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Important notice. I'm sniffing my newlybought deodorant from Old Spice..

...while watching their commercial

This is one of the manliest moments in my life

Ps. Blog texts from my trip to Central America coming soon!

Sticky rice and sweet cakes – Chapter 3, Singapore

Hi again guys!!

It’s time to finish my journey of 40,000 kilometers. I forgot to put a summary of Philippines to the last text, but I have to say it was one of the most interesting countries I’ve been to, where I definitely will return some day! People were reaaaalllyy friendly and the whole atmosphere was much less touristic or materialistic like for example in Thailand. I put below a few pics from our last plast that we stayed in Philippines, Talisay.

The local taxis - straight from the horror movies!

AAAWWWWWWW where are my thongs when I need them?!?

Singapore, in turn, was a totally another world. It was like stepping inside this one big facility, where everything was authorized by rules and penalties. For example, there was a penalty of 500SGD (around 275 euros) for eating in the subway. Obviously this released my inner rebel during our time there and somehow I felt necesary to broke the rules every now and then with some pretty hardcore stunts, like for example CHEWING GUM or DRINKING ICETEA IN THE SUBWAY STATION. Crazy stuff which made me almost shit in my pants, but then I remembered the penlties for it so I gathered myself.

On the positive side, everything functioned there like clockwork. The transportation worked like clockwork and everything seemed perfectly planned out for effectiveness. Even though Singapore is one of the most developped countries in Asia (besides Japan, Korea (and Hong Kong), there are still some great differences to the western world. That said, in my opinion Singapore represents best the Asian culture in the sense of authoritiveness and punctuality, without ignoring the importance of religion.

Every minute of me walking there in the clean streets of Singapore made me think that how would these people survive without rules guiding them in every matter. A little roundtrip through - for example - the central America could do wonders to them or just be the worst experience ever. Buhahaha.. I'm just laughing out loud while thinking of the case. But it wouldn't work the other way around. All the latinos would end up in jail within the first 24 hours.

Like in all of the Asian countries, religion was also a pretty funny phenomenon. Before saying any more I'd like to emphasize that the following text are only my thoughts about the buddhism that covers only 33% of the Singaporean population (Chinatown area). Compared to for example our religion in Finland, the local religion in Singapore a) plays a much bigger role, and b) is overly materialistic. To get a good life and a place in heaven, the rule was simple: The more you paid for the buddhas and the more you owned the beautiful statues of different buddhas, the better person you were and the closer to getting to heaven. For example, every single one of the 100,000 buddha statues were "on sale" so that they could be dedicated to you, of course for a prize. A dedication of a single buddha could be as high as 25,000 SGD, which converts to over 13,000 euros.

One thing that Singapore is also really famous for, is food. Singapore has a reputation of being the world's food capital. I couldn't agree more. There was food stores, food courts, little snack stalls and restaurants in literally everywhere, and they offered the biggest variety of food served in even more different ways. Even though I didn't always want to where the food was really from, it tasted almost invariably really delicious. Food was one of the things that I really missed when I came back to to Mexico.

We arrived to Singapore in our second attempt at around noon at the New Year’s Eve. The day wasn’t exactly the best of our trip, because it was raining like mad and I was feeling sick and sleeping pretty much the whole afternoon. I pretty much stayed in our hotelroom, which was probably one of the cheapest in the neighborhood, 30e/night. We still had a bit time to roam the local shops and restaurants, here's a few pics of that.

Meat... GRAAAAHH

Typical scene from a market

In the night I was feeling already better and finally rose from my wet bed (because of sweat!) at 9pm. We were going to meet Jette’s friends in a really nice club with a masquerade theme for the New Year’s Eve. Jette bought me this:

After making people laugh with my awesome mask we left to see the firework show just before midnight. It sure didn’t disappoint us. We among other 20,000 people saw millions of Singaporean dollars blown into air every minute for a total 10 minutes in the nicest firework show I’ve ever seen. It was also the crowdiest, it took us 30 minutes to get to the first taxi stop and another hour to drive us the 3 km distance home.

On the next day I still wasn’t feeling perfect, but we still decided to head out to skirt in the streets of Chinatown and Little India. Chinatown didn’t differ too much from the night-market scene in Hongkong, but Little India offered many new smells – which all weren’t necessarily good – and the absence of women in the streets. We visited a temple in Chinatown and went eat to Little India. Here's a few pics of that.

Sri Mariamman Temple - Chinatown

Incences in Sri Mariamman temple

One of the various statues inside Sri Mariamman temple

Kitchen knife art in Chinatown

Man eating in Little India. I was really lucky to capture the only female in the streets

Some indian food, it was ok.

On the second day of the rabbit's yearwe went to Marina Bay to see the mascot of Singapore - The Merliot Lion. We were also planning to go up to the Marina Sands Bay to the rooftop pool, but since it was only for hotel guests and only taking the ride up to the viewpoint would have costed around 15 euros/ person, we decided to skip it.

The Merliot Lion

Marina Sands Bay

View from Marina Bay

I paid us to go to to hotel Fullerton and its famous dinner buffet. It was pretty costly, but also one of the best buffets we've ever had, so totally worth it!



Next morning we moved to Jette's house to Commonwealth where she continues her studies for another semester. After moving the stuff we headed to eat the famous Singaporean chilicrab with her schoolmates and watched a freakishly weird movie afterwards.

Our next day was our last. We went to the Singapore national park do hang out. In the night we went to G-Max, which is kind of a human slingshot in Clark Quay, an popular place with a lot of nightclubs. The G-Max was SUPERBLY fun, thanks Jette for the present!

The next night was about saying goodbyes and preparing for my trip back to Mexico. My flight to Kuala Lumpur and onwards to Los Angeles and Guadalajara left the next morning at around 11 am and the leaving ambience wasn't obviously the best I've had. Everything has to come to its end sometime. The last three weeks had been again one of the best in my life, thank you Jette for your company and everything!

Hotel Fullerton at night

Clark Quay - The white towers of G-Max can be seen in the backround

Cya, soulmate!

My trips didn't quite end here! I had still planned to travel in Central America for another three weeks with my dutch friend. To see how I survired to write this text, come back to read the next chapters of the blog! Thanks guys for reading, I hope you made it all the way to the end. A little sneak peak from my adventures from this on can be read at the beginning of the first chapter of this trip (Sorry my English readers, I decided to write it in Finnish!).

Cheers,
Kalle

Sticky Rice and Sweet Cakes – Chapter 2, Philippines

Booyah!

Sorry about my super-slow update speed.. I know.

I forgot to upload one very describing picture from our time at Krabi with Joonas:

I’ll continue our journey “throughout” the Asia with this second chapter. I´ll write from now onwards a bit more about the country itself and also add our experiences within the text.

Philippines and the island of Palawan functioned kind of like our traveling methods: Even though everything isn´t neither necessarily logical nor really planned out, is done with a big smile and a positive attitude. Compared to Thailand, everything seemed to go out in a less stressful way, where time isn’t absolute and tourists weren’t always treated as cash cows like for example in Thailand. And we sure did love it, in exception of the traveling/waiting times and the absence of ATMs.

We arrived to Puerto Princessa, the only bigger city of the island, on 21.12. After spending one night in a decent hostel, we decided to head to El Nido, a small and reputedly beautiful place in north of the island. And no, it didn't have any ATMs.

What the hell is Sulu Sea

After 6 hours of grueling time in a minibus of a local Juha Kankkunen in one of the worst roads in my life, we finally arrived to the town of El Nido. We loved the place right away with its all-relaxed atmosphere and astonishing nature, which – for our sake – wasn’t yet spoilt with mass-tourism. The place El Nido actually consists of 61 little paradise islands around the peak of Palawan, while the town of El Nido is located in the mainland. The city itself is really tiny and basically has only two “main” streets. These were more full of restaurants of different taste (our favourites: Fish and veggies at the alternative, Talk of the Town –burger at Blue Azul). One remarkable point, that we both really liked, was that when the town of el Nido ended, so did the tourism and every white people you could see. We actually took a little walk from the city to another beach, where we bought some palawan-style fried bananas for 10 euro cents.

Locals in/on/around a bus from Puerto Princesa to Palawan. 8 hours of bumby roads with magnificent views for only 5 usd!

Street view from El Nido, Philippines

Fried bananas with "butter" and sugar

On the first day we rested our asses by falling asleep on the beach for two hours. In the night we eat some delicious food in The Alternative and went to enjoy a few beers in the nearby Shisha café. Hotel room with fan and locked door (!!) costed 7 euros for both of us for the night.

In the next morning 23.12 we rented a kayak for the day and went off to see a few of those beautiful islands of El Nido with our snorkel kits. Besides that we didnt only have our own perfect private beaches, we saw many beautiful fish and corals underwater. The only fallback was that in the seasurface there was these littly ameba/medusa/littlefucker -like things that really pissed you off in some areas. And they were impossible to see beforehand and the only way to get out was to ignore the itch and splash forward as fast as you could. Well, seeing two whale sharks in a kayak at 5 meter distance when rowing back in the sunset, we can}t really talk about bad luck during that trip.. In the night we had the first and by far the best grouper for the dinner in a local restaurant and fell asleep at 9pm.

We waited eagerly for the next morning. It was, after all, christmas eve! This time the presents weren't wrapped in colourful packages in the light of a christmas candle with the scent of cinnamon flouting in the air. But when enjoying freshly grilled fish and meat with locally prepared gourmet vegetable- and fruitdishes on this perfect little beach while hearing the never-ending concert presented by mother nature from the waves gently bouncing to the sand and corals, we realised that that whole day was going to be our unique christmas present of this year.

On our way to Star Beach

Christmas lunch at Nat Nat Beach

Nat Nat Beach

Which I declared as being mine like all self-aware white people should

Local animals from Nat Nat Beach (1) - THE BUTTERFLY!!!

Local animals from Nat Nat Beach (2) - THE FEARLESS MINICRAB!!!

The trip, lead by our awesome travel guid Lari, lasted basically the whole day from 9am to 5pm. We visited four beaches: Star Beach, Nat Nat Beach (and had a lunch there), Secret Beach and Helicopter Island. We saw plenty of sea turtles, fish, a lobster, and snorkeled in the best corals (snorkle depth) that I've ever been to.

Found dozens of SUPERNEMOS (Clown Fish) during the day

The islands consisted of these sharp limestone rocks

This day was the day that I officially started my new hobby: Free Diving. The definition of free diving is really broad: Freediving is any of various aquatic activities that share the practice of breath-hold underwater diving (Source: Wikipedia - Free Diving). I understand free diving as a developed form of snorkeling , where a diving-like experience can be had without the diving gear. The sport is newly formed and it isn't really clear what can be understood as free diving. Some people have already done some really impressive stunts (like this) and there is also a competitive freediving form with competitions around the world, but my freediving basically consists of having the same snorkeling experience with spending a bit more time periods underwater. I.e. im a total newbie in this crazy sport and have free-dived to around 15-18 meters for a period of 1-2 minutes. It's a good sport to challenge yourself and great fun, but can be really dangerous if done wrong. I've only done some hyperventilating training and practised to keep my breath for a bit (could do 4 minutes). I have to train more the aerobic breath-holding side if I really want to start doing the sport. Time will tell..

Back to the story. We reserved two places for the Christmas buffet in The Alternative for the night. The buffet consisted of a whole philippinean pig, mongolian-style prepared teppanyaki, fish in every form you can imagine and flambered ice-cream among other things. We got a seat in the "bird's nest"; a round-shape overhang above the ocean. The restaurant and the food was simpy perfect. Here's a few pics of that:

Bird's nest

a GIRL!!!

And then came the DELICIOUS PIG!!!!. Before..

It surely was a DELICIOUS PIG!!! ..and after.

We kind of missed the normal christmas morning feeling back home when waking up to the banging sounds of builders at 8 o'clock in the morning. You got to earn your payday, right? Christmas day was a day-off for us and we didn't do anything special. In the afternoon we reserved some diving for the next day. On the next morning at 9 o'clock we left for our 3-dive again to the nearby islands and saw many breathtaking views down under. When coming back at around 5pm again we saw again the big whaleshark bouncing of the water, but our driver couldn't care less and drove straight to the peer.. In the night we had some pizzas at Artcafe and reserved a hiking tour for the next day.

We left to our hiking tour at 6:30 am. First we thought that it could be doable without a guide, but as we found out, there was absolutely no traces available and we were basically jumping above those really sharp limestone cliffs inside the jungle all the way to the top. Some parts with over 70 degree angle with no ropes or other equipment available were actually quite frightening and challenging to do, but eventually we made it all the way up to the top.

Our guide Saldy climbing some of the steepest parts

The view from the top was simply amazing.

Skyline of El Nido from 170 meters

We made it!

When coming back the only people that we saw were bird nest collectors, who went up there every day to collect valuable bird nests that were sold to the Asian countries. This leads us to the origin of El Nido.

The brief history of El Nido

El Nido was originally a fisherman town that was famous of its bird's nests. Although the place was inhabitated already over 20,000 years ago, the latest era goes back to 1950-60s, when the grandfathers of the current locals found the rich population of swiftlet birds. Their nests are valued over 2000 euros per kilo. However, the population has gone down dramatically because the collectors broke the eggs while stealing the nests and the government has tried to change the manouver that the nests are collected. Although tourism is nowadays the biggest income of the area, collecting is still done among the locals. Here's a few pics that I took when meeting those collectors.

Tough guys

10 euros worth of birds spit

In the night we decided to try again that delicious grouper, this time in a different place. We could choose one of the catches of the day and everything seemed superb. After just 15 minutes from the order the fish came. I just couldn't believe my eyes. The fish looked like it had gone through multiple forest fires to say the least. It was pitch-black outside, while the inside was still raw. I tried to rip some meat of it without managing to get anything but ash and a bunch of fishbones. It was time to make my first official compliance for a restaurant food. The owner came to see my fish and after some negotiations he saw that he didn't have too much to say and decided to prepare us a new fish himself.

I thought everything would end good. Oh boy. It went 20 minutes and they gave us a new fish. This time it was only 50% black outside, and 25% of the fish meat actually could actually be pulled away from the ashy corpse. However, 100% of the meat tasted like shit, again. HOW CAN THIS BE POSSIBLE? These guys just ruined two beautiful fishes by flambering them in an open fire all the time. Neither I didn't feel bad for myself for me, but also for the fish. Poor that. We complained again to the staff, this time the negotiations didn't go as smoothly.The owner was literally boiling when he came again to our table to hear what we had to say. First he refused to give any discount for the fish since we already complained about one before (understandably) and I on my half wasn't going to pay the full price. First he wanted to take the case to the police, but when I saw a big group of tourists coming to the same restaurant, I pretty ruthlessy said that I could make them turn back if u act to me like this. He didn't have a choice and gave us the fish for 1/2 price, which was ok. I felt I did it right, because he was acting like such an asshole, even though he saw that the product was a total failure. After that we went to a 10 times cheaper (and better) place to fill our stomachs.

The next day we had to already leave this beautiful town and took the shuttle van back to Puerto Princesa. We had a flight to Manila in the same evening, but we still decided to hit a local beach in Puerto Princesa. The road to the beach was pretty amazing, here's a pic of it (and a bonus pic of a GOAT!).

Hollowed ground In Puerto Princesa

The Amazing STARING GOAT!!!!

We made it to Manila at around 8pm. In the night we hit the casino (yeah I know, I was such good company for Jette) and I managed to win around 300 euros from the local mean, cigarette-smoking gamblers. That was fun.

The Luzon island that Manila is located has also many activities, but Philippines happen to be famous for its ultra-slow roads and just traveling 300 kilometres will take the whole day. For example, our trip to El Nido from Puerto Princesa was around 150 kilometres and it lasted 6 hours. We decided to head to Tagaytay to see the volcano lake nearby. It rained the whole day in Tagaytay. We slept in a nearby little town called Talisay to get to the volcano easily. The hardest in Talisay was that there were exactly 1 food place in the whole town (that wasn't really a restaurant but a boat renting place). Well, we got a really good and big meal there from a local lady and it all ended up good. After that we went to see a movie and drank brandy with the staff our hotel. I also bought a fired a big firework bazooka that night that i found in the local store! Wish we would have had something to leave for them from Finland, they were great people!!

This picture really captures the awesome nightlife of Talisay, Philippines

Me with the biggest bazooka I could find in the markets

Next day we climbed the mountain with the one tourist that we saw in Talisay (who was also eating in the same place that we did). It took a boat ride and 1-hour-hike to get to the top. The views were pretty good, but it sure smellt like rotten eggs. Here's a pic from the top.

Volcano-lake Taal in Talisay, Philippines

We decided to head back to Manila alreadyon the same day, since there was not too much to see. We spent the night in the night markets of Manila, which was of course a fun and crazy experience as always in the asian countries.

On New Year's Eve 31st of December we woke up at 3:45am and headed to the airport for getting to SINGAPORE. WUHUU!! Our departure got a bit delayed since the pilot decided to make turn back after 40 minutes of flying and we had to wait for another plane. Presumably it was some kind of a engine problem, who knows.

Anyways, this is the end of the Philippines - chapter of our legendary journey in Asia. Hope you guys liked it, feel free to drop comments or berate me for updating this slowly. Now I'm really gonna try and finish our trip blogwise during the coming days!

Peace out!

-Kalle