Diving in the Philippines

We are so excited! We are now qualified PADI divers. Awesome!!!

Our instructor was wonderful and really taught us well. Karin Timmel. 

We've been to Batangas for a few dive trips already, all of them wonderful. I'll name the various dive sites below for those who are interested in diving. For those of you who aren't into diving, I hope you'll skip the writing and just enjoy the underwater pics.

This was our first open water dive. It was at the house reef of Bambu Villa and Resort. As a spot for completing your qualifying dives it was lovely, but I would definitely recommend Dive & Trek's house reef across the bay as another great dive site to do your first few dives. More to come on this dive site later.

Just a quick one about Christmas. Clearly Christmas in the Philippines is celebrated in a huge way! Check out the decorations in the streets around our building and the moving reindeer in the shopping centre over the road. 

Apparently Brad's office has already started with Christmas decorations all over the show.

The Wild East

OK, so no updates in a while.  This is just a quick one to tell a little about our events on the weekend of 21 October.  So, first things first.  Friday we spent a wonderful evening with some new friends at their house in San Lurenzo.  It was a late night after a long week, but was really great.  Ves and I both fell in love with their little dogs.  Really full of fun.

Smokey Mountain

So yesterday I went off with a wonderful group of ladies on an outreach to a place in Manila called Smokey Mountain. It used to be the refuse dump of Manila, and in truth it seems to still be the area where a lot of garbage is sent and sorted. 

We met a wonderful group of people, obviously mostly children, who had lunch with us and enjoyed making gospel bracelets too. 

Admittedly it was really difficult to see what I saw. Not just the conditions that these people are suffering in, but also the look in people's eyes in the area. You could see hardship written on the faces of the people we met. And yet the children still raced around chasing each other, playing and laughing. It really was a humbling lesson for me. I saw one child share her lunch with another who hadn't made it to the event on time. Fortunately, an extra big helping found its way to her! A child taught me a lesson in generosity yesterday!

Mountain Biker gets taken out by a Buck!!!

I totally just had to publish this!!! This is why South African Mountain Bikers have to wear helmets!!! Some expletives, so please excuse the sound in places.

Choices, choices, and the drive to the coast.

So this gives you an idea of what some of the houses are like in the Philippines. Obviously you get much smaller ones with no gardens and you get much bigger ones that look like mansions. This one obviously has a garden, which not all the middle income homes will have. There often seems to be wood panelling in the houses here and the garage is more often than not, underneath the main bedroom usually. Or at least the garage/parking bay would be underneath the second floor of the house.

Front Entrance

Typhoon Nesat - Update 3

I was at lunch yesterday with some friends, who told me that apparently the wall around the bay had been completely washed away in something like 5 places. Looking at the video below, I'm not surprised!

Typhoon Nesat - Update 2

This is some of the video I've found on the internet...I think CNN used this too...of the flooding down at the esplanade on Manila Bay nearby Mall of Asia. We were there just a couple of weekends ago. Crazy!!

Again, we've been absolutely fine, but I am concerned for those people who do not live in proper buildings/houses, or in well run areas.

This site was helpful for understanding the strength of typhoons:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saffir%E2%80%93Simpson_Hurricane_Scale

Typhoon Nesat - Update 1

Typhoon Nesat has arrived. We had no idea what to expect, or rather we didn't have any real idea of what kind of effects the typhoon would have. In truth, we're absolutely fine. I'm more concerned for those folk who aren't in well built homes or buildings or who live anywhere near hills that could become saturated with water to such a degree that a mud slide could occur. We've only watched the crazy wind and we've had rain for almost 36 hours now. Some videos below.                                                 

Saturday Market and Market Market

So, another weekend and more to see.  Today we took a quick trip to the Salcedo Saturday Market.

View Salcedo Saturday Market in a larger map	The market was really nice.  We each had a cheese hotdog and wondered around.  There were many interesting items and interesting smells. Some of the pictures below how just how interesting the food is.  The prices are definitely better than the shopping malls.
As you can see, the seafood is out.  Not all is on ice, which makes me a little nervous, however, the fact that the crabs (not in this picture) were still moving makes me think the food is pretty fresh.	An how about that spit on the left.  No automatic turning.  The poor man in the blue shirt manually turns the spit.  How much fun is that. Now if only we can find some biltong.

Some other interesting pictures follow below.

So that was the Salcedo Saturday Market.  From there, we went over to Market Market which is in a fairly new CBD type area call Fort Bonifacio.  The mall was pretty large.  Outside was very similar to the Saturday Market, having fresh fruit, veg etc.

Some pics below of Market Market.

And how about the taxi line

Anyhow, what a great day.  We ended it at home watching the All Blacks killing the poor French.