The Philippines- Manila & Boracay

For our weeklong Chuseok break we headed to the Philippines on Sept. 13.  Our first stop was Manila for three days where we stayed at the Bayleaf Hotel, which had a great restaurant and view.

Here's the view from our hotel room, looking over a golf course and the old Spanish walls towards downtown Manila (Makati).

Looking down from our hotel room, there were always many pedicabs on the street below.

Here's one up close, transporting someone.

Our hotel was in the oldest part of the city, called Intramuros.  It has a fortified wall all around it, built by the Spanish in 1580. 

There's a lot of Spanish history in the Philippines.

The wall is high above the street and stretches for three miles around Intramuros area.
There were a couple of policemen, like this guy, patrolling it. 

Intramuros is home to many universities, several of them Catholic.

Posing atop the wall with some friendly local university students. 

It seems everyone in Manila has a dog.  This guy was keeping a vendor company.

The tourists love the horses and carriages, but Jeepneys like this one are the main form of public transportation in Manila.
They are a Jeep body made into a bus type vehicle, originally were made from Jeeps left behind by the US military.
They continue to be manufactured (new) today.  

On our way to a walking tour, Marly bought a puppet from this kind gentleman.  
He said he's been making them from recycled items and selling them since he was 14 years old. So talented!

Some of the local street kids really enjoyed Marly's puppet.  They all spoke excellent English, it is taught in schools as well as the Filipino language.

We went on a  historical storytelling walking tour of Manila and the Philippines in Intramuros, done by Carlos Celdran.
He is very popular so our group was large, and included 75 Peace Corps volunteers from the US. Some of them explained to us and the kids what their assignments were; what a great education!

One of the important Filipinos we learned about was Jose Rizal, an educator and leader of the Nationalist movement (depicted in this statue)  He wrote the book,"Nolo me Tangere".

We were transported by horse & carriage to the next part of the walking tour.
It was a rainy day, as it was the rainy season in the Philippines. 

Church of San Augustin, one of the few to survive the Battle of Manila in 1945, because it was a Red Cross center.
Most of Manila was leveled then, and has still not fully recovered. A very sad story.

The next day we took the high-speed ferry to Corregidor Island in Manila Bay.  The Philippines is a Catholic country so you see lots of prayers everywhere, like this one for safety on the water.  It was a 1-hr. trip.

On Corregidor Island there are many ruins of US barracks, destroyed when the Japanese invaded in 1942. 

The big guns were aimed at Japanese ships using good old triangulation. 

The ruins, like this bunker, are everywhere on the island and are an eerie site.  

Another big American gun, this one could shoot for 20 miles.

Corregidor is tadpole-shaped, here we're looking towards the tail. 

Pacific War Memorial on Corregidor. Over 10,000 US, Philipino, and Japanese soldiers died on this small island during WW2.  

These were officer's barracks.  

The Japanese have also made a memorial to their thousands of soldiers killed on Corregidor. The statue is the Shinto Divine Mother.

The Malinta tunnel is deep under the mountain at Corregidor.  It was the last refuge of  hundreds of Americans and Filipinos before the island fell to the Japanese in 1942. 

The tunnel is quite large and goes all the way under the mountain.

There are statues of reenactments of the war events, along with interesting audio performances at each side branch of the tunnel.

An eerie place! When Corregidor fell in 1942, the US and Filipino soldiers remaining joined other soldiers across the bay at Bataan peninsula, to begin the infamous Death March. 

Statue of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. As the Japanese were taking over the island, he said the famous line, "I shall return!" at this spot before getting into a boat at the launch in the background to escape to Australia. 

The next day we headed to Taal, an active volcano. Here it is in the background, with many fish farms on the lake.

We boarded a boat to take us across the lake to the volcano.  The lake is actually the center of a much larger volcano, with a crater ridge 26 miles around.

Looking back on the ridge (which is the edge of a huge old volcano) that we had come down from.

We landed on the volcano cone in the center of the lake, which had a volcanic black sand beach. 

We rode poor, tired looking horses for a mile or two up to the top of the volcano's cone. 

Our guides were very helpful with the horses.  Here you can see some sulfur clouds in the background, spewing from the edge of the volcano.  We actually rode through them and they smelled bad.

At the top, looking down into the center of the volcano and its lake, which seemed to be oozing yellowish liquid into the water.  No fish live here! You can see the ridge of the much bigger, older volcano in the background. 

In the center of the lake is a tiny island.  So it is an island in a lake in a volcano, in another lake inside a larger volcano! 

Back to the black sand beach to make our trip back across the big volcanic lake. 

Here is Taal Volcano from the ridge above.  Just beautiful!

On Sept. 17 we flew from Manila to Boracay island in this Cebu Air prop plane. They are a great airline, and I would use them again.

After landing at the airport, we had to take a water taxi across to Boracay Island.

Our hotel, Boracay Beach Club, was right across the street from this lovely white sand beach.

It was rainy season, so we did have some on and off.. not too bad though. 

The kids enjoyed the beautiful beach.

Beach by our hotel. In the background is the famous Willy's Rock. 

We took a snorkel tour boat which cost $40 for four of us to snorkel for three hours.  Here are our guides, they were the best!

The turquoise water in Boracay is so pretty! 

The guys enjoyed relaxing.

Cool rock formation on Boracay seen from our boat. 

Snorkeling in the warm water was so much fun. 

Our hotel gave us a bag of bread to feed to the fish, like Marly is doing here. 

Fish eating the bread from Mar.

There were so many fish in the reefs, it was like being in an aquarium!

Fascinating reefs at Boracay, so relaxing to snorkel around in.

So many interesting creatures in the coral when we dove down... 

...like blue starfish...
We snorkeled for three hours straight and really enjoyed seeing all of the underwater life.
We all rated it "Better than the Keys" for a snorkeling experience!  

The kids enjoyed ice cream from a vendor in another boat who pulled up and sold them to us. 

Beautiful Boracay!  We were sorry to leave, but it was starting to rain more on our last day there.
Next time, I will not go during the rainy season- the rains and chance of typhoon are great between Sept.- November.
Although the areas we went to had little to no damage from Typhoon Haiyan,
I pray for the health and safety of everyone affected in the Philippines.