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!

Smiling Masskara
Photo by wantet.

Masskara is a combination of two words – the English word mass meaning many or multitude and the Spanish word kara which in English means face. Masskara is also the dialect for the English word “mask”.

Every October Bacolod City, also known as the City of Smiles, celebrates the Masskara Festival. The festival’s highlight is the streetdancing which is held on the weekend nearest to the City’s Charter day on October 19.

Dancers wearing colorful costumes and smiling masks parade down the streets and dance to a Latin beat theme song. Unlike the Sinulog Festival (which is held in Cebu every 3rd Sunday of January) wherein there is live beating and playing of the drums the Masskara festival is different.There is no live beating and playing of the drums instead huge speakers are set up in the side of streets of the parade route. All contingents dance to the same beat from start to finish.

Masskara
Photo by wantet.

The Masskara parade route is much shorter compared to Sinulog parade route. I’m sure this is a very welcome idea for the dancers however since the route is much shorter the crowd is not spread out and there is a tendency for the streets to be really overcrowded.

This was the 2nd Masskara festival I attended. The first time I saw it was in the year 1999, 6 yrs. ago. During that time it wasn’t that crowded compared to this year’s festival. It shows how the festival has grown since then. Visitors from other parts of the country as well as foreigners came to see the Masskara festival.

Souvenir Masskara
Photo by wantet.

I don’t usually buy souvenir items as they as they would just end up as junk in my room but I can’t help buying one for myself a masskara souvenir item. I just found it pretty cool to bring home. The masskara souvenir items were a big hit not only to foreign tourists but as well as to local tourists. They come in different colors and sizes. The smaller ones can be bought at around PhP50 while medium sized ones can be bought from PhP8-120. Bigger souvenir masks are sold as high as PhP500.

In my opinion there are still lot of things that needs to be improved to make the festival more interesting and organized but the essence why the festival is being celebrated should not be forgotten. The Masskara festival is a celebration and declaration that despite all the hardships the Bacolodnons have faced and will face in the future they will survive and succeed in the end.

More Masskara photos can be found in my Flickr site

One more week to go and we’re off to Bacolod City for the Masskara festival. I’m definitely very excited about it. It’s been 4 months since I’ve last travelled outside of Cebu and it’s been over a month since I’ve been out of town. The last time I went out for a trip was when we accompanied Jan’s family to Kawasan last month.

I haven’t taken any shots lately too. I’m itching to shoot again. I hope the weather’s going to be just fine next weekend. This is just going to be my 2nd Masskara Festival and the last time I witness it was still last 1999 during the MFPI mid-year Fed Climb which was held in Negros Occidental during the Masskara week. I look forward shooting lots of pictures during the festivities.

Another thing why I’m looking forward for the trip is that my friends in the office will be coming along. Maal, Sherill, Xenia and Ces will be joining me for this trip. Most of the time when I visit Bacolod I’m usually on my own so this is going to be something different.

This is the 3rd time I’ll be visiting Bacolod City for this year and my last travel outside of Cebu was also Bacolod last June. I hope that my upcoming visit will finally give me the closure that I’ve always wanted. This is the main reason why I’m coming to visit the place again this month. The Masskara festival is only a bonus for me…something to keep me pre-occupied and entertained during my stay in Bacolod.

I hope I’ll finally get the answers to my questions so I can finally move on…

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

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.

I’ve been thinking the past few weeks if I should go to Bacolod City or not. I was supposed to go there last May 20th right after my trip in Dumaguete City but after getting sick I had to return back home and cancel my road trip. Then me, May and Jeovy made plans of climbing Mt. Kanlaon this month. I thought I had a good chance of visiting the place again but then the plan got cancelled as our schedules just didn’t fit.

Last weekend I finally pushed through with my plans. I didn’t mind if I had to go there alone. I could no longer wait another month or week to be there.

I planned to leave as early as 5am last Saturday for Toledo City but then I woke up 5:55am in my watch as I slept late that night while trying to update my photos in Flickr. I was able to leave the house around 7am. I then proceeded to Citilink terminal to take a VHire going to Toledo city. The trip from Cebu City to Toledo City took about 2hrs via Manipis road. I arrived in Toledo City a few minutes past 9am and was just in time for the fastcraft that was leaving for San Carlos City at about 930am.

San Carlos City port

The boat trip took almost 1hr and 30 mins. I arrived in San Carlos City, Negros Occidental around 11am and directly proceeded to the bus terminal to take another Vhire that would take me from San Carlos City to Bacolod City via the scenic Don Salvador Benedicto route.

It takes about 2hrs and 20 mins. of travel to get to Bacolod City via Don Salvador Benedicto route. This is the fastest route compared to the San Carlos-Escalante-Bacolod City route which takes approximately 3.5 hrs.

I arrived in Bacolod City past 1pm. This is the 7th time I’ve been to this city and the most I have visited so far. I checked in at Bascon hotel where I was staying for my very short trip. I decided to stay in Bascon as it was just walking distance from the city plaza, central market, San Sebastian Cathedral and other establishments where I planned to do some photoshoots.

San Sebastian Cathedral

The weather last Saturday was not great however for taking pictures as the sky was overcast. I was only able to take a few shots in the Cathedral and city plaza. Oh well, taking pictures was not the main reason I was there. I was primarily there to visit a friend whom I haven’t seen for almost a year. Photoshoot was only secondary to keep me away from boredom.

What I like about this trip was that I finally got to explore this city. Unlike in the past I had to take a cab when going from one place to another when outside Lacson St and other major roads. This time I forced myself to take the jeepney even if I was not sure where it was going. I realized that their PUJ routes are actually very easy to remember and most of them pass by the Central Market so I have point of reference.

I was not able to take much pictures but I was able to accomplish what I had set out to do in Bacolod. I’m not sure if I should visit this place again anytime soon but who knows I might just change my mind again.

Pinamungahan beach
Photo by wantet

Right after our sunrise photoshoot last Sunday in Liloan and Danao I went straight to citilink terminal to meet up with Sherill and left for Toledo City. I don’t know what got into my head that I just agreed to go there despite the fact I know there’s really not much to see in Toledo. I dunno I guess I just needed some sort of a break and I was a bit depressed with the results of my wedding pictures the day before.

Being in Toledo brought back a lot of memories to me. Toledo was my gateway to Bacolod City. Seeing the boat leaving for San Carlos city gave me this urge to buy a ticket and board the boat. Negros was just a boat ride away.

We waited for Maal in the bus terminal to pick us up as she was already in Toledo the day before. We then took our lunch and decided to look for a good beach to hang out and relax. Since we were not so familiar where the beaches in Toledo were, we asked the motorcyle driver to bring us to a nice or decent beach resort. We didn’t know the beach he was bringing us was already in Pinamungahan, the town next to Toledo down south.

Maal in the beach
Photo by wantet

Well there aren’t really good beaches in Toledo nor in Pinamanguhan. The beaches have dark soil and does not really look very appealing like in Bantayan or Moalboal. The only great thing there is that the resorts are not priced highly. We were able to get a decent room for overnight stay for only PhP400. Certainly cheap compared to the other resorts I’ve been to and it’s already for the 3 of us.

I really had no plans of staying overnight as I didn’t brought anything except for my camera, tripod and 1 extra shirt but Maal and Sherill were egging me to stay. It was not really that bad though. I was able to do things which I never had done before. It was an adventure trip with no clear plans whatsoever but it still turned out great.