Gim and I were supposed to head on home to Zamboanga, but we couldn’t go home without once using our newly bought snorkel gear. So we postponed the trip to today and happily went to Dakak Resort (except that we overslept and had to postpone it again to tomorrow).

Habal-habals (motorcycles that carry passengers on rough terrain for a fee) in Dapitan charge an exorbitant P200 ($5) per head for a 15-minute round-trip ride to Dakak Resort. I insisted that my boyfriend find me a cheaper ride.

So he asked a local tricycle (a passenger three-wheeler common in the Philippines) driver whether anyone was offering a motorcycle for rent. The driver answered his friend had one, and he charged us P200 for the use. Great, Gim said, and took him up on the offer.

Later the driver insisted he himself drive the motorcycle. Much later we learned he wasn’t used to carrying two people on a motorcycle. Much much later we learned he wasn’t used to driving on rough terrain. Nearing the end of our horrible, horrible, life-threatening trip because he was a horrible, horrible driver and a horrible, horrible person, he stated he had never been to Dakak Resort and it was a good thing we knew the way, because he didn’t.

So yesterday I swam. I have never swam in my life. I don’t know how. And I’ve always been scared of drowning. But with the aid of the snorkel, I breathed underwater. With my masks, I saw clearly underwater. And with my Gim’s encouragement and teaching, I learned to float on my belly and swim the breaststroke.

To celebrate my second life (or third or fourth, I don’t know, I’ve so nearly lost my life too many times I can’t remember), I needed to swim.

I never knew it could be so easy. But it was! And so fun! I wanted to do it for hours and hours! And we did. Gim took me to the reefs and we snorkeled over corals of so many colors! Green and red and orange and violet! And we saw sea anemones moving beautifully and a clown fish just like Nemo hiding inside! And then the father clownfish saw us and stared at us angrily and tried to get us to leave, haha! It was so cute, their little family. I saw rainbow colored eels and I saw flat fishes and fishes that looked like stone and fishes that looked like sand.

And the whole time I was swimming all over the reefs, with Gim protectively swimming by my side. :-)

It was such a wonderful day, yesterday. I swam.

P.S. Thank you, Gim. :-)

P.P.S. For the return trip, Gim had our horrible motorycle driver bring a friend and an extra motorcyle so Gim would take me home himself. I no longer wanted to ever ride with that horrible man on the helm. We paid the same amount as if we had rode the habal-habal. I hope that horrible man will have terrible karma for his horrible driving!

Here in the Philippines, we have a sweet treat called Halo-halo. Halo in Filipino means “mix”. Halo-halo is a mix of ingredients such as beans, flan, fruits, sugar, milk and ice, then topped with ice cream, oatmeal and sometimes a cherry.

It’s a favorite Filipino dessert, and the best halo-halos are the ones made by hand by your parents on a hot Sunday afternoon when you were a child. Save that, there are always the food stalls and restaurants.

Here in Dapitan, the best halo-halo is served in Jana’s Place on Josephine Bracken street (named after Jose Rizal’s lady friend).

Gim and I ate this treat a few days ago, when it was stuffy warm all over Dapitan. It sure refreshed us for a good ten minutes. ;-)

P.S. When I went to Japan, they had a similar dessert. They called it Haro-haro. LOL!

In Dapitan, where I’m currently at, the world seems full of old people and children. That’s what this city is made of.

Kids playing CounterStrike and DOTA in the Internet shop.

Old people drivers on tricycles waiting for passengers.

Toddlers sitting by the shore making castles on the sand.

Vendors selling secondhand clothes, seafood and wares.

Infants screaming, infants gurgling, infants cooing.

Grandparents aboard motorcycles lugging grandchildren.

Life seems all about the elders and the youngsters.

Where are the mommies and the daddies?

My academics are done, woohoo! Now all I’ve left to do to complete my Masters is my thesis software and paper. Easier said than done, but for now I’m treating myself to a relaxing vacation!

I’ve left Manila and settled down (pretend) with my boyfriend in Dapitan. It’s been so fun pretending to be husband and wife (hehe). I’ll be staying a month or two here before I head on home to Zamboanga, so I thought it would be much cheaper to buy appliances for cooking rather than to eat out all the time.

We bought a rice cooker (Php600 or $13), an oven toaster (Php500 or $11), a water heater (Php200 or $4), kitchen utensils (about Php1k or $22) and a Petron Gasulette (a single-burner gas stove at Php1700 or $38). My boyfriend’s a great cook so he’s been cooking a lot of great food, like breaded pork (yum!), corned beef with onion and potatoes (mmm!) and calamares (needs work). I’m so looking forward to the future, when he’s finally a doctor and we can buy a house and everything! Hehe.

When we’re not cooking, we’re watching movies. The last movie we watched was What Happens in Vegas starring Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. It wasn’t funny, I wouldn’t recommend watching it. And do people really win 3 million dollars via a slot machine?! In spite of the lousy script, boy that movie made me want to visit Vegas!

I know it’s kind of too far in the future to plan. (Hello, I can barely afford to eat in a restaurant, let along purchase a ticket to fly halfway around the world.) But for what it’s worth, I’ve scouted out a Las Vegas strip map so I won’t get lost. My boyfriend can tell you how bad I am at directions. I once hopped on a jeepney with Gim, confident I knew the landmarks of Malate, and we spent an hour on the vehicle not knowing where to get off. I literally need a travel book just to roam around Manila, what more Vegas. (Am I silly to be planning this nonsense?)

In other news, I’ve been bumming around, sleeping late, enjoying the sun and sea, and looking for a swim teacher (because I would like to learn). Oh if life were always this easy.

On a Sunday in Dapitan, there’s no better place to eat lunch than Kamayan ni Manay’s (literal translation: Eat-with-your-bare-hands at Manay‘s, Manay being a general term for an older lady).

Every Sunday, Kamayan holds an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch that costs only P250 ($6) per person. This includes a lunch of lechon (roasted pork), chicken, crab, shrimps, talaba (oysters), vegetables, fruits and salads. Dessert is fruits and ice cream (yummy!). Oh and don’t forget the bottomless iced tea. It’s a fiesta fit for a king. In my opinion, no other all-you-can-eat buffet can ever top this sumptous feast from Kamayan (and believe me, I’ve tried a lot of other Sunday eat-all-you-can’s!).

For a restaurant in a pretty small town, Kamayan is packed during Sundays! The buffet lunch starts at 10:30 AM but by 10:00 AM, there’s already a line of people outside waiting to get in. It’s that good.

Without further ado, here come the pictures!

 

My first plate. I got a lot of fried stuff. Fried shrimps, fried talaba, fried chicken. Some salad (I thought maybe the healthy would cancel out the unhealthy). And lots of lechon! I was lechon-starved when I came to Dapitan. (In Zamboanga, Sunday usually equals to a lunch of lechon. And I hadn’t had that in months because I was exiled in Manila!)

 

My second plate. I realized the crab was really, really, really good! So I got a whole lot of it. The crabs were small but boy they were bursting with meat. Gim and I surmised they must have come from a farm, because each and every crab we ate was really fat and tasty. It was so much fun eating them, unlike the time we ate crab in Dakak and felt like we were mining for gold in a gold-starved cave! I also got a lot of chopsuey and, erm, took a lot of quail eggs (too bad for the later guests, hehehe!).

 

Doesn’t the crab look divine?

 

This crab reminds me of a ninja. A very tasty ninja.

 

Bottomless lemon iced tea, yum! And the waiters were very prompt! They filled our glasses even when we didn’t ask. Not like other places (especially in Manila) that offer bottomless iced tea and then hide their waiters afterwards, or look at you like you’re being very greedy for consuming more than two glasses of their supposedly limitless drink.

 

Even our trash looked good, haha. We had two piles of this after. Full of crab and oysters. Loved the crab so very much. I got around six halves or so. I shared them with Gim, I swear! Hahaha. I didn’t like the raw oysters that much, though… I don’t like anything raw. The fried shrimps tasted more of flour than shrimp, so did the fried oysters. But who cares?? There was a lot of crab!!! Hehehehe.

 

More trash. And still a lot of crab behind the trash, hahaha. I really enjoyed the crab. Did I mention that already? Hahaha. I went there for the lechon, and the lechon was great. But the crab was better. Haha.

 

Awww, and we’re done eating. I ate so much crab I couldn’t finish my chopsuey. Too bad because I happen to love chopsuey. I ate all the quail eggs, though. Heheh. And do you notice that in every picture, the glass of iced tea is always full? See? What did I tell you about the great service? I must have downed 4 or 5 glasses of that stuff.

I wish I could have taken more pictures, especially of the individual courses. But I was too excited to try all the food. And to cram as much crab down my throat before it ran out. Hehe. I am such a glutton. I don’t have any pictures here, by the way, because Gim ate with his bare hands!!! Well, it was Kamayan. And I did benefit from it because he was able to crack the crab and give me the meat. But that also meant he couldn’t handle the camera. Poor me.

I, meanwhile, hate using my bare hands to eat. Even in a Kamayan restaurant (a lot of restaurants in the Philippines are Kamayan‘s, I guess because it’s cheaper to just use banana leaves instead of washing utensils, haha). Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy feasting with my bare hands. Food tastes much better that way, I’ve noticed, hahaha. My mom used to feed me and my sisters like that before. And sometimes I can get Gim to feed me like that, too, when I’m feeling babyish. Haha. I just would rather keep my hands clean so I can use my camera, get my wallet, wipe my face, etc. Hehe. 

Gim got really tired after eating, as you can see in the pictures. Hehe. Our tummies were full to bursting. He’s getting the baboy (pig) syndrome here. It’s where he feels lazy and sleepy after eating a huge meal, just like a pig. Haha.

And here’s him asking me, “And how are you?” And I answer, “I’m fine, thank you Gim!!!” I’m thanking him because he introduced me to this Kamayan place. But we didn’t know about the Sunday all-you-can-eat buffet until we bumped into one of his doctors (teachers) one Sunday around noontime and he told us we were too late for the buffet. We were very disappointed that day, because we saw all the empty food trays, haha. That’s when we decided to go there again, much much earlier, during my last Sunday (before I would come back to Manila).

Here’s how the place looks. Very simple. Very native-looking. Wooden chairs and tables. Flower arrangements, roses and ferns, on each table.

No airconditioning, just electric fans. And big pretty balls of light above.

And look it’s our bill! For everything we ate, just… 500 pesos! Yay! Hehehe. See, food is really cheap in Dapitan. That’s why I love going there. And then whenever I go back I’m significantly heavier. Hehehe.

Okay, I’d like to insert some pictures of our food that Sunday we went there and didn’t get to try the buffet since it was already past twelve. (The buffet ends at 1PM formally, but after 11AM, the must-try trays like the crab and lechon are already gone. So it’s important to go early.)

So anyway, for that particular Sunday, we ordered sizzling squid (my all-time favorite, and it was the best I’d ever tasted), spring rolls (turned out to be just a reworded fried lumpia, and we thought it was going to be something new hahaha) and pork ribs (mmm, just okay, not as good as I’d hoped). Lots of garlic rice, yum. I like garlic rice better than fried rice. I’m a glutton for anything garlic, I swear. Oh and a mango shake for me. It was really, really tasty, that mango shake.

Here’s a closer look at the lumpia and ribs. I like my lumpia fresh rather than fried, but these rolls weren’t bad. They were pretty good, really. Filled with vegetables and shrimps, I think. But the ribs seemed a bit out of place in our meal, so I didn’t enjoy them much. I mostly left them for Gimmi.

 

I focused on the heavenly squid. Yum. These were grilled very lightly, just the way I like them. And cleaned very well, too. No ink whatsoever. (Some places serve it with the ink, you have to tell them not to. It’s a delicacy, I guess.) What made this squid so much better than the others I had tasted was the garlic. Lots of garlic all over my squid, wow! And lots of tomatoes and onions filling the hollow, yum! Definitely must try this if you’re at Kamayan.

 

A closer view of the squid. Looks good, huh? It was very very good. I loved the tentacles, too. I’m not sure which part of the squid I love best, the tentacles or the body. Hmm, I love them both the same! (But I don’t like the head.)

The mango shake tasted very fresh and milky, and definitely not watery. Also one of the best mango shakes I’d ever tasted. It tasted like a homemade mango shake, that’s how I would describe it. ‘Coz when you’re at home making a shake yourself, you place a lot of milk and mango, right? You don’t scrimp on the ingredients. Well, that’s how it tasted. :-) Loved it!

And while waiting for our food, what did Gim and I do? Well, what we love to…

 

Take pictures of ourselves! Hahahaha! Oh by the way, if you want to go to Kamayan ni Manay‘s, it’s right beside Gloria de Dapitan. Happy eating!

When in Dapitan, you will not fail to visit Gloria de Dapitan, the tiny city’s prime spot for leisure-seeking travellers. You often find me here, as there isn’t really any other place to hang out in Dapitan when you’re not looking to sun or swim.

Gloria de Dapitan (named for the country’s current president, which is a shame) includes several restaurants, a few boutique shops, an Internet shop, some bauble-selling stalls, a snack stall (french fries and ice cream), a bowling place, an impressive fountain (for a provincial town) and in the center of it all, a cock-fighting gymnasium (apparently the Congressman, who owns the entire Gloria and most of Dapitan, is a big fan).

Gim and I go to Gloria everyday to access the Internet. The whole place is a wifi zone, and anybody can access the wifi for free. The girl at the airconditioned Internet shop lets me sit inside while doing my Internet rounds. I try to make her charge me the regular Internet rate but she flatly refuses (she lets me surf and charge my laptop for free) so I sometimes bring her some sweets in exchange for her generosity hehehe. Sometimes she won’t receive those too.

The food in Dapitan is superbly inexpensive, so Gim and I often visit Gloria to get dinner. (Most shops don’t open before 2pm so it’s hard to find lunch there.) Our favorite restaurants are Tapas & Beer and a pizza place (gosh I forgot the name).

At Tapas & Beer, better get an order of tapa (dried beef, fried in soy sauce). It’s very tasty, and the onions are very crisp. Also try their calamares, or fried squid rings. They’re one of the best I’ve ever tasted, because the squid rings are very thick and tender at the same time. Gim loves crispy pata (a leg of pork salted and boiled then left in the air to dry for an entire day, then deep fried) and we found it in the menu so we ordered that one time, and Gim loved it so much he left nothing but bone (the ones he couldn’t chew enough to swallow hahaha).

The pizza shop in Gloria is not to be missed. The shop owners come from Switzerland and the ingredients in their pizza definitely prove it. Regular servings (good for three or four but Gim and I can finish one in 30 minutes) cost only P200 ($4) while family servings cost P300 ($6). Extra toppings cost P30 (less than $1) and a request for thick crust costs P30 as well (you will want the thick crust for sure!). Trust me when I say they are VERY VERY good.

Most of the pizzas are mozarella-and-meat-heavy, just the way Gim and I like it. We love sausage and often ask for extra toppings of it. The pizza is cooked right in front of you if you want to watch. The contraption where the pizza is cooked is bizarrely small, but the server says it cost almost a hundred thousand pesos (roughly $2000). Whoa, but if that’s their secret I want one too hehe!

Have a look at the menu, I took a shot hehehe.

And here is Gim patiently waiting for our pizza on the counter. :-) It takes about 15-30 minutes for the pizza to cook (it’s not a fast-food place) so when the pizza gets served you’re sure to be starving heheheh.

It’s a great eat. :-)

Gloria is a cheap place to eat for city people, but there are many more spots in Dapitan where you can get cheaper and tastier food, especially when it comes to seafood.

But that’s for another post. :-)

Gim and I spent my birthday (August 15) in Dakak Resort, Dapitan. It was a beautifully cloudy day. (A sunny day on a Philippine beach equals a really, really bad sunburn.) We took a dip in the water first thing when we got there. Ate a hearty lunch after hours of playing in the waves. Went back the water. And then enjoyed swinging in the hammock in between.

I love the hammocks in Dapitan. Very comfy and they offer a great, uninterrupted view of the horizon.

They hang from the branches of the trees that ply the shoreline, and they’re the perfect place to rest and sleep or just enjoy the view.

See how much fun I’m having up there??? Hehehe.

Here is Gim resting underneath a tree. And there are his new slippers that I gave that he lost in a Dumaguete beach. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Hehehehehe. At least he has a photo.

Here is me not wanting to leave Dakak yet. The Dakak management is calling us to the van that will take us back home, but I’m too comfortable to get up! I don’t want to go!!!!

And here’s the breathtaking view from our hammocks.

See? No wonder it is sooo hard to leave Dakak. :-) And of course, here is the venerated hammock. :-)

Hehehehe. I want to go back!

In the Philippines, developed coastal roads are often called “boulevards” like the Cawa-Cawa Boulevard of Zamboanga City, the Roxas Boulevard of Manila, the “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” of Dipolog (okay, Gim and I named that a few years ago when we sat there after a quarrel on the last day of our vacation hahaha).

In the Dapitan, they have the “Sunset Boulevard” because this piece of shore does really deliver those romantic sunsets. I haven’t got a sunset image this year yet (it’s the rainy season) but hopefully I will get one on a rare cloudless afternoon.

Still, here’s a shot of the shore from a dilapidated cottage where Gim and I ate a tub of store-bought ice cream on a cold, cloudy day. Hehehe, that’s one of our favorite pastimes.

And a few shots of me… hahaha.

This is back when I had long hair… Oh I am starting to miss it. (Right now I have short hair, and dark red, splotchy, peeling skin. Waaahhhh.)

Living in big busy Manila is fantastically convenient. All your needs are a walk or phone call away.

I live in Katipunan, right in front of the country’s top university, Ateneo de Manila University. Around my place are National Bookstore (where I get my chick lit for whenever I am depressed), a whole lot of fast food joints like McDonalds, Jollibee’s (not just one but two branches!), KFC, Chowking, Kenny Rogers Roasters, Teriyaki Boy and many more, Villman’s (for my gadget needs), Rustan’s and Shoppersville (for my weekly groceries), BPI, Banco de Oro, Megalink and many other banks (for my banking needs!). And SM North, one of the world’s top ten biggest malls, is a 30 minute taxi ride away.

But all that convenience doesn’t buy any love from me. I am and will always be a country bumpkin. I love fresh clean air (as opposed to the smoke and dirt of neverendingly-busy highways), wide blue skies (as opposed to polluted violet ones full of skyscrapers), stars (can’t see them in Manila), trees, rivers and oceans (I don’t even know if there’s any accessible to the big city). I love nature. I am most comfortable without any frills, just give me cheap food and a great view, and I am happy. :-)

To fulfill this need, Gim took me dinner at Port Orient, a shoreside shack of a restaurant here in Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, Mindanao, Philippines, where I am blissfully vacationing (in spite of a terribly sunburnt achy face).

We ordered barbecue – lots of them! Pork barbecue, our favorite, mmm! And also liver barbecue, which Gim loves but I hate. And barbecued innards, which we both love! Heheheh. I’ll not say which inner parts, you may be grossed out haha. And we ordered around 5 puso‘s, which is rice wrapped and cooked in triangle-shaped banana leaves. Plus a liter of Pop Cola, a local softdrink like Coca Cola.

Our table was situated right on the shore, and our sandals embedded in sand. A few feet away, right in front of us, played local children and crashed ocean waves. Have a look-see. :D

 

  

  

Here’s me and Gim playing cute for the camera. Hehehehe.

 

I am not sunburnt here. You’ll see how I look in my later posts. (I will be horribly fattened and sunburnt but still very happy hahaha.) Here’s what’s looking right back at us:

 

And a closer view at the pretty clouds.

 

  

It was a wonderful day. :-)

Arrived in Dipolog, Mindanao safe and thrilled. Met by boyfriend Gim and rode a tricycle (a quirky three-wheeled transportation common in the Philippines) towards Dapitan. Took over boyfriend’s temporary quarters and made it messy, as I am wont to do.

Dapitan (Visayan for “a place often visited”) is beautiful as always. It is the rainy season, so tourists are few, but foreigners in retirement many. The sky is clouded many a sunset, and the ocean roils angrily all day. But oceanside barbecues still taste divine and walks on the beach still romantic.

So far Gim and I have been enjoying the food mightily. I’ve gained a lot of pounds doing nothing but eat all day — lunchtime chopsuey (freshly cooked vegetables in a creamy salty sauce), pork and beef steaks, iced teas and orange juices and Cokes and Pepsis, afternoon raspberry and blueberry cheesecakes and hazelnut capuccino, and dinnertime garlic sausage pizza, crispy pata (crispy fried pork) and a many many more.

Tomorrow I turn 26 and I am spending it on a white sand beach resort called Dakak. Next week Gim and I will be visiting another white sand beach called Piñahon. We’ll try to reach the beautiful beaches of Aliguay and Silinog if funds and time allow.

We will also be trekking to Cagayan de Oro and engaging in some whitewater rafting and ziplining. Also visiting Camiguin to enjoy White Island, Katibawasan Falls, Hot Springs and tours.

Later in the month will be visiting Dumaguete and hopefully seeing some dolphins. 

I have so many pictures I wish to upload but darndarndarn I don’t have a cardreader! Gim’s laptop doesn’t have a built-in one either. So I will have to wait until I get to Cagayan de Oro and buy a card reader there. Am excited to show you all the food I’ve eaten hahaha. And of course the sights.

Until then… ;-)