because unfortunately one of the first things that tourism dollars create in a country like Philippines is beggars.

We met some westerns pioneers who settled in Palawan and live of a small business like boat services, motorbike rental, coffee place, guided tours, diving, etc... They really brought up some doubts in my mind... What kind of life am I really looking forward to?...

Anyway, all things come to an end and we left Palawan, en route to Bohol island, next to Cebu, South of the Visayas. Bohol is much less adventurous, but as friendly as Palawan. There are some really nice rice paddy landscapes to be seen on Bohol. We took the chance to have a look at the two landmarks of the island: the very touristy Chocolate Hills and the Tarsier. We met a very friendly Filipinos at a market, who happened to have spent some time in Kuala Lumpur. She invited us over at her place for some fruits and drinks, that was very thankful of her.

We planned to spend few days South of Bohol, at Alona beach. We came in at evening time, and ended up leaving the place the very next morning: we couldn't stand the atmosphere: this beach is packed with the eye hurting mixed couple of a thin, beautiful, shy young Filipinos lady with an old, fat, sunburned, drunk and rich Westerner. A German guy told us that you can "rent" a lady for 24h. She will do whatever you want. She can do your laundry, cook some food, massage you, or... And it will cost you only 1,500 P, he said. 20 Euros. That's what one day of their life is worth. Just plain horrible. Modern slavery. I hate that. To make things up, we heard many stories of such guys who got manipulated by their lady and end up being tricked into coughing up lots of money. It sounds bad, but somehow I figured it is fair enough. Come on, those repulsive guys can't take advantage of Filipinos beauties for nothing!

We were back in Manila just for new year's eve. Quite impressive: fire crackers all over the streets, lot of people celebrating. In a nutshell, a big mess! Before midnight we ran for our lives and came back in the guesthouse: outside was really too dangerous!

To wrap-up, this trip was one of the best I did in Asia! I was just amazed by he friendliness of the Filipinos. Every country has its own culture, but the Philippines have less in common with most countries of South-East Asia. That's probably due to the strong Spanish and then American influence. The Philippines is definitely the least Asian country of Asia.



As usual, a batch of my favorite pics:

En route to the Philippines

I'm off for 3 weeks in Borneo / Philippines!
Stay tuned for cool pictures and crazy stories...

สงกรานต - Songkran

I was browsing through my picture collection and came across this set of pictures taken by Guilhem last April during Songkran (Thai New Year).

Songkran festival used to be the celebration held for the Thai New Year, but since the year now starts on January 1st, Songkran is a public holiday. Traditionally, Songkran used to be a time to pay respect to the elders, visit the Wat (Buddhist monastery) and pray. As part of this cleansing and renewal, Buddha images in monasteries where cleaned by pouring water perfumed with Thai fragrance.

The tradition evolved into showing respect to people by gently pouring a few drops of water on their hands or shoulders. But since April is also the hottest month in Thailand, young people were more prone to actually splash each other with jugful of water...


Nowadays, that's mostly what Songkran is: a joyful mess in the streets where people randomly spill water at each other with jugs, hoses, water guns, you name it! To spice it up, some reload their jugs with nearly freezing water, or with water mixed with plaster usually used by the monks to mark blessing... And loads of alcohol.


The first day of the celebration, Marie and I were in Ko Phangan, on the Northern tip, a pretty remote area. There was almost no sign of this celebration going on. Of course we knew it was Songkran weekend, but we didn't really know what to expect. The frenzy suddenly hit us when we reached the main village: we were crossing the island by motorcycle towards the jetty in order to get a boat to reach Ko Samui, and from there a flight to Bangkok. The village used to be very quiet and peaceful when we got there at first, few days before. But this time everyone was getting crazy, yelling and spilling water all over the place! We seriously thought we wouldn't make it through the village on time to catch our boat!

We eventually made it and reached Ko Samui's jetty. From there we took what we thought to be a short bus trip across the island to reach the airport, but it took forever since the roads were crowded with drunk, swamped people!... They even stopped the bus and got in in order to splash the driver and passengers :-) Works better than AC!

The frenzy was even more intense in Bangkok's touristy Ko San Road...

At the beginning we somehow felt a bit oppressed, because we were just passive "victims"... but once we got loaded with small water guns the real fun started to seriously kick in! We were like kids for the whole afternoon :-) Great time, lots of fun!

Repression, Malaysian style!

Check out Malaysian government's answer to people peacefully demonstrating for more transparency in the "elections".

This happened last Saturday, 500 meters away from the place I live.

Malaysia tak boleh...

Balik Kampung by bike

Like for all the Muslim countries, the celebration of the end of the fasting month brings up a lot of festivities in the country. In Malaysia, the Eid is called Hary Raya. For the Muslim Malaysians, Hari Raya is the time to reconcile and renew relationship with others, mainly with the family. It lasts usually a week, during which the Malays are supposed to gather with the family in their hometown and ingest as much food as their belly can contain! There is a dedicated Malay song for it, broadcast on all the radio, TV, supermarkets, cabs, food stalls, etc... This is called Balik Kampung and literally means going back to one's hometown (most likely in the remote countryside) and celebrate Hari Raya with friends and family.

Jerome and I have been totally brainwashed by the song, so we took the whole week off for Hari Raya, and decided to go on a tour in Pahang state (the most rural state of Malaysia) and go visit the Kampungs during the celebrations... Since there is almost no public transportation in this area, and to be more flexible, we rode our motorbikes. The good thing with Pahang is that it's the biggest state of Malaysia and it spreads from one coast to another. Therefore Pahang is a concentrate of the whole Malaysia.



Our trip started on the West coast along the strait of Melacca. We visited little industrialized towns with a strong Chinese influence like Muar. Those towns were created during the Spice Trade period and are now hosting most of the Malaysian industry. The West coast is from far the most developed part of Malaysia, but Jerome and I were looking for more adventurous, kampung-style attitude, so we quickly left the West coast and crossed the country from West to East, across the central mountains.

As soon as we passed the North-South highway (main trunk road in Malaysia) we instantaneously felt we reached an very different environment! No more highways, malls and tall buildings. The road became a lot more bumpy and we crossed only small dusty villages. Finally we felt we reached the middle of nowhere! The fun can take place!





On the way we stopped at Endau-Rompin park for a jungle trek. To reach the trek's starting point one must follow a dirt path for about 60 km through palm tree plantations. It seemed fun at first until the monsoon rain started to pour... Dust became mud and it became really hard to control the bikes... My bike was so mishandled that the steel fly case support got literally ripped off by the shocks. Then the trek was nice and very wild, but we felt safe because our young guide was really good. He is an Orang Asli (first inhabitants in Malaysia, they now live in tribal villages in the jungle).




At this point of the trip we were seriously exhausted and needed some rest. We spend the next two days on Tioman Island. We went straight to the Eastern side of the Island, the most quiet and wild one. We spend the next two days chilling out, diving and rock climbing. We hung out with a old Malaysian who once lived with a Dutch lady who ended up leaving Malaysia. But in the mean time they created a gorgeous half-blood Eurasian girl who took a one year sabbatical on Tioman... Yeah, this is life!

One interesting anecdote about the rock climbing thing: to pull the rope on top, we needed a local guide to show us the way. But since it was Hari Raya week, the guy was busy with the family gathering. However after few minutes he came back to us and said it was OK. So he came, along with 2 of his friends to help him setting up the climbing spot. Jerome and I felt pretty bad about it: the guy left the family gathering because of us, and for not so much money... So once everyone was more relaxed after the first climb, I told him again that we were sorry to bother them during Raya, and that since the rope was pulled up, they could leave us and come back later on to pick up the gear. But they didn't want to: he confessed to me that he was really happy to have an excuse to be released from the family thing for a while. He was bored with being a good boy and all, and he brought his best friends along at the climbing spot for them to get wasted on beers while Jerome and I were climbing! Owned!!!... Sometime I really think religions are all about hypocrisy...

After Tioman we were back on track, aiming North along the long stripe of wild, deserted sandy beach stretching for hundreds of kilometers all the way up to Thailand. That very part of the trip was actually the main reason for us to get on this trip. This ride was the most expected part! And I got to say that I was only disappointed... by the fact that we didn't have more time to spend on it! By chance the monsoon ceased pouring for few days, and riding along the beach at sunset, through small fishermen villages is a unique experience! The East coast is definitely very different from the rest of Malaysia, it really lags behind in terms of development and infrastructures.


We finally had to leave the East coast and crossed again the country from West to East through the mountains to reach Gua Musang and finally Brinchang in the Cameron Highlands. Some fresh air felt good. And I loved riding the crooked slope from Brinchang to Tapah. I only touched 4 times the concrete with my footrest...

Some figures to wrap-up the trip:

• 9 days in Pahang
  
• 1670 km by motorbike
• 6 different repairmen visited along the road (yes, bikes are local brand ;-)
• 1 Pepsi can used by repairman #2 to fix my loose wheel barring...
  
• 1 fall (but no major injury)
• 60 L of premium gasoline released in the atmosphere
• ~27 fried rice/noddles dishes eaten
  
• ~10 leeches stuck under my skin
• 6 white water rivers crossed by foot
• 999,999 liters of rain water poured over me
• Priceless: tons of fun and discoveries all along the way!

• 

In a nutshell: I was really hit by the duality of Malaysia: on one hand the Klang valley around Kuala Lumpur, its modern malls, huge elevated highways, Petronas Towers (tallest building in the world), industries, bustling development. On the other side, the rural Malaysia with many villages made of wooden stilts houses, dirt path, little markets along the road etc... Really two different countries.

Beside this, I discovered a new approach of traveling, and I sure will be back on a bike someday for another trip like that... The little man in my ear keeps whispering: "Sumatra, Sumatra"...

The French through the eyes of an American

We were delighted to have you for few days in KL, Jayna! I liked our discussions about cultural differences, about being Asian-American in the heart of Hoosierland (where I spent one year myself) and about French people and body smells ;-) Come again whenever you feel the urge to work on your French!

I wish you all the best for you voluntary action in India... Farewell!

Out of the blue

I finally made it! One year after getting my PADI, I enjoyed diving in Malaysia world class diving spot, namely Sipadan! Sipadan is an Island off Sabah state in Borneo Island, in the Celebes sea. It's unique in the sense that it is a huge limestone cliff standing in the middle of the ocean. From far, it just looks like any other paradise tropical Island.

But when you get closer, you notice something weird: just 5 meters off the beach, the color of the water suddenly swaps from light blue (indicating shallow water) to dark blue (deep water): there is a huge 600 meters vertical drop just few meters off the beach!!! Quite dizzy when you swim above it...

This creates a perfect environment for underwater species and the wildlife is incredibly abundant! It's really an eye orgy! It's actually hard not to see any amazing colorful uncommon species. In few dives, I saw more that in the rest of my (rather short) diver's life: sharks, turtles, barracudas, nudibranchs, lion fish, tuna, you name it! (check Marie's blog for some underwater pix). Visibility is of course exceptional since there is not muddy ground spreading particles.

One of the most famous spots in Sipadan is Turtle's cave: as per the name, it's an underwater cave were turtles can get in but not out, like a prawn's trap. This was my first "indoor" underwater experience, and it was pretty perturbing. Marie was afraid and disoriented in the dark, so she grabbed my hand... but I've got to confess I was happy she did cause I really started to lose it a bit as well. Then as our eyes got used to the darkness and our brain managed to recover the sense of balance, we tried to swim upside down: the air breezed out was accumulating on holes on the roof of the cave, and due to reflection it really looked like puddles of water on the ground. Try to imagine yourself swimming upside down, weighting nothing, and slowly approaching those air puddles on the ceiling, dipping your fingers in it and figuring out that it feels dry in this puddle.... Really really disorienting!!! When we left the cave, a gigantic school of jack fish was swimming like a vortex, as to greet us with a welcome back to the bright world! As I said, it's eyes orgy.

The last day we tried a totally different approach: we went for a muck dive on nearby Mabul Island. It's shallower and the ground is made of sand. Visibility is of course not as good, and we have to actually look for wildlife. But it's rewarding since we got to see really strange underwater things like scorpion fish (really ugly and also dangerous), crocodile fish (still very ugly, but not dangerous), frog fish and moray eels.

Since Sipadan is a really fragile environment, it is protected and it's not possible to spend the night on it, so we found accommodation in a longhouse on Mabul Island. Mabul is a very international Island: it used to belong to Indonesia territory a few decades ago, but it's now part of Malaysia and inhabited mostly by illegal Philippinos fishermen... Some may argue that the contrast between tourists spending in a few dive several month worth of earnings from fishing is disturbing. I can't deny. But I can witness that the kids hanging out at the pontoon, shouting and jumping in the water to splash everyone looked everything but sad!!! (thanks Marie for the kiddies pix).













Check out my pictures:

100 questions for the American Dream

The Bush administration unveiled the new version of the citizenship test for immigrants. As opposed to the previous one, it is not based on pure memory, but it is meant at assessing the knowledge of things that make America what it is.

You can take a sample test here.

I scored 83%! Georgie, I'm comiiiiing!

Any American pal reader? Would be curious to know how good you score at it?!?!

The equation proving English a weird language

There it is! After years of research, worldwide experts came up with the complex equation proving English the weirdest language on Earth:

ghoti = fish

Yes, in English, the word "ghoti" is pronounced exactly the same as the word "fish", although both are spelled in very different ways. Let's prove the equation:

• "gh" like in enough (gh = f)
• "o" like in women (0 = i)
• "ti" like in station (ti = sh)

So, to wrap up: ghoti = fish !

Please, native English speakers, have some patience for us, bothering hard to master Shakespeare's language!

Cocorico!!!...

Screw France!
Some family members and close friends ask me every now and then why I decided to live so far away from France... Once for all, here is the answer: thank you Sebastien!...

Clic-Clac

I just took my 10,000^th picture since I bought my DSLR two years ago!!! This gives a mean shooting rate of 14 pics/day...

That's amazing how digital cameras made photography easier. If you take a look at web galleries, you can notice the growing number of skilled amateurs who really reach nearly professional quality. We are now flooded daily with tons of images via the Web, the TV, the magazines, etc... The level of demand for professionals to differentiate is higher than ever. At the same time, there is a trend to give more credit to those "amateur" pictures and videos in the news. Readers are educated and know the wide range of tools available for the "pros" to manipulate their shoots and change the reality. An "amateur" looking pictures seems more credible I guess.

Anyway, I'm not pretending to be a reporter or an artist, I just enjoy watching pictures I took in places I liked, that's all! And out of 10,000 pictures, how many are worth keeping? Only one out of five since my galleries host nearly 2,000 picts. Indeed, the 10,000^th picture itself was not satisfying so it was not a keeper, but the 10,006^th was. It's the same frame as the 10,000^th, just with better DOF and exposure.

Sir, yes Sir!

Imagine you're lying on a deserted beach somewhere in Asia, let's say in Malaysia. Everything is so quiet, and you fully enjoy yourself. Aside from a tidal wave, what is the worth thing that could happen to you and spoil this very special moment?

--> an organized tour tidal wave...

Since I've spent quite some time on various Islands and touristic spots in Asia, I've noticed many of those groups of tourists traveling on an organized tour. And by "organized", I mean that each and every second of the day is organized.

You can't miss those groups if you go to the Perhentians Islands, they love this sea paradise. They are easy to spot: first they are numerous. Most of those tours gather at least 10 people. That kind of tourists likes to be surrounded by his fellows, he feels protected against all the dangers threatening him when he is so far away from home sweet home. Especially on the Perhentian Islands, this is really dangerous place. And they will always stay close to each other. It's like a school of sardines: strength lies in unity.

You can usually recognize them with their T-shirt: since they are very proud of belonging to the same tour, they make their travel a real event: they give themselves a name, they find a motto and they created a dedicated T-shirt for their group. It's mandatory for them that they wear it all the time. It's actually very clever: in the unlikely event that one of them get separated from the rest of the group, if you find him totally freaked out and lost, thanks to the name on the T-shirt, you can bring him back to his owner. You might get a reward for it.

Finally, since this is an "organized tour", well... it has to be organized, right? This is serious business. The captain of the group usually carries a loudspeaker to regularly give instructions to the group. Thanks to the captain, the tourists don't need to worry to much about what to do and where to go. The schedule is very detailed an a laminated hard copy is given to all the participants. They are told when to go to the bathroom. The captain is the master and his authority is respected: the only case when it's hard for him to keep control over the group is when it comes to food, especially when it's a buffet. In order to guarantee the ROI (Return On Investment), the participants will rush to the buffet and get as much as their plastic plate can carry. Who cares if they can't eat it all, as long as they consumed as much as possible. It's usually a real mess, and there might not be enough food for the weakers of them who couldn't reach the buffet on time. The captain is also in charge of telling jokes in the bus and of ordering them to watch through the window when the bus is passing a landmark. Gosh, a travel must be so boring without a good captain!

But the most funny part is that they don't swim without a bright orange life jacket and two large buoys around their arms. Yes, in the Perhentians. You know, this paradise tropical Island where the water is like 28°C , shallow, quiet, protected by coral reefs... I'm not kidding, that's for real!!!

As you can see, I'm not a big fan of those tours and I'm getting a bit mean. Echoing Nicolas' post (fr), I think that this type of tourism is more or less responsible for spoiling natural wonders...

Well, that said, believe it or not I was myself part of such kind event last weekend!!! Yep, I got enrolled in the Perhentian Island challenge 2007... I teamed up with sport addicted Louis and we both went through a great sport challenge in spite of the "organized tour" background.

The race consist in a mix of kayaking, running through the wild jungle, swimming (yes, with the bright orange life jacket geared up ;-), climbing steep hills. Four and a half hours of constant physical effort around noon, when the sun is the brightest and when the temperature reaches 35°C. It was really tiring but we were determined and we found the guts to finish the race and our rank is 10th out of 83 teams. We won a great medal and a money prize! There will be a one hour coverage on TV Tiga (Malaysian national TV channel 3) in October, I'll try to blog it if I can find it.

Thanks Louis!

Louis was too tall to fit in the kayak...













They didn't play La Marseillaise...

No need to push mah, just call lah!

After more than one year spent in KL I noticed that there are phone numbers painted on almost all the sign-posts, streetlights and stop lights in KL, but until yesterday I never had the curiosity to call and figure out whose number it was.

Yesterday, Marie's bike had a flat tire. I came to help and we were getting ready to push the bike over few blocks to reach a nearby garage. It was about noon, temperature was 35°C, that would have been hell! So I asked a guy passing by if he knew a bike shop closer than the one I was thinking about.

He answered: "no need to push mah, just call lah!", and he finger pointed a streetlight... He explained that repairmen write their phone number on all the streetlights within the area they cover!! One can call and get service 24/7 within 10 to 15 min ;-) But you need to speak Malay to give your location since bike repairmen usually don't speak a word of English...

Half an hour and twenty ringgits later, we were on the road again!

Way to go!...

Kiddy Kiddy!

No big story here, but just the cutest picture I ever took! (not that I'm a big fan of the "kiddy kiddy" type of picture, but I really like this one, though)!



I took those pictures a few weeks ago as Marie and I took a ride to Kuala Selangor.


















Those Silverleaf monkeys are freely roaming in the hills around the town. They are famous for the bright orange fur of their infants, before they turn to regular adults' dark hair with silver shining.










But don't give me wrong, this one is definitely my favorite kind: it can even ride a bike!!