Glimpses of Greece and Turkey

Mykonos, a Greek island in the Cyclades, battleground of Zeus and the Titans in the Greek mythology.
Greek tycoon Aristotle Onasis and Jacqueline Kennedy stayed frequently here after their marriage.

The Parthenon atop the Acropolis as viewed from their hotel.

Twice a year, my niece Roxanna goes on a trip - outside the United States in summer and in the US, where she stays now,  in the fall. Last summer, she went on a tour to Greece and Turkey, culminating on a seven-day trip to the Greek isles as well as Istanbul and Kusadasi in Turkey. 

"I plan my trip way ahead of time," says Roxanna, who lives in Florida where she works as a medical technologist in a hospital, in an email. "After coming back from a trip, I plan for the next trip to keep me sane. I got inflicted by the travel bug."
She often travesl with friends, "mostly single women who are seasoned travelers" like her. "I feel like I got to see places on earth before it disappears. I want to see the ancient and new wonders of the world while they exist. Traveling is my passion," says Roxanna, who hails from San Fernando, Romblon, in the central Philippines.
Roxanne, nicknamed Baby, migrated to the US after joining her siblings in Canada. From Canada, she went to Texas and then moved to Florida.
"My philosophy is that I will travel while I am able - physically, financially and mentally. Hope alzheimer or dementia won't strike me before I retire," she kidded. "About 75 percent of the travelers I met outside the US are retired elderly, with canes and taking all sorts of medication." 

View of the Caldera, a  basin-like depression
caused by the collapse of the center of a volcano.

The sights of them strengthen her resolve to travel while she is young "because traveling involves a long while of walking, too. It's a waste of money paying for a trip if you just stay in a bus or a hotel because you can't go with the group on a walking tour."
She prefers guided tour offered by tour companies. "There are several types of tour: budget, first class, luxury, independent. I take a tour based on the itinerary I like. It could be first class or budget. I have not taken a luxury tour, too expensive for my budget.
On a 12 to 15-day European tour, she says, her budget is usually $5K-plus for airfare, options, pocket money and meals. She doesn't shop on tours knowing that prices on tourist destinations would be about thrice the normal price. She usually picks the month of May for a tour outside the US. "That's when the airfare is low and tourist sites or landmarks are not too crowded."

Blue-doomed church on the island of Santori.

Going back to her latest tour, she picked Greece because the tour packaged included Turkey. From Orlando, they layed over in Philadelphia and then flew to Athens, where she says she felt the ancient glory of the city. They stayed at the Divani Acropolis Hotel, which was close to the Parthenon, and toured Athens the following day to see its major landmarks.

They spent the second day touring the city of Athens and dined in one of the tavernas at the Plaka, a shopping district, where they enjoyed watching Greek folk dances and listening to Greek singers. "We ate authentic Greek food and tasted wine: ouzo (yuk), mousaka, dolmades and gyro (pronounced as yee-ro)."

Performers dance at a taverna where they dined.

It was cold in Athens when they went there with light showers in the afternoon. "Good thing I had brought a sweater. In Europe, you always bring a sweater whatever is the season."
On the third day, she and 47 others in the group from the US started their cruise to the Greek isles. All in all, there were 1,300 passengers in the cruise that started from the port of Piraeus where they saw lots of Filipinos. "I think majority of the port employees were Pinoys (Filipinos). They were all over, from the port entry, ticketing, porters, baggage handlers, visa checkers, etc. When we boarded the ship and got into our cabins, we found out that the steward was also a Pinoy. So we got a special service."
The situation was similar in her other cruises. "I had been to the Bahamas and found out that about 60-70 of the cruise crew were Pinoys. And, yes, you are always well-taken care of. They give excellent services and the Pinoy entertainers were good as well."
The first place they went to was Istanbul, Turkey. "Istanbul surprised me. It is a fascinating place, it straddles two continents. One side is in Europe and the other in Asia. The European side was the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The Asian side is called Asia Minor or Anatolia. The two continents are divided by the Strait of Boshphorous."

White houses with blue domes, a postcard view of Santorini in Ola.

One of the memorable places they had gone to was the Sultanahmet mosque or Blue Mosque, so-called because the tiles used to adorn the interior were blue. "It's a beautiful mosque, with a massive history."she gushed. The also went to Hagia Sophia, a former cathedral turned into a mosque and later into a museum."The Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia are  facing each other.'
Roxanna said they were told by their guide that the Blue Mosque was copied form Hagia Sophia, which had a distinct byzantine architecture, and just added seven minarets.

Other places they visited were the Topkapi Palace, the official residence of the Ottoman Sultans for about 400 years. "Lots of history. Inside the palace, we went into three different rooms where gems and stones of the royalties were kept. No cameras were allowed so we did not take any picture."

On a tender going to the port with co-travelers Cora and Art.

Their last stop in Istanbul were the bazaars where she had a good experience in price bargaining. "Once you touch something they will not stop (pestering you) until you buy. So if you don't want to buy anything just let your eyeballs roll around and zip your mouth."
The bazaars, she said, was a place where you have to haggle for a good price if you want to buy anything because the prices are marked up by "probably 10 times".
"I wanted to buy a souvenir and saw this small replica of the Blue Mosque. Although I was just looking around and didn't say anything, a salesman started following me and persuading me to buy something, probably sensing that I wanted to buy something," she recalled.

The city of Athens viewed from the Acropolis.

"Finally I saw the one I liked. You can pay either in euro or Turkish lira. At that time 1 euro was 3 lira, 1 US dollar was 1.5 lira. When I asked for the price, he said 30 euros. I said 10, he said 20. When I acted like I was going away, he said 'how much do you want?' I said 15. He looked at me and said ok, which confirmed my suspicion that the price was jacked up so much."
Going through the bazaars for food, coffee and spices, their last stop was a carpet store where some Americans in the tour bought carpets. "We watched the demo on how they weave carpets by hand, no machine was involved. While watching the demo, they served hot apple teas (very good) and lion's milk (Turkish liquor fermented anis which I did  not like).
"There were two kinds of carpet/rugs: silk and woolen.Silk was more expensive, from $2,000 to $5,000, depending on the size. They ship it to any parts of the world but it would take weeks or months. First you choose what design you like. If the design was not readily available, they will weave if for you, with your signature weaved into the carpet and would be shipped to your address when it's finished.

Plaka district where shops and restaurants are located.

"Some Americans in the tour bought rugs that would be shipped in the next few weeks. They were really nice and I could have bought a carpet if I had the money. We returned to our ship at night and went to other islands, one island each day. One of the islands was called Kusadasi, where the ruins of the ancient city of Ephesus was one of the tourist attractions. Kusadasi is a also a place where the Virgin Mary was believed to have lived after Jesus died.


"There are so many things to say yet but I would rather let your readers go to these places to see what I am saying. They are beautiful places to visit."

The first Olympic stadium in Athens where the Olympic flame
starts and ends at the place where the Olympic games is held.

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Palawan's Coron islands

Coron island in the Philippines may not be as popular as Boracay island but it has one of best shores for swimming or snorkeling. The third largest island in the Calamian Group of Islands in the northern Palawan province about 310 kilometers southwest of Manila, the country's capital, Coron is more known for several Japanese shipwrecks of World War II vintage.

From left: Bernadette, Lala and Lericita
 at the steps of Mt. Tapias.

The area around the wrecks has pleasant rock formations which provide for excellent snorkeling experience, with underwater visibility extending up to 80 feet (24 meters). The water is often calm. Coron is one of the most visited destinations for wreck diving in the Philippines. Wreck dive sites are found in a depth as shallow as 10–30 feet and as deep as 120–140 feet. Most are in the range of about 60–80 feet, perfect for sports divers.


But enough of the text-book type narrative about Coron as a tourist destination. You can search such information in the Internet. What you can't search in the web are real tour experiences. And that's what I want to provide in this post - this time it's the first-hand experiences of my two nieces and a sister-in-law.

Swimming in clear water, from left, Bernadette, Lala and Lericita

They took a promotion flight from Manila to Coron with the local airlies Cebu Pacific. The two-way ticket cost them 2,211 pesos each. At the current rate of about 42 pesos to a US dollar, that's more or less $52.5. They got the package from the website of Corongaleri.Com.Ph. It was a guided tour.


On day one, they climbed Mt. Tapias, which has more than 700 steps. "We were challenged to climb because our guide brought with him his 83-year old grandfather who took the climb in a breeze. We did not regret it because the view from the top was so beautiful. It provided a panorama of the island of Coron and the neighboring islands," says my niece Lala in an email.

A bee on an indigenous plant they took picture of along the way.

The day-two tour, that cost them 650 pesos extra, took them to the Kayangan Reef, Twin Peaks Reef, Arwayan Beach and the Coral Garden, which they said was the most memorable. "The water was so clear beyond 10 feet you can see the corals from the boat very clearly," Lala. says. "The corals were of different colors, the sight was so beautiful."


Their package included lunch, a tour guide, life vest but they rented the snorkeling gear.

One of their rooms at the Ralph pension house.

On day three, dubbed as Las Islas Ecotour  that cost them 750 pesos each, they went to the Barracuda Lake, Banol Beach, Calachuchi Reef , Sunset beach and Siete Pecados. What they appreciated most in this tour was the Calachuchi Reef.


"To go there, you have to use a snorkel to enter the cave with a submerge entrance. In the cave, you will find a lone calachuchi tree on a middle island. The sand along the sides inside the cave is so fine like a baby talk powder," says Lala. "It is advisable to bring an underwater camera so you can take beautiful sights inside the cave."


Their misfortune is they did not have an underwater camera.

The living room that goes with the three bedrooms.

They stayed at the Ralph pension house. The owner told them that everything they need in Coron - small restaurants, Internet shop, shops for souvenirs and local finger foods for taking home -  were just five minutes walk from the pension house. 

They did not go to those places but the Coron Galeri where they booked their package tours "was just a few minutes away." Food in the restaurant where the took supper cost 100 to 150 pesos a meal and they swear that the food were fine because they were like home-cooked.




Those who want to inquire about the tours here's the link of the Coron Galeri http://www.ralphspensionhouse.webs.com.

Sunset at Coron islands.

For those who want to go diving around Coron Island here's some tips I got from the Internet. 


There are many many dive sites around the island but the most famous is the Gunter's Cave, also know as the Cathedral Cave because at a certain time of the day the sun throws a beam of light through the cave hole illuminating it inside. The cave was named after Gunther Bernett who was part of the first group of divers to  explore it after local fishermen told him about its existence. 


The wreck diving sites in Coron Bay include the Irako wrech, Okinawa Maru wreck, Akitsushima wreck, Kogyo Maru wreck, Olympia Maru wrech, Kyokuzan Maru wreck, East Tangat gunboat wreck, Nanshin Maru wreck, Lusong Gunboat wreck and Skeleton Wreck.


The real name of the ship which was long been called as the East Tangat gunboat was discovered just recently by a group of Dutch divers who spent a couple of days digging the sand around its stern. I presume that the name of the ships in the sites Lusong Gunboat wreck and Skeleton wreck have been known. 


The underwater views of the sunken Japanese ships off Coron Island are listed in Forbes Traveler Magazine’s top-10 bests cuba diving sites in the world.

A group of tourists entering the Subterranean River.

Palawaan province, which faces the South China Sea on the north and the Sulu Sea on the south, has many tourist spots itself, including the Subterranean River which passes through a long cave.  
The 8.2-kilometer underground river in Puerto Pricesa City, the provincial capital, has been declared a national park and listed in Unesco's heritage program. It's among the nominess for the New 7 Wonders of the World.


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The world's best cities to travel

Despite the world economic crisis, travel has gone up with 270 million travelers leaving on vacation this year, Yahoo! Travel and Leisure reported on Thursday, quoting the Airports Council International.


Yahoo! Travel and Leisure said Bangkok is number one destination of most travelers this year, citing a readers's survey for its 16th annual World's Best cities. Florence comes close on its hees..


“Cities absolutely dominate over countryside experiences for travelers,” it quoted Priscilla Alexander of Protravel International as saying. “You won’t have someone going to France and not going to Paris.”
Yahoo! Travel and Leisure took into consideration factors such as efficient transportation and affordable dining, among others.


Here's the top 10 cities:

No. 1 Bangkok
The capital of Thailand with of 10 million people, Bangkok has sky crappers jostling for space, while beneath them are cabs and tuk-tuks inching on heavy traffic. For shopping and dinning, Bangkok has an array of bacchanalia. It has nabbed the number one post for two years running and has been listed in the top 10 destinations every year since 2002.




No. 2 Florence
This much-loved Renaissance city is set amid rolling hills studded with towers and churches. New galleries and aperitivo bars share the compact city center with more than one million works of art — among them Michelangelo’s David and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. With its high-fashion brands like Gucci and Cavalli, succulent steaks and the traditional artisan workshops of the Oltrarno, Florence beat out European cities many times its size.


No. 3 
Rome


Dubbed as the Eternal City, Rome has a series of starchitect-designed buildings. Emblematic of the bold new look are the Ara Pacis, a travertine-and-glass building by Richard Meier, and Zaha Hadid’s Maxxi (Museum of 21st Century Arts), which debuted in 2010 in the northern Flaminio zone. The Colosseum has opened its dungeons and third-floor gallery to tourists for the first time.


No. 4 New York


New York is know for its bright-lights-big-city grandeur where one can always find a quiet neighborhood. The trick is balancing the city’s outsize spectacle with intimate experiences. The latest neighborhood to pull it off is the Chelsea arts district, between 10th and 11th avenues, most notable for the just-expanded High Line, a landscaped strip of elevated public space. For a picnic lunch, stop into Chelsea Market, a food-court-on-steroids, and savor a piece of the city that’s been voted No. 1 within the U.S. and Canada every year since 2000.

No. 5 Istanbul

Straddling the Bosporus — and thus the only major city that occupies both Asia and Europe — Istanbul also spans the ancient and modern worlds. The sounds of construction compete with the call of the muezzin, and the skyline, a glittering ribbon of palaces and mosques, is dotted with rooftop nightclubs. One reason the city skyrocketed back onto the World’s Best Cities list after two absent years. The appeal of Istanbul’s latest culinary trend: resurrecting ancient Ottoman recipes, such as garlicky lamb’s trotter served on toast at Asitane and juicy kubbes — dumplings filled with beef and pignoli — at Cercis Murat Kona, on the city’s Asian side.

No. 6 Cape Town

Cape Town is sometimes labeled the least African of African cities — which, depending on who’s doing the labeling, is said with enthusiasm or disparagement. But whatever you think of the must-see destination, post-World Cup, the city radiates a palpable cool, and now it has surged back onto the World’s Best list with a higher score than in 2009 (the last time it appeared). Split your time between urban pursuits (browsing the trendy Neighborgoods Market and local artists’ galleries) and excursions to see wildlife, sample wines, and stroll the beaches of the Cape of Good Hope reserve.


No. 7 Siem Reap

Siem Reap is best known as the gateway to the Angkor Wat temple complex and other 12th-century Khmer ruins such as Ta Prohm, which remains as archaeologists found it in 1860, with banyan and kapok trees slowly reclaiming its sandstone carvings. But now the city has evolved from a cluster of riverfront villages into a full-fledged destination complete with art galleries, boutique hotels — and a World’s Best Cities designation. Sample the local cuisine at the FCC Angkor, a 31-room Art Deco hotel and restaurant, and drop by McDermott Gallery for black-and-white photographs of Angkor Wat.


No. 8 Sydney


Part outsize beach resort, part culture capital, Sydney, the perennial World’s Best City winner Down Under, exemplifies the art of relaxed cosmopolitanism: urbane but not pretentious; cutting-edge but not stressed-out. New restaurants and boutiques are channeling that Aussie energy in some oft-overlooked neighborhoods such as beachside hangout Manly. And an initiative to liven up the side lanes in the trendy Surry Hills and Darlinghurst neighborhoods has led to a slew of lounge bars opening up; try the lychee-infused tequila at Hunky Dory Social Club.

No. 9 Barcelona
Barcelona has long been famous for its art and architecture, with Salvador Dal, Joan Mir, and Antoni Gaud all leaving their marks. But this is the first year that the Catalan city has broken into the World’s Best Cities top 10 list. Though diversions like wandering the Gaud - designed Parc Güell have a timeless appeal, it’s new hot spots like Tickets, from mad-scientist brothers Ferran and Albert Adrià, that are creating the worldwide buzz. Where to stay? At the new Mandarin Oriental, where the Hong Kong hotel group’s legendary service is paired with Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola’s 98 bright, cream-on-white rooms.No. 10  Paris
 Paris where every cobbled lane, every street-side café, every patisserie window seems to have been art-directed by some impossibly savvy set designer. Yet for all that elegance and drama, Paris’s greatest pleasures are arguably its simplest ones: the hum of a neighborhood bistro; the tranquility of a churchyard; the crunch of a perfect baguette. After all, you come to Paris to eat. Indulge serious cheese fantasies at Laurent Dubois, a fromagerie with seemingly endless options.
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Three days in Hong Kong

With my wife Marilyn (left) and sister-in-law Lericita
in an elevator of Dorsett Far East hotel where we stayed.

Three days in Hong Kong was not enough to see how people lived there, but our sojourn gave me at least an inkling of how hurried and harried life was for most of the estimated seven million people in the former Crown Colony.
If our tour guides were a gauge, I could feel that they run their lives like they were running business enterprises. Our first guide, who gave his name as Randy, came to our meeting place right on the dot and immediately told us to fall in line as if we were schoolchildren.
"Don't change your money at any foreign exchange center here at the airport. Their exchange rate is extremely low," he briefed us, making me regret that I had changed $100 at the first money exchange center that I saw. "The money changers downtown have better rates."

A cobbler on a Hong Kong sidewalk.

After his briefing, he immediately went to his own business, writing on a sheet of paper and adroitly trying to avoid any conversation. "Excuse me sir, but my English is very poor," he said when I tried to strike a conversation, although he spoke fluent English.
Up to the time of our departure to the hotel, he carried a formal, distant demeanor, although on our way, he tried to make us laugh with his handy jokes from time to time while telling us a sweeping history of the former Crown Colony.
I never saw him dropped his guarded behavior even when we were already at the hotel, trying to keep himself busy with anything and reminded us to be at the lobby at the exact time the next day for our tour of the city in the morning and Disneyland in the afternoon.
The first day of our short stay was free so we decided to go sightseeing downtown after lunch which we took at the nearest MacDonald food chain and where we experienced our first problem: few people spoke English. So we just strolled aimlessly in old Hong Kong, watching people who seem to be mostly in a hurry.

On our way to the city tour with my daughter at the bus's door.

I learned later that few people in Hong Kong owned cars; only the affluent have. Most walked to the offices or any short-distance destinations. People take the Metro rail and public buses only for long-distance journey. Taxi was expensive. That answered my wonderment as soon as we arrived why most Hong Kong residents were lean.
Although Chinese residents in Hong Kong seemed aloft, many of them were polite. In a noodle restaurant where we took a mid-afternoon snack, people sitting beside us or in front of us just took their food quietly, but the restaurant owner who spoke a little English assured us that they want  tourists to come because it would help boost their economy.
When we took our tour the following day, I learned that what the restaurant owner told us was a mantra that would be repeated by our first tour guide. On our way to what was supposed to be a city tour, Randy joked about how they like tourists to keep on coming.
"We like you to spend your money here so our economy will grow," he said with a laugh, without us knowing that the tour was not to tourist spots. We were immediately taken to two factory outlets where we were shown products we may want to buy before taking a 30-minute stopover at the Avenue of Stars to gawk at statues and other memorabilia of great Hong Kong celebrities and a boat ride later at the Hong Kong Channel for HK$50 each.

In front of Bruce Lee's statue at the Avenue of Stars,
a park dedicated to Hong Kong's celebrities.

The supposed city tour was a subtle marketing coup attached to tourism. It was ingenuously timed  at the moment when we had put down our guards to our purse strings and succumbed to impulse buying. We found out the next day that mainland China had copied the same strategy when we went to Shenzen a little beyond the border of Hong Kong.
We finished our "city tour" at noon where we were taken again to a factory outlet that sold souviener t-shirts and hopia, a kind of Chinese foodstuff that is also known to Filipinos, on the side. If that was a clue, we failed to pick it up that we won't be taking lunch until we reached Disneyland.
Our first tour guide left us to the second tour guide without saying goodbye. It turned out that our second tour guide had coordinated with several groups of tourists to wait for the bus in various parts of the city. It took the bus about an hour to pick up the different groups and we reached Disneyland at around 1:30 pm. When I told our second tour guide that we hadn't taken lunch yet, he replied with a sweet smile: "So haven't I."
At Disneyland, our new tour guide reminded us to be in the bus on time that night and that a third tourist guide was to take care of us. Left on our own, we looked for a place to take lunch at Disyneyland where food was so expensive but later enjoyed our tour in fantasy land. For all the trouble, we were glad to have visited Hong Kong because it fulfilled a childhood dream of our 14-year-old daughter.
When we went back to our bus after all the Disney activities, our third guide was already there waiting for us and for another group of tourists. It amazed me that all the three guides worked with clock-work precision without personal touches which  the Filipinos call TLC or tender loving care.

The spectators during the parade of the Disney characters
with my wife (partly hidden, left) taking pictures.
This picture was taken by our child.

After our bus had dropped all passengers to their hotels, our third tour guide took us to the train that would take us to Shenzen where we had to spend the night in a quite messy hotel. As it was in Hong Kong, the next day we were taken to two factory outlets where the  sales ladies persuaded as to buy products that included jade stones crafted into elegant earings or bracelets that were supposed to cure many ailments.
And as  in Hong Kong, our business-like schedule rubbed all the fun from the tour. After lunch, our guide immediately took us to immigration in another side of the border for a bus that would take us straight to Hong Kong airport. When she finished all the paper works, she instructed us on what to do and where to wait for our fourth tour guide at the Hong Kong side of the border. It was amazing that everything went on smoothly, despite our trepidation that we could get into trouble if something went amiss.

My family and sister-in-law with Cinderella's castle at the background.

Waiting for our plane at Hong Kong's airport,  I could not help think of Singapore where we enjoyed a guided tour about six years ago and pondered if we would still go back to Hong Kong. Probably, we will but  no longer on a guided tour and instead study the railway networks as some of our friends in Jeddah later advised us to enjoy another sojourn in the former Crown Colony.

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Climbing Mambukal's mountain trails

From Lakawon (previous post) we went to Mambukal Mountain Resort about two-hour drive from Bacolod City on the same jeepney that ran at 40kph. Mambukal is known for its hot springs with sulfuric soda water in one of them.
It has a bath house with spa, famous among Asian tourists, particularly the Japanese. Each spa is supplied by hot and cold water from the springs on the mountain sides. Tourists who suffer from body fatigue and want to release stress, dip in the spa for its alleged therapeutic treatment.
We skipped the swimming pools as well as the spa and chose to climb the rugged mountain trails to see the waterfalls. We took the trails because our nieces Lala (right in photo above) and Bernadette (front right), who often travel to other tourist spots in and outside the country, wanted something different from the usual beaches they had gone to. (Others in photo are, from left, my in-laws Lericita and Josie, me, my wife Marilyn and daughter Maria Angeline.)

There were seven waterfalls but we skipped the two further up toward the mountain top because we took so long dipping in some of them and had forgotten about the time until it was almost dusk. At 68, without a heart problem and other serious ailments, I joined the climb through the mountain trails. The trails were sometimes steep and there were times that my better-half and I had to crawl on our way up. A hanging bridge (picture above) offered an easy way for P50 per person but we were more attracted to the challenge of the rugged trails. Besides, we did not have much  faith in the strength of the hanging bridge.

Manbukal Resort lies at the peak of about 1,200 feet or 355 meters above sea level and serves as a gateway to Mount Kanlaon, one of the Philippines' active volcanoes and is the highest mountain peak in the Visayas or the central Philippines. Mount Kanlaon itself hosts several waterfalls, the most noted of them are the Quipot and Sudion Falls. The mountain volcano is visible on the way to Mambukal from Bacolod City.

Before we climbed the mountain trails, we took lunch in one of the cluster of small eateries beneath the archway at the starting point of the trails. Up in the sky, bats flew in droves from yonder trees and then back where they clung to the branches like black spots. We left at about 2 pm and went down before dusk fell. The right picture shows one of the seven water falls. In upper-right photo, the bats flying in a clear sky are seen from one of the eateries where we took lunch. 

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Photos of the water fall (right) is from TripAdvisor. The rest are by
Al Rico Mayor.

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Lakawon: Away from the madding crowd

Source: Internet

Lakawon is an island resort in Negros Occidental province in the central Philippines. It's about 48 kilometers from Bacolod City, the provincial capital. On a leisurely pace of 40kph on a hired jeepney, it took us about two hours travel to Cadiz City where it was located. Lakawon is a short trip (about 10 minutes) on a motor boat from the nearest village in Cadiz Viejo where the jeepney took us. Rent for a jeepney from Bacolod City would be at the range of P500 up (We got ours at P500) with the driver waiting for you until you come back in the afternoon. Fare on the rigger boat was P50 per person.

The island resort, a favorite hideaway of the city 

folks during summer, has a white beach looped around it. There are small non-airconditioned cottages (picture on left) with electricity from 6 pm to 9 pm. Traveler can buy food, consisting mainly of grilled seafood and pork. Unlike Boracay off the neighboring Panay island which has become too crowded, mostly by foreign tourists, Lakawon has ample spaces when we went there. There were foreigners with women escorts but you can count them with your fingers.

Like most beaches in the central Philippines, Lakawon has clear turquoise-blue waters near the shore. I did not take a dip, but my family and my in-laws (in picture) swear that the sea was cool even in such a hot summer day as when we went there. Lakawon, a 13-hectare, banana-shaped island owned by a family, got its name from the Cebuano word lakaw which means "walk" probably because it is said that one can literally walk a great distance to and from the island during low tide. Lakawon is the verb of the noun "lakaw" as in let's walk from here to there. 
The island has plenty of trees (picture below) where one can take shelter from the hot sun if one decides not to swim and be content with watching the family as I did when we went there. 

Photography by: Al Mayor

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Sharing travel expereinces

Welcome.

This is my third blog. The first is Salt of Life. The other is Fun in Life. I am giving their links below in case curiosity bites you to visit them.

I have decided to start this blog because I love traveling as I do reading and writing. Travel makes me forget my cares in the world especially in this age when life has become too complicated.

I do travel as often as I have the time, particularly during our yearly vacation to take a rest from a year of working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I am a journalist and works as a sub-editor with the Saudi Gazette.

Aside from my family's own experiences I will feature the travel of other people who may want to share theirs with the aim of guiding those planning to take a furlough. So if you have traveled to some places lately share your experiences with others by sending your story and photographs to my email casianomayor@yahoo.com.

Please make as many descriptions and impressions as you can remember of the places you have gone to so I can make a good story about your experiences.

In the meantime, I will close this page to start my first travel story.

Before I forget, the links to my other blogs are Salt of Life
http://salt-romblonwriter.blogspot.com and Fun in Life http://salt-funstories.blogspot.com.

See you on the next page.


Please also visit our website: The Travel Bureau