Oct
24
Boracay
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My brother Kerwin and I just came back from our recent trip to Boracay. We stayed on the island for several days this time around although the weather did not cooperate. It rained for a couple of days. As some of you know, Boracay is the premier resort island in the Philippines.
It is rated as one of the top ten beach destinations in the world. I took some photographs and hopefully will be able to upload pictures in the next few weeks. My brother has my usb card reader and he is in Cebu. I will not be able to upload the pictures until I go there myself within a week or so.
In the meantime, I have to deal with very little memory left on my camera. To tell you the truth, I have not been taking many pictures since I got here in the Philippines. Sometimes, I get into this mode of not taking pictures for weeks. This happened when I was travelling in South America. I didn’t take any pictures at all in Chile and I just took a few pictures in Argentina.
The internet access here in the Philippines is more than adequate compared to some areas of Latin America. There are numerous high speed internet shops in the malls and outside of malls, and they are very cheap compared to costs in Costa Rica.
Shopping for clothes here is the ultimate. You can buy T shirts for less than $5. Eating out is also very cheap compared to a lot of places in the world. The only items that are expensive here are imported goods like sports shoes and electronics.
I’m beginning to enjoy it down here in Iloilo. I have checked out several lots or subdivisions within the city for my parents. My parents are looking to retire in the Philippines in two years. Other than that, not much going on here.
Oct
4
Antique
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Kerwin and I went to the province of Antique this past week. We went to the towns of Bugasong and Tibiao to see relatives. Our relatives took us around Antique to Kalibo, Aklan where they hold the Ati-Atihan festival every January. It was definately a very intriguing trip since this part of Panay is not traveled by most tourists.
These towns don’t even have cell phone coverage which is unusual for the Philippines since it has more than 30 million cell phone users, which is about one third of the population.
By the way, I picked up a cell phone here and have begun to learn how to send text messages. Text messaging is very popular in the Philippines due to costs. A phone call costs 7 pesos per minute while text messages are only 1 peso. Even at 7 pesos, its still cheap compared to the cost of cell phone usage in the US.
Switching gears now, I think I have gained a few pounds since we seem to be eating out all the time. I now have joined a gym in Iloilo City to shed a few pounds. I have not worked out in more than 8 months, so this is very good. Well, ciao for now. Someone is kicking me out of the computer.