The Crown Regency Pt. 1

Wow. What a place. It does not have the most grand of entrances, but once inside you feel like a pretty important person. Your bags are carried for you and the workers here are very helpful and patient. My dad managed to lock himself out of the room and collect a few more door cards and the hotel has not kicked us out yet, so that is a good thing.

After a few days of being here, I feel like now is a better time to write about it since I have gotten used to the place. Overall I am satisfied with it even though I have to sleep on the couch and the floor where I get eaten alive by bugs. No joke about the bugs:


The room we are staying in is basically equivalent to a two-bedroom apartment complete with two bathrooms and a kitchen:


There are even three balconies each with a great view of Mactan Island. I was playing with long exposures and came out with some pretty decent shots that I am happy with even though all I brought with me was my 55-200mm telephoto and 50mm prime because my 18-55mm is such a cheap and horrible lens. I would have liked to take some decent wider angles but oh well.



The hotel is as strange as it is fancy. I must say, however, I do love the fact that it actually has running water and a shower. I feel a little closer to home that way…and I am already homesick. The swimming pool and gym are on the second floor and we are on the sixth but it is a nice walk down the stairs (screw elevators) to get there. The elevator is super quick and silent so you are already on your floor as soon as you press the button…almost. Being that it is the rainy season, there are flash floods and great droughts and as close to the apocalypse as you can think of. Okay, maybe not, but it does rain pretty hard and the lightning is pretty gnarly. It is a nice view from the balcony to see everyone and everything else being drenched while I stay cozy and dry. It is also fun to watch the streets flood and be glad that I am not down there.
The gym is pretty basic and a lot of the stuff is broken but it does the job and it is fun to use. I do not think I have ever sweated that much in my entire life at a gym because of the humidity. It is pretty gnarly. It is conveniently right near the pool so as soon as you finish your workout you can head right over to the pool and cool off even though the pool is like four and a half feet at its deepest. Oh well, though…what can you do?






^Cousin
More picture fun:

Haha

Green Tea?


Super nice buffet.

>

Final Crown Regency write-up coming soon.

Setting Out!

I apologize for the back-to-back posts, BUT we are heading to the Crown Regency Hotel for a week to stay in one of these:


because we know the right people. STOKED. There is a gym, swimming pool, Wi-Fi, basketball courts, and laundry services. Haha, I never thought I would be this happy about laundry services but once you feel the difference between machine-washed and hand-washed, I can bet you would prefer the comfort of machine-washed.

Anyways, gotta pack this up so we can head out.

Settling In...

Okay. I have finally settled in (as much as I can) to my new home for the next six weeks. This gives you an idea of my room:




We finally got Wi-Fi up and running which means I can use my phone again. I have to text through third-party apps but it is still worth it to hear from everyone.
We are here during the rainy season…the only other season the Philippines has besides the hot season. It is probably more accurate to classify them as The Rainy and Hot Season, and The Really Hot Season” just because that is what it feels like compared to California. Whenever I am in my room I still feel a little like I am in the US, but once I walk out of my door the culture shock sets in every time. It is so different here that it is kind of hard to explain everything but I will try.

Here is a little beginner’s crash course to Cebu:
-In the Philippines, there are no speed limits. People just drive at their paces and honk to let other drivers know that they are passing through. I would compare it more to the foot traffic of a crowded mall rather than the car traffic of California freeways. People just assert themselves in with reckless abandon. Okay maybe I exaggerated, but it is still pretty crazy if you are not used to it. J-walking seems like a sport rather than an offense here. Also, the cars and trucks here are much different compared to the behemoth SUVs and mid-size sedans everyone has in the states. I will get into those in a later post once I have photos to aid the experience.
-Running water and air conditioning here are a luxury. You do not really understand how much you take each for granted until you have to bathe yourself with a pitcher and a big bucket of clean water. Even washing your hands and brushing your teeth are made that much more arduous but not impossible.
-Roosters are annoying. They wake you up early.
-Washers and dryers do not exist. If you must wash your clothes, you will spend hours doing so by hand.
-Most people speak English…some are just better than others.
-Do not look rich and flash your bling. You will get robbed. Pirates do exist.
-There is no surf, but there is scuba diving. Take your side.
-People here live in much more cramped living situations than Americans would be used to seeing. There are no McMansions but they are content with it.
-People here are poor but they seem a little happier. The roads are gnarly rough, the karaoke never stops, and the island never sleeps.
-Bugs will eat you alive.

So yeah, we started unpacking the boxes:






Anyway, this post was meant to waste time more than anything. There was nothing important to be said except that I miss this:






And I want to come home to that as soon as possible.

Touchdown REMIX

V-Log 1

Touchdown!

PREFACE: I am sorry that this blog will be kind of unorganized at first. Everything is hectic right now and it is hard to concentrate on anything for any amount of time so if I jump from idea to idea, please do not hold it against me. I will try my best to make this thing as smooth as a Brazilian. Also, I will try to add a Video log at least once a week but no promises. So yeah…this is my life in the past 24 hours.
SIDE NOTE: If you have not yet noticed, I have tried to avoid using contractions when I type all of this. It is pretty difficult but after taking English 101 I have tried to get into the habit.
*Scroll down to just see the pictures and skip the incessant rambling.
---
Well that certainly was an adventure.
Wow, where should I begin?
Well, why not start from where we left off? Sounds good.

Let me just start this off by saying airports suck because they are airports. Every airport employee I encountered turned out to be really, really unpleasant. They were jerks. At least, in LAX they were jerks and everywhere else they were just business.
Once we finally got through the checkpoints and scans and were at our boarding gate, I decided to go and look for our plane. This is what I saw:

The plane was absent, but I did find a lovely young stranger all by her lonesome lying down in the corner. She was gorgeous. She was also nice enough to let me sit down and talk with her while we waited for our flights. I am not giving away the details, but I will say that I am sad she is leaving LA for Honolulu...but then again, how can I blame her? I hope she has fun in Honolulu but I also hope to see her again someday…she was a very interesting person.
About half an hour later we board the plane in preparation for the five hour flight to Honolulu. At this point it is starting to sink in that I will actually be in Hawaii which of course gets me stoked. The stoke-killer was the fact that we stayed in Honolulu for the better part of thirty minutes before we left again. This was basically my only experience of Hawaii (the street was actually lined with trees outside):


Except for about two minutes when I was actually outside of the airport since they decided to lock the doors to our terminal without telling us, so we had to circle back outside to get there. It was then that I had a revelation: my carry-on bag ripped my hands up like nobody’s business. I was way too cool for rolling luggage but not cool enough to bring my cushy handle strap from home. I suffered a long time from that mistake.

I do have to make one note, though. In the spirit of Hawaii and all that is good on Mother Earth, yes I did listen to Jack Johnson and nothing but Jack Johnson during my brief visit in Hawaii. I plan to be back for a lot longer someday soon since I love the vibe of that clump of islands. Just you wait.

I will be nice and save you the details of a ten-hour long flight from Honolulu to Manila. It was pretty boring…they showed Race to Witch Mountain, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and some other movie but I forgot what the title was. They also served us some actually good food considering it was airplane food. I am unsure why but the only things I drank Anyway, all I did the entire time was sleep and listen to my iPod.
Why not just list the playlist? It is pretty short, haha.
-Lil’ Wayne
-Talib Kweli
-Mozart Season
-PMToday
-Passion Pit
-A bunch of random new songs to see if I like them or not.

I am pretty surprised how much rap has taken over my iPod…but is that a good thing?
Anyway, we finally land in Manila. Super bummed at this point since I am legitly far away from home in California and I have no random friend to talk to since Stephanie left me behind in Hawaii. So we get off then we have to wait to pick up all of our boxes just to transfer them over to the next flight. It was super ridiculous but there was a super cute girl there all by her lonesome. I did not talk to her for the sole reason of not having to look at her Ed Hardy hat. Haha syke, but for real I am not sure why I did not say anything. I did, however, talk to a lady next to me and found out she lives in Honolulu (jealous), she knows where Victorville is, and she was a flight stewardess. She was really pretty for being like 35+. I need to move.
So then we get all of our boxes and the chaos just begins (as if it was not chaotic enough already) because we had to find a bus to take us and our boxes to the international airport. Mind you, this is all new to us since we flew Hawaiian Airlines this time instead of the usual Philippine Airlines. Hawaiian > Philippine. Then once we do all that good stuff, we have to go through two checkpoints in a row and wait for a long time because of crazy stuff. Then we settle in to wait an hour for a one hour flight.
After all of that crazy mess, we finally arrive and everyone is happy to see us. I actually have air conditioning in my room this time, which is a huge plus, and INTERNET which makes my life a little more happy. Granted, I still feel a little isolated since I do not speak the native language, nor do I look foreign to anyone here. The whole realization that this is my life for the next six weeks is slowly starting to sink in which makes me miss California more and more each day.
just as good practice. It is kind of annoying, though. Chances are I will give up eventually and this blog will become a little easier to read.

VISUAL:
LAX at midnight:


Convenience:


I have had some weird habit of photographing all of my meals...probably just to see how different they are compared to American food:





In Manila. Completely over travelling and for some reason my face looks swollen:


Manila airport:




More to come very soon once we get our internet situation figured out.

12 Hours Later

and I am finally at LAX. The best part? It is almost completely devoid of any signs of life except for the sporadic blasts from the speakerphone telling people their flights are going to leave without them. I actually really wish someone would say "Jessica Long we are leaving without you because we gave you like fifteen minutes and you still have not shown up so this is all on you. Good luck and have a good summer."
That would make me slightly happier considering I'm sitting against this pillar for the next...six and a half hours. What is it with that magic mixed number? Six and a half seems to be running my life right now. Six and a half hours, six and a half weeks...neither sound very exciting.

I am glad that the first pictures I am posting on this documentary are completely boring but that is what my life is right now. Haha. Enjoy?








Notice how happy I look because I get to stare at this:


until the sun comes up.



Oh and by the way, we fly for three hours then stop in Honolulu for an hour and fifteen minutes, then fly out again for like thirteen hours for another hour layover in Manila, then another hour flight to Cebu. FUN.

T-Minus Nineteen Hours

until the 8am flight.
We are packing all day and aiming to leave at 9pm. What a strange time to leave. I have a feeling this is going to be a long night of waiting in long lines, stressing out, and nothing - just absolute nothing.

I just hope my iPod, phone, and laptop will actually last the whole plane ride. If my iPod dies I will have no idea what to do. It is probably pretty sad that I am that dependent on technology but come on, man...I grew up in the digital age.
I know you are probably thinking
"You could read a book?"
Yeah, you are right, and I would if I packed any. Space is crucial when packing for overseas trips and my parents decided to pack five pounds of snacks in MY carry-on bag so it looks like I will just have to enjoy e-books...or just buy some at the airport.

Anyway, if you have no idea what is going on, this blog is to document the next six (and a half) weeks I will be spending all summer in the Philippines.

I cannot make any promises of greatness, or even entertainment, but this blog was created at the suggestion of an enthusiastic lovely lady named Georgia (spelling?) as a way to constructively waste time while I am there. It is also a chance to view the Philippines from the eyes of a 19-year old professional survival expert, travel guide, cheese connoisseur, and compulsive liar who would prefer to stay in California for the summer and become a professional survival expert, travel guide and cheese connoisseur (maybe).

LAX here I come...eventually.