Philippine Adventure: Part One

We're home, safe, and mostly healthy. I'll let you know in a few days if we escaped bug free. I took over 1000 pictures on our trip. I still have to weed through them, but I really want to get started on posting. This will be a series of posts until I cover everything. We're going camping for a few days this week, so it will probably take a while for me to finish.

Day 1: Thursday, June 18

We left the house at 4:45 am to pick up Barb and Sid Sponsler, the Hooyer's neighbors who traveled with us. We all caught the 5:30 ferry, aiming at getting a 7:45 flight to San Francisco. (Since Dave Hooyer is a retired United pilot, we used his companion tickets and traveled stand-by on the flights from Seattle to SF and SF to Hong Kong.) Unfortunately, the lines at the airport were long and by the time we got checked in, we were too late to get the 7:45 flight. Our last chance at making the 1:00 flight to Hong Kong was getting the 9:45, which seven of the eight of us made. Dave ended up taking a later flight on Alaska, which put him in SF after the 1:00 departure for Hong Kong, but none of us made that flight, so it didn't really matter. It was very disappointing to miss the flight. I don't like uncertainty, so waiting to see if our names would be called was very frustrating. We made the most of it by enjoying our afternoon in SF. Carlyn, Barb, Kylie and I took the BART into China-town and pretended we were in Hong Kong. Never having been there, it wasn't hard for me to do! We even ate delicious Dim Sum for dinner. Sorry, Katie, I don't remember what they were called: some had shrimp, some had eggplant, some had tofu, some had pork, all were delicious!

Kylie and I outside the China-town gate in San Francisco.

Day 2: Friday, June 19

We woke up determined to have a positive attitude about making the flight. We said a prayer together for safe travel, which made all of us feel better. And we made the flight. Sid, Barb, Kylie and I even got seats in business class, which made the waiting well worth it! The seats recline all the way into beds, each person has their own entertainment center with movies, TV shows, music, & games, the food is good and served on real dishes with cold silverware, drinks are refilled constantly (as our seat-made took full advantage of...), all which made the 15 hour flight bearable.

When we arrived in Hong Kong, we had to rebook our flight to Manila, since we had missed our scheduled flight. We learned an expensive lesson not to make confirmed reservations when flying standby. Paying twice for flights and hotel rooms add up. I don't even know what time it was when we reached Manila. Stepping off the plane in Manila felt like stepping into a dog's mouth: hot, humid, heavy, and stinky. I never had a chance to be jet-lagged; I was exhausted by the time we got to the hotel and was able to sleep six hours and wake up in the morning somewhat ready to catch another flight to Cagayan de Oro on Mindanao.

Here's all the luggage from eight people, six of whom are spending the whole summer in the Philippines.

Day 3: Sunday, June 21

We lost most of Saturday due to the time difference (they're 15 hours ahead).

Carlyn's dad and brother, Mao, picked us up from the airport in Cagayan Sunday morning and drove us into town to go grocery shopping and eat lunch. Our first whiff of durian greeted us in their van. It smelled like overly powerful Pepto Bismol and we were promised the chance to try it later.

Driving up the mountain from Cagayan to Manolo Fortich was unlike anything I've ever experienced. I think they purposefully tear up the roads to create jobs repairing them. The road in the picture above doesn't show how bad they were. But it's a decent shot of the back of a jeepney, which is a very popular form of tranportation in the Philippines and is used to carry as many people as can squeeze in along with any kind of goods that will fit. The roads are usually two lanes, but the drivers treat them like both lanes go in the same direction and will pass each other at any time, even when there is a huge truck coming towards them. It's a bit like playing chicken: if you've got the guts to pass, go for it! Motorcyles (or hubel-hubels, as they're called) weave in and out of traffic and of course no one wears helmets or seat belts.

Most of the houses are very primitive. I kept thinking it would get better, but it didn't. There aren't "nicer" neighborhoods and "poorer" neighborhoods like we're used to in the U.S. Every once in a while, a house with a tile roof and stucco walls would appear from behind a walled enclosure, but not very often. I was starting to get really worried about where I was taking my daughter (and myself). Fortunately, Carlyn's family's home is one of the nicer ones in town.

On the right is the Dumotan's home, on the left are the stairs leading up to the Dumotan-Hooyer library.

The front half of the Dumotan's home,

and a view of the very front.

This is their kitchen, which was just added on when the Hooyers built the library two years ago.This is the "dirty kitchen", which might have been what they used before the addition. I'll have to check with Carlyn and see if that's true.The living room.The library. It's one of the biggest buildings in town, and by far the nicest.

Upstairs in the living quarters, the top two floors.

The bottom floor is the actual library.
Our beds were back by where Kylie is sitting. It fulfilled my childhood fantasy of being locked in a library at night and getting to spend the night amongst the books!

This is their neighbor's house, right on the other side of the wall, so you can see how the houses are all mixed together.