I am now in Singapore. The plane touched down around 11:30 pm but I was able to get out of the terminal a quarter past midnight. I’ll just be walking around the vicinity of Betelbox to be able to take some pictures. Tonight i’m flying to Denpasar (Bali).

I totally forgot to activate the International roaming on my phone. In my panic last night of missing my flight I just totally forgot that I haven’t activated yet my roaming.

I guess there’s good and bad side to it. Bad thing is my family and friends won’t be able to contact me but the good thing is I’ll be totally be voided from work stuff.

Backpacking alone in KL (Kuala Lumpur) is not bad. It’s my 3rd day here and so far I have enjoyed my stay. I just came from Putrajaya, the Administrative Capital of Malaysia, and the place is definitely nice and pretty. The highlight today though is meeting my friend Noor and her family. Noor is a penfriend of mine way back when I was still in high school when Internet was not the “in” thing yet. When the Internet came in we were still able to contact each other through email and YM. After so many years of correspondence I was finally able to meet her and her family. They took me to Putrajaya and showed me around Cyberjaya. Then, they brought me to Kajang for a taste of sate in HJ Samuri. Sate is a Malay food wherein meat or chicken is grilled then dipped in a sauce made up of grind peanuts. They told me that Sate in Kajang HJ Samuri is the best in Malaysia and they surely did not dissapoint me. It tasted good!

We’re now back in Kota Kinabalu City after we successfully summitted Low’s peak, the highest peak in Mt. Kinabalu, yesterday early morning around 6:11 am. It was more difficult than what we expected. We took the Mesilau trail and our 1st day took us 9 hrs. to get to Laban Rata where we spent the night before summitting to Low’s peak early morning yesterday.

I’ll post details of the climb as well as pictures of the climb once I get back to Cebu on Sunday.

We’ll be staying here in Kota Kinabalu city until tomorrow, Friday, Nov. 17. We’ll just probably be going around the city looking for some pasalubong to bring home as travelling around Sabah is quite expensive..costing RM 20 or around PhP270 per person to go on long distance travel by taxi.

I would like to visit Tunku Abdul Raman (TAR) Park today but it seems that my 2 other friends are not so keen anymore of going there ‘cuz of the expenses. They’re more interested in shopping and checking out the shops around KK.

We will be heading back home to the Philippines tomorrow afternoon (1420). Hopefully the weather will be great. We certainly don’t want to get stranded again as we’re running out of money here in KK…hehe!

Dangerous Curves
Photo by wantet.

I was having difficulty deciding whether to go to Dapitan for Kuya Arvin’s birthday or go to Daan Bantayan with Chai’s team. I wanted to go to both places even if I wasn’t feeling very well during those days.

I packed up my things with a thought of going to both places. I thought that if I won’t like Daan Bantayan I’de return back to the city and take a boat bound for Dapitan at 10pm.

Around 7am I went to the office to meet up with the rest of Chai’s team. We then proceeded to the North Bus Terminal to catch a bus bound for Kawit, Medellin. We were able to leave the Bus terminal almost 9:30am as we had to wait for Harold who still went home to Lapu-lapu.

Popoy already informed me that the trip was going to last for almost 4 hours before arriving in Kawit. I didn’t really thought it was going to take that long but it did. We arrived in Kawit past 1pm.

Kawit Medellin

We proceeded to a resort in Kawit that Popoy had booked but we realized the resort was a li’l expensive for our limited budget so we decided to transfer to a resort in Paypay, Daan Bantayan.

The resort that we stayed in Paypay was way better in Kawit at a much lesser price. We had the whole place all to ourselves. The place had 2 bedrooms (1 room with a/c), a kitchen with stove and refrigerator and an outside cottage all for PhP1600. I think it’s a pretty good bargain.

Seeing the beach and the long shoreline in Paypay I immediately got excited. It was past 3pm when we were able to finally settle down. I decided not to go Dapitan anymore as I was tired from the long trip and I haven’t explored the place yet. Another reason was that I was wary of travelling alone as I was not feeling a 100%.

Paypay, Daan Bantayan

While the others were trying to catch some sleep I started taking pictures of the scenery while trying to wait for the sunset to come. As the sunset arrived I was certainly not dissapointed. The colors were just beautiful and sun looked magnificent. My officemate, Maal, willingly posed for me and it was indeed such a good idea. I just love the silhoutte shots as it looked more interesting compared to just the plain sunset shot with only the sun.

Sunset

The fun didn’t there in fact it was just starting! The next day we went on an island hop to Gibitngil Island. The island is right across Kawit, Medellin which is a private island from what I was told by my Mom. As soon as we arrived in the island I just fell-in-love with the place. The water was crystal clear, the sand was white and the waves were just a thrill. We were like kids playing and riding with the waves. I never had so much fun in the beach as much we did in Gibitngil Island. The heat was scorching hot but nobody cared about it. Everybody was having a lot of fun in the island. We even forgot that we still had not eaten any lunch.

Around 2:30pm we left the island and headed back to Paypay to have our very late lunch. After arriving back in the resort we ate our lunch, took a shower then started packing up our things. It was almost 6pm when we left the resort and headed back home to the city.

I certainly did not have regrets coming to this trip. It was a lot of fun and full of adventure. I certainly would like to come back to this place again

More pictures in my Flickr site

It’s feels good to be back trekking again. My body is sore and aching from the climb but not an ounce of regret. I’ve never enjoyed hiking as much as I did last weekend. I felt I’ve been energized again.

I terribly missed trekking and going on an adventure. Like what I mentioned in my previous post it’s all been work for me the past few weeks and I was getting bored. I was itching to do some physical activity and adventure to inject some life into me.

So here’s a brief summary of the trek last weekend:

August 5, 2006 (Saturday)
1300-1400 – wait at South Bus Terminal for Freedom and the rest of the gang
1430-1640 – travel by bus from South Bus Terminal to Dalaguete
1700-1740- travel by habal-habal from Dalaguete main highway to Nong Isar’s place
1750 – started hiking from Nong Isar’s place to Osmeña peak. The sun was already setting down so I took snapshots of the sunset while hiking to the base camp.
1810 Рarrive at Osme̱a peak base camp
1920 – ate dinner
2100-2430 – Socials and party

August 6, 2006 (Sunday)
0610 – woke up
0630-0700 – took some pictures at the peak
0700-0800 – prepared breakfast and packed lunch
0800-0900 – ate breakfast
0900-1030 – break camp, group picture
1030-1230 – start trekking to 1st water source
1230-1340 – lunch at 1st water source
1340-1600 – trek to Kawasan Falls
1600 – arrive at Kawasan main source
1630-1700 – had some snacks
1700-1730 -swimming at Kawasan
1730-1745 – change clothes and prepared going home
1745-1815 – hike from Kawasan Falls to Matutinao highway
1815-1840 -wait for bus
1840-2100 – travel by bus and left for Cebu City
2130 – Home Sweet Home

I’m quite excited for this weekend’s cross country hike from Mantalongon, Dalaguete to Kawasan Falls in Badian. From Eastern Cebu will be heading to Western Cebu.

It’s just a minor climb but I definitely miss hiking and going in an adventure. The last time I hiked was last April when we climbed Mt. Kitanglad in Bukidnon. I definitely need a diversion. It’s been all work for me the past few weeks.

The Mantalongon-Kawasan Cross Country hike is an annual activity in our club. This is the first minor climb for our new applicants in the club after the BMC (Basic Mountaineering Course). The first time I made the Mantalongon-Kawasan Cross Country Hike was in the year 1999 when I was still an applicant of the USC-Mountaineers and since then I’ve only missed it once. The only time I missed it was in 2004 when I went to Malapascua instead of joining the climb.

I’m looking forward taking a lot of pictures this time. I already had my digicam last year but I only got a 16MB of memory ( I only had the memory card that came along with the camera) so I wasn’t able to take a lot pictures. It’s been raining the past few days I just hope the weather will be fine today and tomorrow. I hope the sky will be clear during the hike.

Hidden Valley Cottages

It’s been awhile since I last blogged. I’m having some problems with my PC the past couple of weeks. I’m not able to login in a quite number of websites including my own website…Argghh!!! I’m not exactly sure what’s wrong. It could be that the security settings with Trend Micro PC-cillin has changed or this PC might have been infected with a virus as I can’t do a ping, ipconfig or trace route from the command line. It’s been acting weird the past 2 weeks.

I think a reformat would really be good to have a clean slate. IE is not working correctly as well too. Although I’m using Firefox, IE not working kinda indicates there’s something wrong with this PC. I’m not sure though when we could reformat as I would need to back up all my files and I would have to wait that my sister will be able to back up all of her files.

For now I’ll have to blog via Flickr instead of logging in my WordPress site.

It’s been a very busy week for me at work and I’m just really feeling tired and drained. I’m glad the weekend is finally here.

Last weekend we had our team building in Hidden, Valley, Lamac, Pinamungahan, Cebu. I wasn’t really looking forward at it at first as it was a weekend and it seemed like I’ll still be working on my day off- facing the same people at work and discussing about work stuff except that we are not inside the office.

If not for Yman begging that we go I wouldn’t have went. I told myself that the only good thing about it is that all expense is paid by the company.

The road going to Hidden Valley was rough and bumpy. We took the Naga-Uling route and then upon reaching Lutopan, Toledo our van turned to the left heading towards the interior mountains. The place really seemed remote and far from “civilization” until we arrived in the Lamac. We were surprised to find many houses and people in such a remote place. My officemates were all saying “No wonder it’s called Hidden Valley!”.

I didn’t realize that Lamac was in Pinamungahan. I’ve heard of Lamac before as my friends in the mountaineering club have been there caving but I didn’t know it was in Pinamungahan.

We were all business in the morning going through all the team-building activities. In the afternoon, it was much more serious as Jan did a 4-hour discussion about work stuff. Everybody was getting a bit sleepy and tired. As much possible nobody tried to ask too many questions so as not to prolong the discussion.After Jan’s discussion, we took a dip in the pool and finally got to unwind.

The next day we woke up around 6:30 in the morning to prepare for some hiking and caving. We were a bit dissapointed that we could only explore 1 cave as we did not brought any caving equipment (headlamp/flashlight, helmet). From the resort we hiked up to the cave which was located up in a mountain. The cave was already dead and there was really nothing spectucular to see. It’s looks similar to the cave in Carcar. Hopefully next time I’ll be able to explore the other caves. I’ve heard from friends how beautiful the other caves are.

Our Kitanglad hike is one of the most memorable climbs I’ve ever had. It was the first time I was climbing in all-women’s group and we were only 3 who summited Mt. Kitanglad. It was definitely an adventure.

More pictures at Flickr

You may also View the slideshow

The 3rd Visayas Mountain Festival was a success. I definitely had a great time. It was nice meeting new friends and acquaintances who share the same passion for the outdoors. It’s an experience I’ll never forget again.

More pictures in my Flickr site

A lot of things has definitely changed since I last visited Basdaku in Moalboal. There are more high end beach resorts now and the accomodations have certainly gone expensive. We just used to camp in Manang Ester’s place but now they have their own rooms for rent.

Basdaku is definitely gaining a lot of popularity now because of it’s white sand beach. Before when you talk of Moalboal the first thing that always come to people’s minds is Panagsama. Now, a lot of people know about the white sand beach in Basdaku.

Panagsama caters more to the divers. It does not have a long shoreline like Basdaku and the water drops deep just even a few meters from the shore.

USC-Mountaineers banner

Me relaxing in the hammock -what a good life!

Basdaku, Moalboal – overcast skies

Me at Basdaku

with Leslie and 2 USC-Mountaineers applicants