Adventure Time with Keri!

Have I ever mentioned how great my family is? B/c they are.

Ok, moving on. 

Pua/Mau vacations are pretty much the best. This time we were off to the Philippines for some diving, shopping, and family time.

*Disclaimer: Pictures that do NOT have my watermark and are not cellphone pictures are from daddy's camera and I was too lazy to edit them...hahaha*

We left Semporna around 1pm, flew to KK, and then had a very long 10-hr layover there. Thankfully we have lots of friends and family that came to our rescue. After stopping to eat (of course) and meeting up with family, we went shopping (of course)…well it was more like “let’s walk around the mall to kill some time.” We finally met up with more family and somehow all the cousins ended up in the ice cream section of the super market debating which ice cream was the best. We finally departed from the mall in four different cars. In some way, I ended up following Brian’s car with Baby and racing his younger brother’s car half of the way there. Definitely some major cousin bonding time there. Haha. After a huge dinner we hung out at Auntie Ahiang’s house and when I couldn’t get any shut-eye, Baby and I followed Stefanie and Amy back to Amy’s house to “help” her pack. Hahahaha. I don’t think Amy appreciated our “help” at all. We all scrambled to get back to the airport and then holed ourselves up in the airport for what seemed like eternity. Our flight was supposed to be somewhere around the 2am time slot…but it got delayed an hour. Sleeping in the airport never really works in my opinion, so you can be sure I didn’t get much sleep there. I did, however manage to sleep on the short flight to Manila, Philippines.

Tea time!

Cousin line-up

The sun was just peeking out when we landed and we all groggily dragged ourselves to the van waiting for us. We stopped at a McDonald’s for breakfast on our way to the jetty…b/c a trip to another country is never complete without going to a McDonald’s…haha. What, they’re different in other countries. After two hours of driving we finally reached the port, dragged our heavy diving equipment through a dark building and waited for our boat to come. When our boat came we boarded with everyone else until we were jam packed like squished sardines and couldn’t move one more inch. It was sweltering by then but we all managed to snooze the hour and a half to Puerto Galera on the island of Mindoro. 

When we arrived there was a moment of confusion when a bunch of drivers tried to haggle with us about driving us to our destination…until Jo-Jo and Joy showed up just in time. Our destination happened to be a hop, skip, and  a jump away. We checked in to our resort and crashed for about 2 hours before we ate lunch and jumped into a boat to do two dives. Yupp…we traveled for almost 24 hrs with little to no sleep and then did two dives. That’s how boss we are. The visibility on the first dive was amazing and although the visibility of the second dive was less than stellar, we managed to see a flamboyant cuttlefish and a bunch of cool macro stuff!!

That night we decided to rent tricycles…which are basically motorbikes with a cart attached to it. Looking at it, you should only be able to fit 3 ppl comfortably on it – two in the cart and one behind the driver….but no…we saw more than 8 ppl on one tricycle. I’m not even kidding. There were kids on the roof of the cart. Hahaha. Anyway, back to what I was saying. So we took like 3 tricycles to Sabang, a nearby town. Let me tell you, it was quite the ride. We were all hanging on for dear life, I can assure you. 

Tricycles

Sabang

Sabang

Jeepney

Sunset at Sabang

Mommy and me

Cute kids

Cousins!!

Mommy and me with the tricycles

Cousins!

That night, Baby locked Kian out of their room and she sleeping like a little piggy with the TV on loud and didn’t hear us banging on the door. LOL. I also slept like a rock…with Amy IN the room and not locked outside…AHEM. Baby. SMH. Hahaha.

Next morning we headed out and did two dives in the morning, the first was to a big wreck at 30m – it was fun going through it! – then the second dive I finally got to see an electric clam! 

After lunch we walked down the road to buy souvenirs...Auntie Beth ended up buying a ton of t-shirts for the dive crew and family and then the whole time we were on the streets a group of pearl sellers were trying to bargain with us. They even followed us to where we were staying and bargained with us for another hour! 

The small road of shops.

Already being heckled...haha.

Bargaining with us.

Auntie Beth and Amy are satisfied with their purchases.

Dad stalked us with his camera when we went to go diving...haha.

We did a late dive, found a seahorse, and then we were supposed to do a night dive but we opted to try our luck at seeing mandarin fish…except that when we got there, everyone else had the same idea as us.  There were so many divers down there that it was like a shopping mall…except everyone was shopping for the same thing – mandarin fish. There was literally a huge group of divers all clustered around a large coral with their cameras poised ready to snap a picture of the elusive creatures. If you’ve never heard of mandarin fish, they are these beautiful, small fish that are VERY shy and like to hide in coral. Since there were so many ppl, we didn’t have a chance to see them and decided to dive around the premises instead, which means I don’t have a picture of the mandarin fish, BUT, I will have one posted on my next adventure post! (Which means you have to check back later…muwahahaha.) 

We surfaced just in time to witness an absolutely GORGEOUS sunset! It was such a great moment to welcome the Sabbath in – diving and a beautiful sunset. 

Oh, can't forget the story of the crab!! So Baby came into our room to hang out with us and was laying on my bed when I spotted something very dark run across the pillow to her hair. So I said, "Baby! DON'T MOVE!!" I initially thought it was a really big spider...but then after I saw it crawl away I knew it was a crab, of all things! Haha. So then we chased it when it dropped to the floor...I ended up on my hands and knees when it went behind my bed. How a crab got into our [2nd floor] room, we'll never know. Haha!

The next morning we headed out on the boat for an hr boat ride to Verde Island. The coral there was awesome and there were a lot of nudibranches…but hardly any fish! Well, fish worth looking at. Haha. There was also strong currents there and not only strong currents, but changing currents! Our second dive there was quite exciting. There was a strong current in the first half of the dive along the wall…and then there came a bend in the wall that went right. If you didn’t swim fast enough, the current would take you straight ahead into the deep blue. So, when Jo Jo signaled to us that the bend was coming up, we all got read to swim right as fast as we could. It was over in a flash…and quite exhilarating, I can assure you. Haha. Oh, and yes, we all made it in one piece. What Jo Jo didn’t mention was the fact that the currents are forever changing on the other side of the wall. It was probably the first time I experienced that many current changes as well as an upwelling or up-current. When you find yourself suddenly rising faster than you should be and your buoyancy is usually really good, all you can think of is, “What is this sorcery!?!?!” Hahaha. Needless to say, during our safety stop we all had to hold on to the wall to keep from being swept away. While we were waiting, I looked down the wall and saw a huge group doing the same thing…it was so funny looking!

We had our lunch in a cute little hut on Verde Island before heading back to Puerto Galera to do our third and fourth dive. On said fourth dive we finally managed to see a mimic octopus, which we had been looking for the other day! 

Since that day was both mom’s birthdays…my mom and Auntie Beth’s, we tried to make the night a little bit more special. The girls that worked at the resort made them two different kinds of traditional Filipino desserts – maja blanca and mango graham cracker cake (or mango float if you freeze it). Both of them were so delicious! After surprising the moms with the desserts we headed out on more tricycles to the other Badladz beach resort just outside of town. There, we had our dinner, played with the owner’s baby, Charles, and then surprised the moms with ANOTHER cake! Haha. We were sugared out by that point…so the cake was merely a prop to take photos with. Lol. We then headed out to White Beach, a local and tourist attraction of…wait for it…lady boys!! Haha. Dad was so incredulous the whole time. He was like, “I don’t get what’s so entertaining about watching guys dress up as ladies and lip syncing to music dancing around.” Ok, so maybe not in those exact words, but it was close. Lol. I was cracking up the whole time. 

White Beach

Sunday dawned and we got to drive around in a jeepney, or their local taxi over there, around the island. (It’s very similar to the Thai siongthew.) We visited a beautiful waterfall and then headed to a fantastic view of Puerto Galera where the majority of us decided to go zip lining. It was a short zip line, but it was still fun nonetheless. 

After lunch we headed back on the slow boat back to Manila….to do some shopping!!

In the two and a half days we were there, I managed to go to about 4 different malls (yes, I DID go to the Mall of Asia), buy some clothes, meet relatives I had never met before (and some that I didn’t even know about), and eat lots of yummy food. The last day we were there was actually Independence Day for the Philippines and we managed to see a few fireworks during the night and a lot of flags all over the place! 

We had to make the long trip back to Malaysia in the middle of the night again. Bleh…I dislike traveling at night unless you’re flying from night till morning straight. What did we do at 2:30am when we arrived? We went to eat, of course. It was some amazing pan mee though, I must say. Took a snooze at BGB and then headed back to the airport for one last flight. I can promise you that I slept for a very long time when I finally reached the bed.

Chilling at the airport

Yeah...we have a lot of luggage.

Our fearless tour guide...but she's lazy...hahahah.

The moms taking it easy and watching all our carry-ons

Mommy taking a nap while waiting for our flight

So much food at 2:30am!!

Love milo!

Best pan mee EVER.

Baby was exhausted in the airport...haha.

All-in-all, it was a fantastic trip with my family that contained three things that we love doing and are so good at: eating, diving, and shopping!! I mean, what more could you want when you’re with an awesome family? Haha =) Thanks to my family for a great trip, to Amy for arranging everything, to my auntie and uncle for inviting me on this trip, to Badladz resort, dive center, Meikie, Jonny, Jo Jo, and Joy for a wonderful stay and arranging/leading the dives!!

Our crazy family with Meikie, JoJo, and Joy.