Philippines

I have been putting off this post for a few weeks now. Not because I didn't love my trip, but because I don't even know where to begin and this is going to be a really long post!!

I had the opportunity to go to the Philippines to visit my parents over Thanksgiving. I left Gordon and Taeya home (thanks to my awesome neighbors Heather, Alyson, and Lawni). I left early Friday morning, November 22 and came home late Saturday night, November 29th.

My sister Mariel and I flew over on Friday morning, and my other sister Chantel, her husband, and their 4 kids left on Saturday morning. Mariel and I didn't buy our tickets when they did, so we left a day earlier to get a cheaper flight!! (The flight still ended up being about $1200.00) The annoying thing about our flight was that we went through Minneapolis on the way there, and Detroit on the way home. For those of you who aren't familiar with geography, we were going the opposite direction. The only cool thing about that was that we were able to fly over Russia. We were able to see the awesome mountains, and it looked really cold! So here is a log of my trip:

Day 1: Friday, November 22, 2008

We left Salt Lake at 8:30 am, and flew to Minneapolis, from Minneapolis to Tokyo, and from Tokyo to Manilla (Philippines), and all of that only took 24 hours!! The Philippines is 15 hours ahead. So, we arrived in the Philippines on Saturday at 11:00 pm (Which was Saturday morning at 8:00 am in Utah). We met a nice Filipino man on the last leg of the flight who helped us get through immigration and find my mom and dad. The outside of the airport is so crowded with people picking up passengers. The Filipino people make is a little family reunion with the whole family greeting the traveler!

Day 2: Saturday

Mariel and I were exhausted when we arrived. Unfortunately we still had to drive 2 more hours to Angeles to my mom and dads apartment. By the time we there, called Gordon to tell him I made it safely, and got to bed it was around 3:00 am (Sunday) in the Philippines. (11:00 am on Saturday in Utah. By now I had been awake for about 30 hours).

This is a picture of the mission home. My mom and dads apartment is on the right hand side, to the left is the office elders apartment, the middle is a staircase which leads to the mission presidents home (the whole upstairs), and on the left is the mission office.

Day 3: Sunday

We woke up around 7:00 am to get ready for church. (We only got to sleep for about 4 hours). Church started at 9:00 am, but it was an hour and a half drive. This was our first time "seeing" the Philipines. I was amazed at how busy it was that early in the morning. The little towns are so crowded, there are no real traffic laws, the roads are narrow and overcrowded for the most part. But it is very green and beautiful in many parts. (Just not the little towns!)

The above 2 pictures are the main form of transportation. The top one is called a "trike," which is pretty much a little motorcycle with a side car. These trikes would sometimes be filled with as many as 8 people!! The lower picture is called a "jeepney." Which is kind of equivalent to a bus system. All of the jeepney's are decorated differently. I guess that is how the Filipino people know which one to take.

This is the branch that we visited it is named "Guimba 3." This is what most of the churches look like in the Philipines. The chapel is a tile-floored room with a podium and benches in the front. We sat on plastic patio-type chairs that they just quickly set-up when we arrived. My mom had told the branch that I played the piano, so I played for sacrament meeting. (Otherwise they usually just sing ac-cappela). The piano was so out of tune, it almost hurt my ears!! The second counseler was the only member of the bishopric present. He was wearing jeans and a green shirt and tie. My dad said we were lucky he had a tie on.

It was the branch primary program. About 12 kids performed. I was impressed with their singing. They sung all of the songs in English except "Called to Serve." A few talks were given and they were in part Tagalog, part English. Apparently a lot of "church" words are just said in English. So I would catch a familiar word every now and then. The tall missionary (next to my dad in the picture below), kind of translated for us, but I couldn't really hear him!

These are the 2 missionaries in the area. They brought about 10 investigators to church the day we were there. (Those investigators made up about 1/3 of the congregation).

After church we ate lunch, took a tour of the mission home, met the Mission President and his wife, and took a nap. I thought I would only sleep for an hour or so, but we all woke up 3 hours later!! By this time, it was time to go to the airport and pick up Chantel and her family. Once again, by the time we got back to Angeles, and to bed, it was about 3:00 am.

Day 4: Monday

Monday morning we ate our first Filipino meal, McDonald's! We got to McDonald's around 10:00 am, and they only had 1 plate of hotcakes left for breakfast (which I got), and every one else had hamburgers. The food at McDonald's actually tasted pretty close to our McDonald's. The menu was a lot different. You could get spaghetti, rice, or fried chicken legs! And instead of saying "supersize," it was called "go big time!"

After breakfast we went and exchanged our money (49.60 pesos to $1)before heading over to the local mall. We just had to see if it was any different from malls in the United States! It was pretty much the same, other than the employees watched us really carfully. They would come up right next to you, almost invading your personal space. I don't know if they thought we were going to steal something or what, but it was annoying!

After the mall, we packed a little overnight bag and drove about 2 hours away to a city called "Subic Bay." The first thing we noticed in this city is the weird cemetary. Because of the water table, the bodies are not buried in the ground, the whole mountainside was covered in tomb-like graves. (Pictures of the cemetary are below).

While my brother-in-law Casey was trying to arrange some scuba diving we got hounded by "salesman." I think it was worse than Tiajuana! We thought they were going to get in the van with us. We got a good laugh out of them. Subic Bay was annoying for that reason, they just wouldn't leave you alone.


We found a nice resort called the "White Orchid" where we stayed the night. We ate dinner at the hotel along the beach and went to bed early.

Day 5: Tuesday

Casey, CJ, Chelsea, and I went scuba diving in the South China Sea. We had this really cool English "dive master." He took us on 2 different dive. The 1st dive was a ship dive. In 1942 during the war, the ship "El Capitan" was sunk. The visiblity wasn't great, but it was still pretty cool. The water is so warm there, and it was just fun to go diving. The 2nd dive was some sunken "barges." The visibility was much better on the 2nd dive. We saw some cool fish, stingray, an eel, and a little octopus.

Chelsea and I on "Skinny Dick." (That was the name of the boat!) Casey and C.J. (below)

While we went diving the rest of the group swan at the resort and drove around the city. After we got back from diving we showered, ate lunch at the hotel an headed back to Angeles. (I took the picture below as we were driving out of Subic Bay, this is just across the street from the cemetary).When we got back to Angeles we are little overnight bags and headed to a "Bagio City." My mom and dad had borrowed a van for the week. In the van we were barely able to fit all of us, so we didn't really have much room for luggage. We really had to squish!!

Most of the drive to Bagio was in the evening. Thank goodness my dad is a good driver because I don't think he had any company during the drive. We all fell asleep!! It seemed like every day around 6:00 pm we would get really tired (which is 9:00 am in Utah). We arrived in Bagio around 10:00 pm, checked into a hotel named "The Golden Pines," and went to bed!

Day 6: Wednesday

This is the view out of our hotel window. The picture doesn't do it justice, but it was actually really beautiful. We couldn't really see anything driving into the city, mostly because we were alseep, but it was also dark!! The temperature in Bagio was quite a bit cooler, which felt nice.

We ate breakfast at the hotel, then headed out! We found our way to a fun silver jewelry store called "Ibay." Apparantly Bagio is known for their silver, so this was a fun jewelry shop where we each picked up a few souvenirs.

Next we headed to a place we called "Mines View." We thought we were actually going to see a mine, I think it was probably once a silver mine, but all it was was a beautiful view, and quite a lot of "vendor-type" shopping. We really scored on the souvenirs in this town!

Top picture is Chelsea, me, and Cynthia. Bottom picture is the whole gang at "Mines View." It really was beautiful.

After "Mines View" we hopped in the car and started driving. Our original plan was to go to a place called Banaue, which in one of the "wonders of the world." It has terraced rice fields that are supposed to be beautiful, but it was about 9 hours away. We were all really tired of driving by this point, so we opted for a shorted drive to a place called "Hundred Islands." Hundred Islands is just off of a city called "Alaminos."

The bad thing about Hundred Islands was that none of us brought our swimming suits in our overnight bags so the first thing we did when we got there was find a vendor selling swim suits. We found a place still open. The good thing was the swim-suit and cover up were only around 600 pesos, which is around $11.00, the bad thing was that it was one size fits all! (That's why we had to buy a cover-up!!) After finding our swimsuits we checked into a hotel called "Islandi." (The hotels we stayed in were always the nicest in the city, but they weren't really very nice by American standards).

Day 7: Thursday (Thanksgiving Day)

We were up and ready to go by 8:00 am. We went to McDonald's for breakfast, but to our dissapointment breakfast was not served. Does anyone really want to eat a hamburger at 8:00 am, apparantly the Filipino's do. I decided to have fries and an apple pie. I figured since it was thanksgiving I could have pie for breakfast. (Obviously the Filipino's don't celebrate Thanksgiving). From McDonald's we headed to the pier. On the way we passed a funeral.

My dad told us that when someone dies the family goes to the home of the deceased and they play poker for a week. They don't shower or anything, the just play poker. With the earnings from playing cards, they give to the family to help pay for the funeral. They often hire bands to lead the funeral procession. The family walks behind the hearse all the way to the cemetary, which is often a long walk. As we drove by with our camera's the people waved and smiled at us. (They like getting their picture taken!) You can't tell very well from the picture but the hearse had balloons on it.

From the pier we hired a boat with 2 men to drive us to a few of the Islands.

The Huntsman kids on the boat: Cynthia, C.J., Chelsea, and Collin

On the first Island we just looked around and took a little hike that gave you an overview of some of the Islands.
Mariel, me, and C.J. at the lookout point of the hike

On the second island we went snorkeling. The water wasn't totally clear, but we still enjoyed our time. The masks were really cheap and kept filling up with water, but we were still able to see lots of cool fish. While snorkeling we were able to show off our cute swimming suits.All of the swimsuits were the same, just different patterns and colors.

Me, Chantel, Chelsea, Mariel, and Cynthia


While we snorkeled my mom and dad observed from the beach.

By the time we got to the third and last Island it was getting windy, so we made a little picnic and enjoyed the beautiful scenary. (In the picture is Mariel, Chelsea, me, C.J., and Collin)
When we got back to the Pier the women were bothering us so much trying to get us to buy things that my mom got out our container with cinammon rolls and cookies and started giving them away. The women and children came running!! It was hillarious. I wish my mom would have told us she was going to do it and I would have filmed it. It all happened so fast. They stopped bothering us afterwards!!

We headed back to Angeles after we finished our "shopping." It was about a 3 hour drive. We showered and went and ate our "thanksgiving dinner" at the Holiday Inn which is close to my mom and dads house. It was pretty good and we were even able to have turkey.

After dinner we went back to my mom and dads apartment, packed up our bags, and went to sleep.

Day 8: Friday

We got up, finished packing, my mom made us pancakes and eggs for breakfast, and then we went to a fun quilt shop to buy a few more souvenirs. (As if we needed any more!) We had to hire a taxi/van to take all of our luggage to Manilla. Since we had to leave early Saturday morning we thought it would be wise to just stay the night in Manilla. We didn't anticipate the aweful traffic we would run into finding a hotel. What we thought would be a 2 hour drive, turned into 4. We were able to see "old Manilla" on the drive. It is was a crazy, dirty city. The people live in total poverty. There would be a decayed building, with cardboard in the windows and half of the roof missing and you could see people inside. It made me so grateful for all that I have. We really are so blessed to be living in America.

When we finally found a hotel we checked in and ate dinner there. This place was called the "Diamond Hotel," and it truley was a 5 star hotel.

This is a picture of all of us in front of the "Christmas Tree" in the lobby of the hotel. We had a hard time believing it was close to Christmas when we were in a country that was so warm. The Filipino people love Christmas. They start preparing for it in September!

After we had dinner we decided to go to the MOA (mall of Asia, which is the biggest mall in Asia). I found some fun stores inside this mall. I would have loved to have spent more time there, but we were trying to keep the men happy. Unfortuntately and our trip ended on a bad note when Chantel discovered that a large sum of money had been stolen from her purse. One of the department stores we were in was extremely busy and we assume it happened there.

After the mall we said goodbye to my mom and dad and went to sleep!

Day 9: Saturday, November 29, 2008

We had to leave the hotel at 4:30 am (which in Utah was Friday at 7:30 pm). It was about a 3o minute drive to the airport, but it was crazy inside. We had to go through security just to get into the airport, then we had to wait in a really, really long line just to check in. Then we had to wait in a line to pay a $15 airport tax. Then we had to wait in line to go through immigration, then we had to go through another security just to get to all of the gates, then we had to go through one other security system before getting to our gate! No wonder they told us to be at the airport 3 hours in advance. It was so insane.

We finally began our long journey home. From Manilla to Tokyo, Tokyo to Detroit, and Detroit to Salt Lake City! We arrived in Salt Lake on Saturday night around 10:00 pm. (Only about 28 hours later!!) It was good to be home! I was realy excited to see Taeya, but she just gave me a kiss and didn't really seem to care that I was home. I am so glad she had a good time while I was gone. It made it so much easier to be away.

Mariel and I at the Tokyo airport on the way home.

We really did have such a great trip thanks to my awesome mom and dad, and Casey and Chantel. They really took care of us!