The best laid plans...

First order of business--the answer to the latest edition of Food Fight. I got a few (hilarious!!) guesses from you all. Amanda correctly named the largest mystery item--it was eggplant! From everyone else's guesses, it sounds like a review trip to the veggie, errr, fruit section of the grocery store is necessary (This means you Deb :-)! As for the other 3 foods, they are ALL eggplant! See how sneaky I was?! The smallest ones are almost horribly bitter, but were in green curry everywhere we went. The rest all taste like, well, eggplant!

And now, back to the Philippines. Sometimes, in spite of all your best intentions and advance planning, you just can't win. Take, for example, our month in Australia: in 30 short days we lost (and found!) our passports, had all but one day of an entire week of diving cancelled, and had to scramble when an airline we'd booked was suddenly grounded indefinitely due to safety issues. We're learning very quickly that when it comes to planning a month long vacation something undoubtedly, inevitably, will go wrong. And sometimes that can turn out to be the best thing in the world.

After leaving the rice terraces of the northern Philippines we flew south to Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan. We arrived two days before we were set to depart on a scuba liveaboard so we could poke around town and float the underground river, which was just named one of the new 7 Wonders of the World. Unlike our experiences here in China, the Philippines actually has a vested interest in preserving the underground river, so they have restricted the number of daily visitors on a permit only basis. It's a very popular attraction and since we didn't reserve a permit in advance, we were out of luck.

So we spent a rainy day wandering the tiny town, which really didn't have much to offer. Puerto Princesa seems to function primarily as a jumping off point to bigger and better things. We did find a stretch of road with several handicrafts shops where we bought enough carvings and statues to redecorate our entire home in a Filipino theme. We rarely so easily agree on art that we both like, we just went crazy buying everything we saw! We shipped it all back to the US, so hopefully no buyers' remorse when we see it again in a few years. At least it was all dirt cheap!

Then that night, as we were once again gorging on kinilaw (amazing ceviche dish) and calamansi juice (oranges you pick while still green--it's limeade on steroids!), the phone call came. The liveaboard, the entire reason we'd flown to Puerto Princesa, would not be departing the next day due to engine trouble. We made a 9am appointment with a crew member to discuss options. We were content after the meeting, as we'd been told to give them 1 hour to make the substitute hotel booking and travel arrangements we requested, and we'd be on our way.

Kinilaw--Raw fish with calamansi, coconut milk, ginger, peppers and more! If you're in Puerto Princesa, eat it at the Hibiscus Garden Hotel's restaurant!

Philippine Siren...the trip that wasn't...

Fast forward a very cranky 23 hours and we still found ourselves in Puerto Princesa waiting for a car to our new destination of El Nido. I'll spare you a recap of the frustrating run around and mixed messages we got from the liveaboard. Suffice it to say we were on the war path. So when our 8am finally showed up (late, of course,) we foolishly thought we were on our way. Wrong. In spite of our insistence that we get to El Nido as soon as possible (silly us for believing them that would happen yesterday--why didn't we just hop on the local bus?!?!), the driver presented us an itinerary that had us stopping for lunch at 10:30am and doing sightseeing along the way to catch a 3pm boat to the resort. We told him to go directly to the airport to meet the boat. So, at 10:30am when he pulls over for lunch, we tell him "NO, keep going." He indicates the bathrooms, which we didn't need, but he gets out, we assume to make a quick pit stop. The next thing we know, he's sitting down to lunch! More seething ensues...Once back on the road, he pulls over in Taytay at Fort St. Isabel. The schedule allotted an hour here. We were done in 15 minutes--our driver seemed irritated that we'd cut his nap so short.

Fort Santa Isabel

Built 1667-1738 by the Spanish

Finally, we pull into the airport/boat pier at 1:30pm, only to learn that there is no 3pm boat as we were told by the liveaboard. We just missed the 1pm boat and were now waiting for the next at 5pm. Talk about comedy of errors. But we'd finally made it. The airport was darling, and the scenery even better. When it was time to finally get on the boat for the 40 minute ride to the resort on a private island (yes, I said private island!) we were ready to put it all behind us. We were headed to paradise.

The El Nido Airport

Cutest airport ever!

Airport mascot

Time to meet the boat

Have you ever seen a more beautiful airport location?!?!

We're finally, almost there!!!

Our room, 2nd from the right

I suppose this would do...

One Year Ago:

Happy Duanwu!