Our Philippines Adventure

Sunday, October 25, 2009

So once we made it to the resturant and we drained our bladders and waited for the rest of our group...we had to walk another piece to the other hut where we caught the ferry to the actual Dolphin Island (i found someone else's description of the place!).

The ferry boat rides were very relaxing with the purr of the motor and the nice breeze!

Here are a few of our crew.

That was our destination!

Dolphin Island

The next few posts will be about our trip to Dolphin Island. I tried to find a good description of this place on the internet but there wasn't one...so i will try my best to put into words what it is exactly. This is the view of the place from the main highway. On this day it was high-tide and the water completely covered the road. These children took advantage of this fun!

We had no choice but to walk to the park. Sophia and I had to use the bathroom pretty badly so all this water sure didn't help. This place had what we call a "fishery" and a wildlife zoo(such sad living conditions for those animals) and then you headed out to the island where the dolphins are.

Walking with all our stuff!

Who is that beauty! Carrying our water of course!

Sophia and I anxiously asked the first attendant we could see where the bathroom was. He pointed out toward the water. We started that way but were a little leary of crossing that bridge since the water was almost coming through the boards. I turned around to double-check that we were going the right direction. "Surely they have a bathroom closer or in one of those various buildings"...was my thought process. I was forgetting that I was in the land of anti-toilet paper. We indeed were heading in the right direction. The bathroom was in this hut which was the resturant. Luckily they had some toilet paper. The floor was wet and there was a big garbage can of water to flush with. This was something I NEVER got use to.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Ozamis

Here are a few pictures of the big city of Ozamis. This is where they would do their shopping, where Richzer worked and where Richard and his siblings attended elementary school. It was about 18 kilometers away(30 minute drive).

This is one of the department stores.

The pedicabs had motors here...well some of them. It was always comical to see how many people they would fit on these vehicles. One even had a small refridgerator strapped to the back....along with their other belongings on the top and family members inside the cab!

Pigs...no delivery service

We had pulled over to have the air pressure in the tires checked when I heard this pig squealing!

It was making all kinds of noises. Apparently this must have been a pig farm or the distribution site because we saw these 2 parties take off pigs. I love how they just throw the pig on the motorcycle like it is a family member!

This porker had a little more room!

Balut

This is the famous "duck-embryo" delicasy called Balut. It is a very common street food in the Philippines. At night there are about 5-6 Filipinos along the street with their coolers and a little table for their customers to sit and enjoy this 12ph snack.

Add salt....just like a hard-boiled egg...

Open it up, inspect the poor little duck who ALMOST saw the light of day or felt the water under his webbed feet.

wikipedia defines the balut as follows:

A balut is a fertilized duck (or chicken) egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside that is boiled and eaten in the shell.

Fertilized duck eggs are kept warm in the sun and stored in baskets to retain warmth. After nine days, the eggs are held to a light to reveal the embryo inside. Approximately eight days later the balut are ready to be cooked, sold, and eaten. Vendors sell cooked balut out of buckets of sand (used to retain warmth) accompanied by small packets of salt. Uncooked balut are rarely sold in Southeast Asia. In the United States, Asian markets occasionally carry uncooked balut eggs. The cooking process is identical to that of hard-boiled chicken eggs, and baluts are enjoyed while still warm.