Rear Window

2008-01-31.

A quick tip for couples flying coach class on long-haul flights: if you’re riding a 747-400 and you like windows, reserve a pair of seats at the very rear of the plane. The last three rows of seating go from 3-4-3 to 2-4-2 because of the tapering of the fuselage, so you can reserve two seats by the window without anyone being in the middle of two people, no awkward clambering over strangers to get out, and a bit of extra arm space between chair and window. One more cool thing I found out about the rearmost seat — if you look back, you can see the tail wing:

Major disadvantages to the rear twosome seats: while it’s far enough from the lavs not to stink, people do tend to congregate in the emergency exit space behind the seats for loud conversation and leaning on chair backs. Plus, you’re pretty much the last off the plane. But I think it’s worth it for sixteen hours of relative comfort and guiltless reclining. See the SeatGuru chart.

LAX Transfer

2008-01-31.

We flew home from Hong Kong, crossing the Pacific through a miserable haze of cough meds and throat lozenges, but the real fun began on landing at Los Angeles Airport (LAX). As is standard U.S. port-of-entry policy, all transferring passengers had to disembark and go through immigration and customs, picking up bags at a baggage claim and depositing them at a dropoff after customs before continuing on to their connecting flights.

The way to immigration from our arrival gate was through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, ending in a long, snaking immigration queue in a crowded, dimly lit, sterile basement — where there were too few immigration representatives, too many arriving residents, and, to my bladder’s dismay, no restrooms. (On the up side, we were waved through customs with nothing to declare because dried mango balls are not technically fruit.) Worse still was the fact that we had less than two hours to make our transfer, and the wait for our bags plus the wait in the immigration queue had left us no hope of catching our connection. Fortunately our airline had a service counter right at the bag dropoff, so we were able to rebook a later flight — the main drawback being that we would have to spend three extra hours at LAX. Not so bad, right?

We emerged from the International Arrivals exit and looked around — and could not find anything indicating where passengers transferring to domestic flights are supposed to go. There were no signs or arrows pointing to domestic departures, the single escalator coming from above was going down, and the travel information desk was unmanned. Finally we were approached by a cheery, official looking woman equipped with a map of the airport and instructions for transfers — who turned out to be a volunteer for a local homeless shelter who was soliciting donations from hapless lost travelers like us. So after learning that we were supposed to go up a small unmarked escalator out by the arrivals driveway, we had to stand through a rather lengthy spiel and give a ten. Thanks, Los Angeles!

Upstairs, the line for security guaranteed that we would have missed our flight had we not rebooked. Worse, there were no signs or guides as to whether to remove shoes, laptops, and jackets, or what went in separate bins, causing a scene of general chaos at the head of the line, exacerbated by yelling TSA guards and beeping metal detectors.

Once inside the concourse, we couldn’t find our gate because the arrows had fallen off the signs, or had loosened so that they hung haphazardly over the heads of passengers. I dropped by the money changer to get rid of my Hong Kong dollars, but got stuck in line behind a trio of confused women trying to buy Hong Kong dollars for their trip.

The only decent food we could find was La Salsa (which looks a lot like Baja Fresh), and the floor was dirty, but there was a nice view of planes on the tarmac.

Then we left and flew to a new transfer. At Chicago O’Hare. I don’t remember much of that other than us walking through a crowded terminal looking for food and finding nothing better than McDonalds before flying out to National Airport and taking a taxi home, where Pandora was happy to see us.

I still like travel, and I still like flying, but wow, we went through some pretty trashy airports on this trip, especially compared to HKG.

Ibis North Point

2008-01-30.

For our two night stay in Hong Kong, we reserved a Harbour View room at the Hotel Ibis North Point, a small budget hotel in a mostly residential area on Hong Kong Island. The hotel sits right across a bus terminal from the waterfront, just a few steps from stairs down to the North Point MTR, making it quite convenient to the rest of Hong Kong. The neighborhood is very local and residential, with nearby tenements, small stores and noodle houses, a wet market and “cooked food center” down the road, and not much English spoken, so the easy access to the more touristy spots of Hong Kong was appreciated — six quick MTR stops to Central.

The guest rooms at Ibis North Point are very, very cheap because they are very, very small. Our full-size bed took up most of the room, with barely enough space between bed and wall for our bags, which we had to hop over to get to the tiny desk and window. The carpet had coffee stains, the bathroom was tiny and lacked an exhaust fan, the mattress was a bit too firm, the walls a bit thin, the elevators rather slow and cramped, the lobby a floor up from the hotel entrance, and internet only avaiable in prepaid cards at 3 hour increments, but hey, we were paying under $60/night, and it was still better than tolerable, even with two in a room. An added plus: harbour-facing rooms commanded a lovely view of Kowloon and the old peninsula which used to be Kai Tak Airport.

So yeah, for the low price, Ibis North Point is a great hotel if you need a small room with just the bare necessities, close to the MTR. We paid a total of about US$240 for two nights with a couple of internet cards, just a bit lower than what we paid for a single night at Novotel Citygate. That’s pretty good.

More info: Official Ibis North Point Hotel page, and TripAdvisor reviews.

Short Hong Kong Trip

2008-01-29.

After leaving Manila we dropped by Hong Kong for a couple of days to sightsee. I hadn’t been there since 2000 (and never got to see much at the time) and Amy hadn’t been at all, so we were looking forward to checking out some sights: Victoria Peak, Star Ferry, HK Museum of Art, and of course try some food. That seemed like more than enough for two days.

Unfortunately we got a touch of bronchitis on our last day in Manila. On landing in Hong Kong and alighting from the Airport Express, we went straight to our hotel in North Point to sleep off the sickness. I had enough energy that afternoon to go out and get us some supplies at Watsons, and some beef brisket noodle soup at “YOU ME YOU ME,” a noodle house by the hotel (best noodle soup ever, ordered by pointing at pictures on a menu), but we had not the energy to sightsee, and decided to hold that off till the next day when we felt better.

The next day dawned gray and overcast, and the trip to Victoria Peak was shrouded in thick fog. There wasn’t much to see from the top beyond the immediate vicinity of Hong Kong Island, and the anvil-shaped mall at the Peak was a tourist trap (who comes to Hong Kong to eat Burger King and Bubba Gump anyway?), but we found some decent dimsum and fried rice for lunch at Tien Yi, and the novelty of riding the steep old funicular Peak Tram was quite fun all by itself.

After this we took MTR to Central and got on the Star Ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon. (The actual path to the ferry was a bit hard to find due to lots of construction going on along the waterfront.) From there we were crestfallen to find that the Art Museum is closed Thursdays, so we settled for a walk along the Kowloon waterfront’s Avenue of Stars, taking in the view of the Hong Kong Island skyline across Victoria Harbour. Walking back to the MTR, we wandered through Kowloon Park, enjoying the flamingo pond, hedge maze, and Chinese garden. Later that night we had dinner with Louie (an old classmate and friend from Ateneo) and Ginny, who treated us to an excellent Chinese dinner at Yung Kee, the famed roast goose restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong.

And the next morning, we flew back to the USA. All in all, a great visit. We really only had one day to actually see the sights, but I’d say we managed to get the touristy Hong Kong basics done. Full Hong Kong photoset here, and a selection of photos follows:

Manila Pollution

2008-01-28.

This is an average windless morning in Manila. The smog of vehicle exhaust and coal plant emissions sits heavy on the city, blanketing everything in a thick cloud of throat-itching particles. It seeps in everywhere; you can even smell it through closed windows with the air conditioner running.

When our plane took off from Manila we looked back at the cobwebs of haze settling in the valleys and immersing the buildings in blue smoke, and we heaved a sigh of relief that we were out of that. Then the plane landed in Hong Kong and we saw the same thing. Turns out smog in China is just as bad.

Looking Out Car Windows in Manila

2008-01-27.

Upper left: Outside the walls of Intramuros.

Upper right: Afternoon siesta in a pillowed nook by the street.

Lower left: Family gathering on a highway island.

Lower right: Father and son on Pasay Road in Makati.

Stuff We Did in Manila

2008-01-27.

Condotel

Having three brothers plus anywhere from one to three of their girlfriends and a nephew in the house made things a bit tight, so Mom was nice enough to spring for a room for me and Amy at the nearby “condotel” Le Gran. The first night there proved trying, however, as the studio unit we rented had only a day bed — more of a couch, really, which had been made for the sleep of a single person significantly shorter than either of us. So that was a pretty cramped night — and the bathroom had no hot water. The leasing office moved us to a backup one-bedroom unit with a full bed and a shower heater, and this proved adequate for the rest of our stay. The view was nice, too.

Malls

In a city where the public spaces and parks are hot, polluted, and sometimes of dubious character, shopping malls tend to be the recreational destination of choice. Given our proximity to Greenhills, V~~irra~~-Mall and the tiangge were of course our most frequent visits. We also managed to hit Megamall, the Makati/Ayala Mall complex (SM, Glorietta, Landmark, Greenbelt), Market Market, and High Street. Notable malls we missed — Mall of Asia, Robinson’s, Shangri-La, COD, Farmer’s, and Manuela Edsa — will have to wait for another visit.

Intramuros Walk

To give Amy a taste of Old Manila, we went over to Intramuros and went on one of Carlos Celdran’s Walking Tours through San Agustin Church and Casa Manila. Celdran is a brilliant tour guide, dressed for the occasion in a flamboyant parody of period costume, accessorized with various hats, props, and a mini-boombox for ambience. Going beyond simple historical context and descriptions of times, locations, and artifacts, Celdran peppers the script with comedic trivia, biting political commentary, song-and-dance, and even prayer.

While I had seen Casa Manila before, I had never been inside San Agustin Church, and I had no idea that it contained the tomb of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. Both church and adjoining museum were a fascinating historical treat, and we’ll be returning next trip to peruse the art and artifacts there more closely, and also check out Fort Santiago, which I’ve only ever seen at night during a cousin’s wedding reception.

Museums

Amy, being an artist, was of course interested in seeing some of our historic talent, so we dropped by the Ayala Museum and the Bangko Sentral Metropolitan Museum.

The “new” Ayala Museum (my first visit since they demolished the old one) of course had a gallery for the classic Philippine History dioramas, as well as exhibits on Damian Domingo, Juvenal Sanso’s ubiquitous Water series, and the “Pioneers of Philippine Art” exhibit, which amusingly featured such great historic painters as Juan Luna, Fernando Amorsolo … and Fernando Zobel. (Zobel, of course, was himself a member of the Ayala family which founded the museum — also a great artist, but I’d say there’s still a kapal-mukha temerity for the Ayala Museum to rank him with Amorsolo and Luna as a “pioneer.”).

At the Bangko Sentral Metropolitan Museum (just across Roxas Boulevard from the Manila Yacht Club) there was an exhibit of paintings by Felix Resureccion Hidalgo: among them “Las virgenes Christianas” and “La barca de Aqueronte.” Upstairs from this was a fascinating mix of paintings from the permanent collection, including this early Amorsolo portrait of a woman which Amy and I both found remarkably sensitive in comparison to his later works of historic exposition.

Ateneo

I couldn’t let this trip go by without taking Amy to see my old academic stomping grounds. We met up with Rowie, Bok, and Erik, friends from my old college barkada, and went around the college campus a bit, noting the many changes sice our graduation ten years ago, then headed down to the Grade School campus to check out the Rock Garden. The day was capped off with pizza and mojos at Shakey’s, which, though it is an old American chain, is far bigger on Katipunan these days than it is anywhere that I know in the USA, and is an old outside-Ateneo establishment.

So that’s what occupied us the week and a half we were in Manila. Here’s the full photoset from that part of the trip, and a distinct photoset for the walking tour of Intramuros. Enjoy. I haven’t really bothered titling, captioning, or tagging any of them yet.

Fortune Island Dive Video

2008-01-21.

Quick followup to the Fortune Island entry: I also have a short video from the dive, about a minute long. There isn’t much to see, and I didn’t know about the camera’s “Underwater” setting till after the dive, so things look rather blue.

Note how barren the reef looks; most of it was crushed coral. This is due to years of illegal dynamite fishing used by local fishermen. They catch more fish at one time this way, but destroy the reef, leaving no spawning grounds for future catches. The island has yet to recover, and the practice of blast fishing continues unabated, so sea life here is neither as plentiful nor as diverse as it once was decades ago.

Fortune Island Dive

2008-01-21.

Dive #84

Date: 31 Dec 2007

Location: Fortune Island

Maximum depth: 70 feet

Dive time: 45 minutes

Air used: 2000 psi

Strong northeast winds caused significant chop en route from Tali, with a troublesome rolling swell persisting even in the lee of the island. This unfortunately made the best Fortune Island dive sites — Canyons and Blue Hole — inaccessible, so the only relatively calm alternative was a generic reef dive off the island’s west side, within sight of those incredibly campy fake Greek ruins the resort recently put up.

My gear was, as usual, cobbled together from family leftovers, but I was glad to at least have my own mask. The BC vest was a source of some grief, partly my fault: I forgot to attach the direct feed hose, an omission which I only discovered after jumping into the water. (My brother Francis was kind enough to fix that for me.) Another annoyance presented itself after swimming against the surface current to the anchor line at the front of the boat — I could not descend without first finding the BC’s vent valve pull-string or deflator button, both of which were proving hard to find on this borrowed BC while simultaneously trying to hang on to the anchor line against the current in a heavy rolling swell. Partly it was my own unfamiliarity with the unit, but partly it was that the vent valve pull handle was star-shaped rather than the standard ball I was used to, and the deflator button was also of a different shape from what I expected. I spent about 500 psi of air flailing about the vest trying to find either deflator before finally finding the star-shaped vent pull, deflating, and making my way down the anchor line.

I took a few photos and some video with my Canon Powershot SD 1000 (in a WP-DC13 underwater housing) but there was really not much to see. Most of the dive was unremarkable, a landscape of crushed coral populated by small fish with occasional glimpses of larger life occasionally passing by. Highlights included a medium-sized giant clam, a small fish with a long and thin dorsal fin, and a large jack which was unfortunately too distant to photograph. Some highlights:

Full photoset here, and short dive video here. Amy also had her own [mis]adventure on the island itself while we were diving but you’ll have to ask her about that sometime.

Tali, Fuego, Fortune

2008-01-20.

Mom picked us up from the heavily crowded, polluted NAIA Terminal 2 arrivals driveway, and from there we skipped over Manila and drove straight to Tali Beach, where we had borrowed a relative’s friend’s villa. (The trip is normally about two hours’ drive, but took six hours thanks to pre-New Year traffic and heavy SLEX construction. We also swung through Tagaytay to pause for food and restrooms, but unfortunately didn’t get much of a view of Taal through the mist.) The villa at Tali was a lovely Mediterranean affair right by the sea, its architecture airy and wide open to the sea, with several bedrooms, a sprawling backyard and pool overlooking the bay, and a sunny second-floor balcony with a view. We did a Dec. 31st dive at Fortune Island, and New Year was spent with relatives at Punta Fuego. Some photos from the four days we spent there:

Full photoset here.

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