Sex tourists ahoy! Katie and I are in the Philippines!

We arrived in Clark Manila 'Airport' (read: strip of concrete) a little under three weeks ago and headed straight for downtown Manilla with only a vague idea of what to expect or where to go when we got there. Manilla is a massive place, with the roads gridlocked with beeping Jeepneys (stretch Jeeps they use as minibuses) and motorbikes. The main road through Manilla is full of shopping malls, McDonalds, KFC's and Jollibee's (their McDonalds). First impressions were that it was the busiest, noisiest, dirtiest place we' been to and that we probably wouldn't like it that much.

After getting on to their LRT monorail to go through the city (not a good idea with our travelling bags that they go through at every station, and at rush hour) we then walked down a never ending road to a hotel with a room that would make a shoebox look big. I'm painting a negative picture so far but they sell Kebabs everywhere in Manilla and their local beer is San Miguel which is laughably cheap so this story has a happy ending!

We went for a few beers on our first night, and listened to a lot of Filipinos singing Karaoke; some bad, some terrible. People in the Philippines love Karaoke, and people here are forever singing. My favorite experience was when I was paddling in the sea in Boracay and two young lads were wading past me both singing and harmonizing Westlife songs.... not even ironically!

Whilst in Manila we walked to a place called Intramuros which is their old town. It was a Sunday and the roads there were deserted and a group of young lads were walking towards us, as they got close they said Hello and gave me a high five. Katie later confided that she thought they were going to mug us.... I should say that Manila doesn't feel particularly safe.

Whilst in Intramuros we looked in to two catherals (very religious here) and saw two pretty lavish weddings. We also went to a castle where they commemorate a national hero of theirs called Jose Rizal. (I won't bore you with the details of why they love him, something to do with writing a poem and then getting shot).

After our morning of culture we walked a million miles down a dual carriageway to Mall of Asia. This place was ridiculous and had an Olympic sized ice rink, Imax, and was just generally massive. We milled around there for a bit as their aircon was pretty good, and watched Avatar in 3D which was awesome.

Next port of call was a place called Sabang on an island called Mindoro. We got a ferry across from the mainland, and without exaggerating I was the only western male on the boat who was not arm in arm with a Filipino girl 30 years their junior!

Sabang was okay and we did a dive there, but it wasn't anything special and was sex tourist central so we headed to the main beach destination Boracay.

It took the best part of a day to get there on Jeepney, bus, boat, another boat and then tricycle, but was worth it as the 3km long beach was beautiful and they had a Starbucks.

We spent about five days in Boracay, sunbathing, reading, eating and drinking San Miguel. It was very nice!

I will mention one rather special bar in the middle of Boracay which is called the Hobbit Hole. All the staff there are midgets.

After Boracay, we caught a flight to a place called Donsol in the south of Legazpi. This is the place that due to the amount of plankton in the water, attracts hundreds of whale sharks every year, and you can hire a boat with a spotter an go snorkeling with the sharks!

On our first day out we didn't spot any sharks which was pants. However on our second day we did! Horray! When the spotter sees one, there is blind panic as everyone in the boat rushes to get their mask, snorkel and fins on and then jump in the water. Before we got in they had told us to remember to look down which I thought was a bit obvious at the time until I got in the water and the spotter was furiously pointing under my feet where the 12 meter long whale sharks head was! We swam along beside it for a little while, and I took some video of it that isn't going to win any awards. It was absolutely amazing seeing it and a highlight of traveling so far.

Next stop was an island called Malapascua which was absolutely beautiful and very peaceful. We went there to relax on the beach and also to do some diving as we heard that it had some of the best sites in the Philippines.

I won't go in to the details of each dive but we got to see Thresher sharks, devil rays, reef sharks, sea horses and Mandarin fish and also got to do some cave diving as well. Really was great! We also did some relaxing on the beach and watched Murray get beaten in the Aus open final. Nice.

c*** fighting is very big in the Philippines and they have a satellite channel devoted to the sport. In Malapascua they had a lot of fighting birds tethered to posts, and on the public bus back from Malapascua to Cebu one of the passengers was sitting on the packed bus with his prize winning c*** in his hands..... they like basketball here too.

We are now on and island called Bohol staying in a place called Nuts Huts in the middle of the jungle. It is really nice and relaxed and the huts that we are staying in sit right next to a turquoise river that runs through the jungle.

Earlier today we went to see the worlds smallest and freakiest looking primate, the Tasier. We saw a few of them in a Tasier nature reserve where they showed us a video about them before we went to see a few of them in the forest around the reserve. The video said that Tasiers that are kept in cages get depressed and some have been known to attempt suicide.... I didn't want to ask the warden the method they were attempting as I thought it may be missing he point. Anyhow the things are really cute and I think Katie has uploaded photos so take a look.

We are staying here a few more days and then flying to Singapore for some expensive fun.

Bye for now

Dean and Katie