Top 5 Things To Do in Kabankalan City

Here is my list of the top 5 things to do in Kabankalan City (from a visitor's point of view):

1. Take part in the Sinulog Festival (held every third Sunday of January)
2. Swimming, hiking and a picnic at Mag-aso Falls
3. Public plaza
4. Public market (just so you see what the locals do)
5. Visit the new City Hall

More Mag-aso Falls Pictures

Space Food

It's always interesting to learn about space travel and the intricacies of preparing for one. A couple of years ago, I read a lot of books on the lives of astronauts, for I also wanted to be one. Then I thought of becoming a pilot because I noticed that astronauts are usually former pilots, either from the Air Force or as test pilots. As in a lot of our dreams, we dream new dreams and we end up in other pursuits.

Space travel is a lot more advanced these days. But there is always one interesting topic about it all - space food. How do they plan for it?

In the video below, Professor Joseph Marcy of Virgina Tech described the challenge of planning for how to feed astronauts on a nearly three-year-long mission to Mars.

Long Weekends in 2009 (Philippines)

There a lot of long weekends in the Philippines in 2009. As you may all be eager to plan your weekends and vacations, here's a list of those 10 long weekends:

• April 4 - 6 (Araw ng Kagitingan on April 9 was moved to the nearest Monday, April 6)
• April 9 - 12 (Holy Week)
• May 1 - 3 (Labor Day weekend)
• June 12 - 14 (Independence Day)
• August 21 - 23 (Ninoy Aquino Day)
• August 29 - 31 (National Heroes Day)
• October 31 - November 2 (All Saints Day/All Souls Day)
• November 28 - 30 (Bonifacio Day)
• December 24 - 27 (Christmas holidays)
• December 30 - January 3, 2010 (Rizal Day & New Year)

When I heard this news, I had to sit down for an hour and mark my calendar on these dates. Also, the christmas holidays in 2009 will be a long one again, as only December 28 and 29 are not official holidays.

Also, Air Asia is giving away free seats. Yes, free! Check out the site now as a lot of people in Asia are interested in this too. But yes, their airport in the Philippines is at Clark.

We better start planning already!

Something

In the movie Finding Forrester, one of the characters says that the key to writing is to not think and just start writing. So tonight, I write, even though I don’t know what it is I really want to write about. While writing, I’m also watching American Idol. It’s always a riot watching that show. It’s also nice to be able to follow some of the contestants, see their potential and see them go on to the AI finals. I once worked with a team doing Sarbanes-Oxley work for an out-of-town client and we all stayed together in one hotel. Every Wednesday and Thursday, we would all be excited to go home and buy or make our dinner. By 8 pm, you will find us either in our own rooms watching AI, or together in one of the rooms also watching AI and having a coffee party or chocolate party or whatever party we all happen to think of. It didn’t really matter then, but one of us will just call someone and pretty soon we would all be together somewhere.

I guess that how things start to happen, someone starts calling, or someone stands or asks for something. During the Christmas break, our family went to an uncle’s place somewhere in southern Negros. It’s this place that’s located up in the hills, where it’s quiet and all you see are green hills, trees, sugarcane fields and the clouds in a blue sky. No noisy cars, tall buildings, or traffic. We weren’t the only ones who finally got somewhat tired of sitting around there, for pretty soon our other uncle stood up and asked if we can organize a trip to the town center. You know… civilization. :) Of course, all the kids stood up and started getting ready to go!

We had a good time with that little road trip to town. We went to the city plaza with the really old trees, to the busy market in all its chaos, to a mini-mall, and then had halo-halo at a small restaurant near the stalls selling firecrackers and fireworks. We were glad our uncle got to go around.

We all don’t know what will happen. But there sure are some things we want to do and places we want to go to. But in a lot of ways, the key is to start something and take the first step. Or it could be something much simpler such as to start writing, or start watching, or start a party… something.

Google Earth Underwater and Mag-aso Falls

As of this writing, Google just launched "Ocean Google Earth", or Google Earth underwater. Amazing, isn't it? At first, one might think that it would only be useful for those in the scientific and research community. But on second thought, the applications are only limited by our imaginations. In fact, it can be a sort of travel experience from home, straight from your desktop or laptop, specially with the sometimes high cost of travel, specially in this economy and, in some places, in these kinds of weather.

I've been waiting to post my pics of Mag-aso Falls for sometime now and I've finally done it. Mas-aso Falls has only been recently developed by Kabankalan City in Negros Occidental. The main falls is that pic on the left, and to get there, you have to go down some 100 steps or so (I stopped counting). The water is clear and there are not that many people, except when we went there, which was on January 1. I didn't know that it is a tradition to go to the beach or somewhere with water on New Year's Day. The people of Central and Southern Negros, though, take it up a notch. You see them all in fully loaded tricycles, pick-up trucks and hauler trucks.

So anyway, when you go back up the steps to the main falls, they have a swimming pool back at the top, and just a few steps near that are the small "falls" up the river. My cousin said that is one of the best places to bathe in because you're the first one to bathe in the water. :)


If you click on the picture, it will take you to my Flickr page where you'll find a few more pictures of Mag-aso Falls.

Blog Action Day: Look at the Positive

Here's my 2 cents worth to Blog Action Day 2008.

All we see are sugarcane everywhere. We are in Negros, sugarcane country, and we are driving along a two-lane highway, one lane going north, the other going south. I'm hitching a ride with an uncle and his wife and we're heading to my grandmothers' wake. We had a pleasant ride for some twenty minutes or so when my uncle suddenly calls my aunt's attention.

"Look at that, oh."
"Yeah. That's why I want to bring the kids here again."

I squirm in my seat, uncomfortable that I get to be the witness of this conversation. I look ahead and see what they see, "karga-tapas" guys or sugarcane field workers cutting and cleaning the sugarcane and loading them in batches on a waiting truck. This part of harvesting sugarcane is a very labor-intensive process and there could be several people working on a portion of a field at one time. Here, in front of us, are several people on each side of the , highway, working the field and clearing out patches in a (I'm sure) systematic manner here and there.

"You see, Rizza, sometimes we forget." My aunt tells me.

Maybe... Sometimes we forget what other people's lives are like, we forget what we're working for.

At another time, while traveling on the same stretch of highway, this same aunt tells me that she likes Filipino houses. Specifically, the houses and huts of the ordinary people. She says "they're just simple, from simple and native materials, but they have a certain grace to them." I wanted to grin so wide at that point, if I just could.

The story does not always have to be so grim and it doesn't always have to be about blaming someone. There are those who might live in poverty or in the edges of poverty, yet who still have a certain grace in the way they live. In our travels, let's invite everyone to look at the positive side of things.

Cebu Pacific Sale

Just wanted to share something that I came across recently when I had nothing to do but surf the net looking for cheap airfare, hoping to get a good deal on an adventure trip one of these weekends. Cebu Pacific Air just recently released its promo fares which start at Php 1 (plus taxes and surcharges), including Php 288 all-in fares for domestic flights. I have been searching for good deals for the November 29 to December 1 weekend and found a Manila to Iloilo flight for Php 2800 (roundtrip). Good enough, considering how much it used to be and how much the other carriers charge for this. But then, in all my OC-ness and, uhm, frugality, I might end up staying home because I can't decide where to go. Whew.

If you want to go abroad or around Asia, the flight fares are also reasonable. You can go to Hong Kong (roundtrip) for Php8000+. But you need to research carefully and plan the timing so that you get good fares, and sometimes, the earlier you buy, the better. Yes, it's time. It's time to get those hands pitter-pattering on the keyboard and clicking on all kinds of flight combinations to get that deal. After all, a great bargain can make you feel like the queen of the world.

Little Walks

Next week, our bosses will be out traveling in the Hongkong/China area. Well, it's not exactly a case of when the cat is away the mouse can play. No bonita. That is a weird situation for all of us. Of course, in an interconnected world, people are just an email or a text message away.

Anyway, as it's a rainy night in Makati, this actually reminded me of the Promenade at the Tsim Sha Tsui side of Hong Kong. Sometime before in Tsim Sha Tsui, my uncle went to China very early in the morning so he can play golf with his buddies and he left me alone to fend for myself. He must have realized that I can find my way around by following the maps in all those folded papers and travel brochures. My friends call them "papel-papel". With the sole intention of seeing those old folks doing their tai chi early in the morning, I went out 7am -ish for a walk on the Promenade along the harbor. Well, nothing beats a walk along the harbor early in the morning. You have the Promenade all to yourself (well, okay, along with a few other joggers and walkers), see the HK Cultural Center, Clock Tower, the Avenue of the Stars and the HK Space Museum without the usual crowd.

There are actually many other "walks" to do in Tsim Sha Tsui. You can get lost in Kowloon Park and at the Knutsford Terrace/Knutsford Steps, as well as walk the length of Nathan Road and haggle with a vendor for those dried things that hold clams. Haggling is a lot of fun, then see their reaction when you walk away saying, "Ok. Thanks. I'll think about it first."

As in life, the little things count. So pay some attention to those brochures on those little stands in little corners. There are themed walks that can guide you around and they include maps and bits of descriptions about the attractions. I took one of each of the brochures available and those basically became my maps for going around. They are also posted online at the Discover Hong Kong website.

From those little walks, I discovered that walking around and getting lost (a lot) can actually help you know a place better. I hope to discover more interesting places soon. I hope you do too.

Like a Spark

Great travel ideas come to us like a spark. Usually, they're not a result of so much planning and careful thought. They appear out of nowhere, like a bright spark in the middle of a dark sky and suddenly spread out like fireworks - bright, colorful and exciting. They call you to just go, not next month or next year, but tomorrow. It's a call at the back of your head telling you to start packing now.

This reminds me of an English guy who said he doesn't normally think so much about his upcoming trips. He just packs his things and goes to wherever it is he needs, or wants, to go. His favorite website? You guessed it -- Lastminute.com it is. :)

This is not a call to all of you to leave your jobs and pack your bags, like, now na. It's reminder that we don't need to "engineer" our trips so much, and even the way we live our lives. That where to go will come to you when you least expect it. That sometimes, places off the beaten track can actually define a trip.

Weekends

Good weekends, good travel experiences make you feel like jelly. They give you this bright, colorful, yet warm feeling inside, like everything's right with the world. Sometimes it's a matter of perspective, or the company you're with, or the place you're in. It could happen in any of the following ways:

• Under the sun, on the beach
• Under the water while snorkeling (off the coast of Batangas possibly)
• Inside a stupa in Bangkok
• Gazing up at the gigantic Wat Po buddha
• At home on a calm and lazy Sunday afternoon
• While feeding bangus in a fish pen on a river
• Having Southern barbeque with live country music
• Walking city streets on weekends
• Driving on a stretch of road to somewhere (no traffic!)
• Walking in Greenbelt in Makati
• Sitting at a table at Seattle's Best while watching "older people" dance the night away at Cafe Havana
• Riding a boat, with really nowhere to go
• Or, having a cheeseburger at a McDonald's with free wifi access :)

What's Your Driving Music?

What's a great driving song? I was just sitting here and listening to Yahoo Music when it played Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield.

Take me away: A secret place.
A sweet escape: Take me away.

Then I just thought that this song would be great when driving. It's not too slow to make you feel drowsy and it's upbeat enough to make you feel that yes, you're still alive. That's how I like the songs to go when I'm driving. Rock music makes me hyperactive, and that's not so good for soon I'll be going at it at 80 mph. If the music is too slow, it makes me feel sleepy and drowsy. The best types of driving music for me would probably be jazz, some kinds of R&B, a little alternative rock, erm country music, something in the mid-stream upbeat side.

There's this male friend who likes to listen to The Carpenters while driving. Oh boy, once we were on a ten-hour marathon road trip and when it was his turn to drive, he played the whole 2-disc Greatest Hits: The Carpenters album. Of course, we all fell asleep in no time. I woke up in the middle of the night and found him all-alive, energetic and singing along with Karen Carpenter at the top of his voice!

There are also some who like playing classical music when driving. Imagine that, driving along to the sounds of the Hallelujah Chorus. Or to the thumping sounds of The Great Gate of Kiev. Majestic... and amazing. I wonder where I'll end up if that were me.

We all have different preferences and I'm sure you will have your own driving music preference. What's your style? What's your favorite music for driving?

The sun is on my side. Take me for a ride. I smile up to the sky. I know I'll be all right.

Moments to Just Do It

In our travels, there are times when we are so attracted to a certain scene, a certain view that we get the urge to take a picture. We hold an internal mental debate whether to just grab the moment and take that picture, or risk looking naive, or worse, like someone from the boondocks.

I often have times like these, and often, these happen at weird times like when a camera is not exactly easily reachable or allowed - like in the middle of the road while driving, or inside a plane that is about to take off, or a hundred meters up in the air inside a cage-like thing for humans (they called it a cable car, ha...) suspended in the middle of two hills. Exciting, but insanely distracting.

Often, the answer is to give in. There is a running joke among some of my friends that I am the only person they know who will stop on the shoulder of a highway road to take pictures. It's like that Nike commercial, just do it. How I wish we can also do this more often in life. You know, grab the moment and just do it.

Globility

While reading posts on the net, I came across this write-up on a cool family (The Jenss Family Travels) that will go on a year-long trip around the world. They call the idea for the trip as Globility, that is, the "quality of being open to a world of cultures and experiences." Why this caught my attention? It's quite interesting. I look forward to reading their travel stories from different parts of the world.

Read on... As a friend of the father, Rainer Jenss, says, "Set your intention and the universe will conspire to show you the way."

How To Catch Crabs in the South

More river talk... here's my take on crabbing during a visit to Beaufort.



In the early morning darkness, we all file out the door to go crabbing. It's cold outside, and out beyond, dawn is slowly crawling out on the horizon. We walk on the wooden planks to get to the hut nearly floating on the side of the river.

We are in Beaufort, S.C. and we are about to haul out of the water the morning catch. I have never seen yet, nor cared to ask, how crabs are caught. I have always dismissed them as someone else' problem, hence, something that I don't have to think of. I have also noticed these little crab-like folks that run around on the sand when we go to the beach, but I look at them as cute little thingys that you chase around on the sand. So when everyone goes into an amazed state at the mention of catching crabs, I play along.

When we get to the hut, we look for the rope that connects to the basket trap. We haul it out of the water and find crabs... and chicken. It turns out that "in these parts", they attract the crabs with raw chicken quarters. Yes, as we say it in slang, sosyalin! You put the chicken inside the basket trap, put it in the water and leave it either for the day or overnight.

What we get are Blue Crabs, because parts of its claws are blue. Later, these will be cooked, the table will be covered with newspapers, where after an hour or two, a mountain of crab shells will show up.

I don't eat crab anymore due to dietary "rules" I have adopted, and don't ask me why. But it's great to see people eating from the bounties of the rivers and the seas, eating fresh and simple food. A big part of travel is also about tasting the local flavor, both the simple and the more complicated gastronomic delights.

Crabbing was a simple exercise of putting in a basket and hauling out the basket. Well, yes, there was the chicken too. But when done in the fresh morning air, in clean waters, with friends and family, it can be a pretty rewarding experience.

Visiting Savannah

In my previous post (It Takes Clouds to Make a Glorious Beaufort Sunrise), I wrote about a trip to Beaufort, SC. After Beaufort, our party went on to explore Savannah, Georgia, which is only around 2 hours from there. Savannah is a beautiful city; I have been there twice and every time I always find something new or cool. It's a city rich with tradition and history. There are historic homes all over, historic cemeteries and historic forts. The downtown area is now one of the largest National Historic Landmark Districts in the United States.

I took the picture above at the Colonial Park Cemetery. With Spanish moss hanging from trees, silence, old tombstones for publishers, businessmen, leaders and patriots, the cemetery is calming yet eerie at the same time. That's why I found it interesting to find people reading or walking/exercising there. Usually, cemeteries are only visited on special occasions or on November 1st. But here, people treat the place as a park.

In Savannah, I love walking on River Street and Factors' Walk, visiting the "squares" that are all over the city, having lunch at Paula Deen's The Lady and Sons, walking around to look at the unique architecture and, generally, just soaking up on all that Southern charm. An author, Nick Cohn, talked to someone in Savannah once and that person told him that the secret to living there is to live slow, to learn to drip like honey.

Remember that movie called Forrest Gump? "Life is like a box of chocolates" and all that? The scenes where he was sitting on a bench waiting for the bus were shot at Chippewa Square. Unfortunately, the bench is not there anymore. There's a replica of the bench at the museum at the Savannah Visitors' Center.

I think I actually wrote something about Savannah before, which I will look for after writing this. Some of my suggested things to see and do when in the city are below. Savannah is a city great for walking, so I suggest you stroll around, take out the camera and explore.

Must see:

• Factors' Walk
• River Street
• City Market
• Colonial Park Cemetery
• Bonaventure Park (where the statue commonly associated with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil used to be; it's now in a museum)
• Cathedral of St. John the Baptist
• Telfair Museum of Art
• Chippewa Square
• Forsythe Park
• Historic Homes (great also if you can schedule during the Savannah Tour of Homes)
• Tybee Island (for the Tybee Island Light Station, the first lighthouse on the southern Atlantic coast)
• Mercer-Williams House

Must dos:

• Eat. There is Paula Deen's The Lady and Sons (the Sunday buffet has a good Southern spread) and other nice restaurants at the City Market.
• Visit the "squares".
• Join a ghost tour.
• Walk along River Street.
• Watch how a taffy is made. There are stores selling water taffy along River Street.
• Take pictures of the unique architectural highlights.
• Find unique water spouts. There are uniquely designed water spouts all over; I saw one shaped like a fish' head.
• See all the must-see's.

It Takes Clouds to Make a Glorious Beaufort Sunrise

Around two and a half years ago, I got invited by a friend to go to Beaufort, South Carolina. I have been looking for the pictures from that trip for years now. While poking through my email accounts (yes, I maintain several email accounts), I found pictures from that trip that I emailed to myself years ago. Past disaster recovery plan trainings are working, I guess.

We arrived in Beaufort at night, just long enough to meet our host, my friend's family friend who were gracious enough to let us stay at their lake cabin. The next day, we woke up very early in the morning to go crabbing. Going around in the dark, the morning light slowly crept on the horizon. Everything was still and quiet. The picture above is a testament to that beautiful moment when you get afraid to even whisper.

Then the clouds came. Big, glorious clouds that we all went scrambling to get our cameras to get pictures. It was still silent, the water was calm, but the clouds made our day. As they say, it takes clouds to make a glorious sunrise.

When I Got Lost in a Temple

Here is one of my posts in Friendster Blogs, where I write about a visit to a temple in Bangkok, Thailand:

It was nearly dusk and I thought our friends have left me in a corner of Bangkok. We were inside the complex of the 16th century old Wat Pho (sometimes also called Wat Po), Bangkok’s oldest and largest Buddhist temple complex. An oriental circus is practicing their routine in the middle of the complex and schoolchildren from the temple’s elementary school are playing ping-pong. Earlier, against all pre-departure advise, we took a ten-minute ride in a tuk-tuk to peek at the temple’s 151-foot-long, gold-plated Reclining Buddha. Well, with a temple name like that, for obvious reasons, I wasn’t about to leave the city without setting foot on the place.

The group I was looking for didn’t bring their cellphones, or one of them did, but I didn’t have the number. Fortunately, I saw one of them a few minutes later. It turns out she was also lost. We walked around to look for the others, and when we got tired, we walked some more, hoping that that extra few steps will mean finding our other friends.

After almost memorizing the layout of the temple complex, after minutes and minutes of looking for the other group, we found them sitting under a tree in the middle of the compound, relaxing and chatting the minutes away. Chura neto! It turns out that while we were frantically looking for them, they were up there in one of the stupas, or whatever you call that, and someone suggested that they all go inside one of the chambers. They all felt adventurous and explored the chamber.

I’m torn on how to conclude this. Sometimes, we need to walk a little bit farther, look a little bit harder. There are also times when we need to just sit down, relax and not worry so much. You never know, they may be just up there in one of the stupas feeling like a modern-day Indiana Jones.

Dreamy Morning Drives

There's a road in the Druid Hills neighborhood of Atlanta, GA that winds through dreamy homes, where people regularly do their morning jogs and a canopy of trees shade you from the hot Southern sun. For several weeks, I had to pass by this neighborhood where some of Atlanta's wealthiest citizens live. My morning drive consisted of going through Peachtree Street, then Ponce de Leon Avenue, a left on Clifton Road at the corner of the Druid Hills Golf and Country Club, and winding my way up to North Decatur Road. At first, I dreaded the drive, where the roads are crooked and the maximum speed is only 25 mph. But after a while, I began to enjoy it, I began to appreciate the landscape designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the place and "ambience" of the neighborhood.

Coming from the Philippines, where the drivers are kind of suicidal, I found it funny to have to stop everywhere there's a stop sign printed on the road and on intersections, when I was running at a top speed of 23 mph. I noticed too, that everyone was very courteous, so when at an intersection, I stop, and when there's another car coming from the other side, I wave and yield to the other driver. It wasn't a place run by stoplights, it was the South after all, where grace and good manners were de rigeur.

Sometimes we face uncertainty, find ourselves at a new place or are forced to be where we don't want to be. But sometimes, with a little bit of luck and effort, we can find ourself enjoying the place and the whole experience.