Mabuhay 2015: Dipaculao and Baler

Blake always raves about the local Filipino bakeries. We picked up some treats on our way out of Cabanatuan. It only took me 30 minutes to realize I had left my cell phone at the hotel and we had to turn back and get it. Luckily it didn't ruin our day too much. 

The drive to Dipaculao and Baler was beautiful. It was so lush and so green. Blake always refers to these places as his beach area. He served there for 4.5 months and all I can say is I wish I lived there for 4.5 months. 

It's a pretty windy road to Dipaculao/Baler and we stopped at a little market to get some snacks and took a picture by this broken down D' Liner bus. This is what all the missionaries would ride in to get to the beach area and back. It would take them 4 hours just to get to the closest zone. Not what I would call traveling in style...

One of the church buildings. 

Ok, so this is Mother Falls. When Blake and I were dating, I remember seeing pictures of him at some waterfalls and I knew I wanted to visit them when we went, so this was big on my list of to-dos. It had been completely commercialized since Blake had been there and it was packed with people, but it was still beautiful. 

We took a tricycle up to the beginning of the hike and walked for about an hour and made it to the falls. We swam for a while and Blake jumped off a big rock and all the Filipinos were cheering for the white foreigner. 

We bought Keen's for this trip and they were really a perfect hiking/swimming shoe. I highly recommend them. I think we should be models for them...what do ya think?

That night we went to Dipaculao and visited with some of Blake's closest friends from his mission. Most of the people there don't have internet, so we didn't really know how to let people know that we were coming, but Blake remembered all the streets like it was yesterday and we just showed up unannounced.

Nanay Lleonora is on the left in the green shirt. I remember she was sitting in her outside hut making dinner and we walked in and immediately she said, "Elder Day!" It was so special seeing these people recognize and remember Blake and visit with them. I couldn't believe that they remembered him so well. I couldn't tell you a single name of missionaries that passed through my ward growing up. Nanay Lleonora kept on telling me that Blake was her favorite missionary. She actually never joined the church, but she is indeed a kindred spirit and I hope I'll get to visit with her again one day.

Next we visited the Sibayan family. Orland (far left) left for his mission while Blake was serving and Blake baptized Orland's mom. About six months later, Brother Sibayan was baptized. They were so kind and hospitable and once again, they had a great time telling me stories about Blake as a missionary. After a while of chatting, it was time to go and call it a night.

We didn't really know where we were going to stay while we were visiting this area, but the missionary couple told us about this beautiful new resort they had built in Baler called Costa Pacifica. We walked in and I was in awe. I was taken aback at how beautiful everything was. We decided to just go for it and booked a King suite with a beachfront view for a night. It was way more room than we needed, but it was worth it.  

We ate at the restaurant that night and had fresh juice and enjoyed our meal and REALLY enjoyed our room.

The next morning we woke up around 5 AM, opened up our curtains and doors and just laid together and watched the sunrise for an hour. Afterwards we got some breakfast and enjoyed our last few moments in Baler.

This is our balcony and view from our room.

We loved our selfie stick

Bedroom

View from the room

Bathroom setup

Living room. 

We started our long drive back to Angeles and Manila and were getting super excited for our trip to the island of Palawan. More to come!

Mabuhay 2015: Manila Day 3

This was by far our most successful day in Manila. It was Wednesday and we got to meet Darlene! Darlene is the little Filipino girl that my brother sponsors in the Philippines. They've been sponsoring her for about 2 years and we only found out they had a sponsor child when we moved in December. I thought it was pretty cool when I found out, but never thought that we'd get the chance to meet her. We visited her at the Children International office in Quezon City and brought her all sorts of fun gifts from the United States.

 In front of the office.

This is Darlene and her mother. Aren't they the cutest?

Everyone in the entire office was so impressed with Blake's Tagalog and I think we literally met every person in the office. We liked what we saw so much, that we started sponsoring a little boy in the Philippines through the same office. We hope that we get to meet him next time we go. 

One of the best parts about the visit was when we gave Darlene a Hot Tamale to eat. She eventually spit it out and told us it was not delicious. Filipinos don't have much spice in their cuisine, so it was definitely something foreign to her to have a spicy candy.

We said our goodbyes and left Manila behind and headed to Blake's mission area. On the way I snapped a picture of this woman giving a pedicure. I don't think state board would approve, but it's good to know that I could make a living in the Philippines if we ever lived there!

After Manila, we made our way to Blake's mission area, Angeles. 

We headed straight to the old mission home and took a picture out front. Blake was a little sad to see that it hadn't been maintained as well as when he lived there. It has since moved to another area, but we did find a senior missionary couple that lived in his old apartment. They were so kind and let us sit in their air conditioned apartment and fed us fresh mango. 

Our next stop was Nayong Pilipino. It's basically a mini Philippines amusement park. They have replicas of famous sites in the Philippines, like the Banaue Rice Terraces, which was pretty fun to see since we didn't get a chance to visit the rice terraces in person.

My favorite part was watching these high school students perform native dances and songs. Blake got to participate in the tinikling dance on stage and it as pretty cute.

 On our way to Gapan I noticed some people playing baseball in a field. Blake said while he was on his mission, he NEVER saw so much as a glove, let alone a full on game. We turned around immediately and pulled into a dirt driveway. Within seconds, every single person from the town had heard that a tall white man drove up in a car to play some ball. Everyone gathered around so they could watch Blake hit and it is seriously one of my favorite memories of our time there.

We made it to Gapan and visited with Lyra and her grandmother. Lyra joined the church when she was about 13 and now serves in the Young Women organization as a leader. It was really special to hear them talk about Blake as a missionary and the role that he played in their lives. They even had an old picture of him on their baptism day. (He's the tall one =P ) 

Blake is in his Filipino squat outside one of his old apartments. We stopped at a hotel for the night and visited his beach area the next day. One of my favorite stops. 

Mabuhay 2015: Manila Day 2

We woke up Tuesday morning and had one of Blake's favorite missionary meals for breakfast-pancit canton on white bread and CheezWhiz sauce for the bread. It wasn't new to me. Blake made this for breakfast for us a couple times while we were dating. The noodles are basically Filipino ramen, but you drain the broth and then sandwich the noodles in between bread. Ha. It's grown on me. 

Our first stop was Malacanan Palace, basically the Filipino White House. As mentioned before since I was a little short on time, we weren't able to book a tour since I didn't get my passport until right before our trip. I was a little sad because it looked pretty cool, but we got to walk around the outside at least. 

They don't let you take pictures of the palace, so these are the best we could get. From there we took a jeepney to Quiapo. There wasn't too much to see there, but we did eat some quail eggs off the side of the road...They were fine. They put them on skewers like kebabs and have a bunch of sauces to dip them in. Like I said, they were fine. =)

Also popped in this massive Catholic church. Brought back memories of my Catholic school days. Everyone had their pamaypays going. (That is the Tagalog word for fan... I'm trying to retain what little Tagalog I know.) I also remember that I bought myself a pamaypay because I was DRIPPING in sweat. Have I mentioned already how hot and humid it was there? I kept my hair down though, because you gotta get cute pix, right?

We had planned to go to a restaurant that Anthony Bourdain had visited in his travels, called Lumpia House. Lumpia is basically the Filipino egg roll and who doesn't love egg rolls? So we flagged down a tricycle and went on our way. 

Tricycles and jeepneys are the main ways to get where you want to go, if you don't have a car, which is pretty common. Tricycles are motorcycles with sidecars attached. Blake had told me so many times about when he rode on tricycles as a missionary, he had to hunch over because he was so tall. I fit just fine. =) 

This man brought his wife and baby along for the ride. They don't really do the carseat thing. 

Here we are. Blake fit pretty well in this one, but sometimes if he's too big, he'll ride on the back of the motorcycle with his feet hanging off on the side and then holds onto the sidecar. 

We made it to Chinatown where it was located and walked down this little alley where people were selling fish, meat, fruit, and vegetables. I wasn't sure what we were going to walk into, but we were so surprised to find a really nice, clean restaurant. I ordered some thick noodles and we split a huge Lumpia. Looking back it was probably the best meal we had there and I'm so glad we made the effort to find it. 

This right here is halo halo. It's a really popular dessert in the Philippines. It has crushed ice, ube/taro ice cream, jelly, red beans, and other goodies. Blake made an instructional video on how to eat this, so if you need to watch it, I'm happy to send it to you. In the video he said that halo halo literally means "mixed together." So the way to eat this is to, duh, mix everything together so with every bite you get a little of everything. I've come to really like it. It's not quite like chocolate cake, but definitely something I enjoy. We had halo halo like 3 times while we were there and this was definitely my favorite one. 

After lunch we walked across a bridge to get to the oldest district in Manila, Intramuros. For one of the bigger tourist attractions, it wasn't very easy to navigate. There was this fortification that I had seen pictures of that I knew I wanted to see, but they didn't have any maps anywhere and everyone just wanted to have us pay a lot to go on these tricycle tours. We weren't super interested in paying for a tour so we decided we'd just walk to try and find it. Well, the heat got to us and then a Manny Pacquiao look alike came along in a pedicab and offered to help us find what we were looking for, for a smaller amount. I mean how could we turn down Manny?

Do you see the resemblence?!

The poor pedicab driver was going sooooo slow. He definitely was not used to peddling around two Americans of our size. I probably could have walked faster, but it was relaxing to just sit, no matter how slow we were going. This is one of those sidecars where Blake has to hunch over a lot. 

This is Baluarte de San Diego. It's pretty cool looking, right?

Steps leading up to Baluarte de San Diego

One of the many churches in Intramuros. 

But this right here is the first church built in Luzon--San Augustin Church. All the pictures I had seen showed an orange facade, so I was a little disappointed when it wasn't orange, but nonetheless, still beautiful and cool to be next to such a historic building. It was built in 1571!

This right here is a snapshot of the Mall of Asia--the biggest mall in Asia. I guess the name kind of says it, but it was HUGE. So many places to eat and shop. They don't air condition as well as American malls, but still fun to look around. I was really hoping I would score some cheap stuff there, but I realized that any things you found in American were pretty much priced the same. 

Being a tourist is tiring. The only way I could think of ending the night was going back to our pool. Isn't it pretty?

View of Manila

Our condo was attached to a shopping center and we grabbed some burgers for dinner. Does this remind you of my favorite burger joint? It's called CaliBurger, red and yellow color scheme, palm trees and those fry baskets?? Definitely NOT In-N-Out, but A for effort. 

We were exhausted and went to bed shortly after dinner. It was a perfect day.