Adventure Trip to Taal Volcano

 4th March 2012

One of the highlights during our trip in Manila was the adventure trip to Taal Volcano, the smallest active volcano in the world. We were picked up by the tour guide, Gerald at our lodging. The trip took over 2 hours to reach Tagaytay city.

We had a quick stop for natures call at a dining cafe, and one of us, Shak intrigued at the sight of 'balut'. Oh, just so you know, balut is a Filipino well-known dish, which is a boiled FERTILIZED egg. Yes it was boiled, but c`mon, there were feathers blended with the egg for god sake!

Of course none of us dared to have a taste of it, thus we requested our tour guide to eat it. And like some jakun photographers, we snapped the eating scene like nobody's business. Ahh.. yes, I tried quite hard to keep my face as straight as possible when seeing him eating the egg. Well, respect other cultures, right?

 Afterwards, we descended to the shore to board onto the boat. The ride to the volcano across the Taal Lake took about 30 minutes to arrive.

On the paper, it didn't sound too adventure, thus we expected amateur level of hiking with leisure walking to the top of volcano. With little preparation, we didnt bring the spare pants, spare shirts as per advised. Degil.

It was sunny and dry day. The local guide recommended us to hop on the horse with an additional price of Php600. I was thinking that the deal was fishy, thus mutually agreed with others for not riding the horse. On top of that, we were also advised upfront by the tour guide from the mainland for not using the horse-riding service. After all, we are still young and strong physically, arent we?

After battling with dust in sunny day with blood and sweat (ewah!), even some of us almost gave up walking to some extent, finally we reached at the top of the mountain. Yeeha!

We were awestruck with the sight of bright turqoise lake which is surrounded with high wall craters. And amazingly, it is still active and ever ready to explode.( O God pls dont let it happen while we are still around~)

We took some time to have a rest after challenging hiking (yes, for us who have been less and less fit over working years :P), and the next activities were  capturing every breathtaking scenery while we could and hitting golf ball into the lake. That is source of income to the local too.

We descended down the mountain, and yes, again with the breath of dusty air. Hmmph! It was not a pleasant experience tho.

After having picnic lunch, we were ready to depart to Manila city.

But hey! We have yet to snap the picture together with this cute tour guide, Gerald. So,we stopped in the middle of the highway for capturing this sweet pic(sweet as I see it. Hihi)!

It was funny that his shy behaviour made me assuming that he was a teenager who dropped out from school. But surprsingly he is in 30s with a daughter of 3yrs old!Aiyayaiii!~

Adele-Set Fire to the Rain

It started from Rolling in the deep, when I repeatitively hear the song, gradually I found that the beautiful voice of this English 24-yr-old singer is getting irresistable. And it was followed with Someone Like You, which has unleashed her undeniable strong vocal.

And come the next hits, Set Fire to the Rain, with its haunting title, now I am Adele- addicted. Never get enough with her songs especially this very new song.

Effortlessly beautiful singing.

On the other hand, her award-winning fiesta during recent Grammy Award at her first time appearance, I have a feeling that she has the potential to be the next Whitney Houston, ok, definitely not with the cocaine and drugs abuse whatsoever.:p

And while it was apparent that her physical is not as skinny as other gorge singers, she is beautiful in her own way, no?

Tivoli Garden Residence Apartment, Manila

We arrived in Manila in the morning, so next thing to do was to unpack our stuff, get refreshed before going off to the city. Oh hang on, for the intro, my friends and I went to a short trip to Manila recently. We wasted not much time at the Clark Airport and shoot to Tivoli Garden Residence Apartment in Makati city.

 

 

The local settlements along the way are almost at  run down state, but as we entered the apartment premise, we were caught offguard. Complete different as compared to the surrounding community. And silently I thank God that our lodging for this trip was not that bad.

 

checking in

counting pesos in hand.converting frm little RM, it was a lllooottt man!

Ok, let`s have a brief tour inside our shelter. This apartment comprises of 3 bedrooms with two bathroom, living room and kitchen. It was a small unit of apartment , but I think the landlord is very genius in deco-ing the available space so that it looks bigger.

                                                                             the pantry

 

 Flat screen LCD, with American Idols and Best of How I Met Your Mother marathon in Starworld channel,enough to make us felt at home. Not that I am really a fan of AI, but, who cares~

 

Overall, the stay was really worth the money we spent, at super affordable rate and backpacker-friendly! Oh yes, I booked the website from booking.com.

Charles and Keith for the next complete wishlist

Oh yes, nowadays, travelling to KL hasn't been a regular trip anymore. And recently I had an annual ACD assesment at KLCC tower.The assessment took over 3 hours to complete, and even the assessor interupted casually in the middle of the assessment "alaa tak payah serious sangat ngn ACD ni, datang KL mesti shopping.." duhh!~~

Ok, lets make it short, the assessment went well *:-DD*, I was delighted upon exitting the room and skipped the tour around Suria KLCC and went to the hotel room, instead.

I changed my formal attire of blouse, pants and shoes to shirt, jeans and sneakers. Off I went to have a stroll at Pavilion.

Speaking of wishlist, I`ve been meaning to buy a pair of high heels, I mean literally high, not just one or two inch higher, but 4 inches and I always hooked with Charles and Keith collections. When entering the Charles and Keith  store, I always had an adrenaline rush seeing the beautiful shoes, but man! why they are sooo freaking high for my height? And the intention stopped there, with no Charles & Keith was grabbed.

And this time around, as always I entered the same store again to browse around the shoes, and aaahh.. , being alone with no friend by my side to be 'ruler reminder', I slipped off my sneaker and there~!

It felt so good in it that I just didn`t care of how ridiculously tall  I will be. I guess that`s why womens' obsess towards stuff like shoes or bags, for that matter, sometimes beyond reasonable explanation, no?

So now this pair has joined the rest of my shoes collections, notice how it differs with my other footwears? :)