03-08-2008
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#77 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Massachusetts
Posts: 6,654
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 Wow. Another incredible Andiline report! And your photos, as always, are simply spectacular. Looks like the diving is well worth the long flight. Loving all of the above water photos too!  I hope to visit the Phillipines some day when my brother and his family move back there. |
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03-12-2008
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#78 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Cologne, Germany
Posts: 9,886
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Yeah, I know... no entries for a couple of days. And no pics for now. Maybe tomorrow or on friday if I can connect with my laptop here at the business center. You know, the business center is open only from 8 to 5 which is not the time I am usually free to surf the net. In Dumaguete I did that in the evenings after the days work... ;-)
But to let you know... I have arrived save and sound in Tagbilaran on Bohol island. My transport was not there but on the Philippines they just take care of you and before I knew it I was in a car with a driver and he told me the ressort would pay for it (which they actually did). Then I am not sure they expected me and when I saw the big welcome sign 'Welcome Avon powersellers" my day was done...  And in fact the avon girls drove me crazy. They had the rooms near to mine and in the evening it was like they had tupper parties (probably buying Avon-stuff though). Fortunately they stayed only three days and their last night I didn't sleep much since it was like they had some sort of disco close to my room (although there is no disco in the ressort) and whenever I was dosing off they up-ed the loudness and I was sitting upright in my bed again...Have been diving the past 2 days again and I have seen really amazing things. The first morning we went to a dive site where there are pygmy sea horses. They are 8 mm long and you can barely see them with your eyes (but they are CUTE!). I have a couple of good shoots of them though. Yesterday we went to Balicasaq Island and again I had problems with my underwater housing since for the second time it leaked. I most probably hadn't been careful enough with it. So unfortunately I do not have a picture of the hammerhead shark we saw on the first dive. And have no pics of the second dive since I took only the housing and left the camera on the boat. The housing was okay though and didn't leak again. Tomorrow I'll be going back to Balicasaq and of course I hope that the hammerhead comes back to pose for me...  The ressort does have a wonderful nice white beach. Will go there as soon as I have finished here. Since it is rather long it never seems crowded. Although there are several groups from Taiwan ( geeez, these people are LOUD...). All in all it is not really the place I would normally choose for a vacation but it is a good value for the money I paid. Haven't got to know anybody here yet though. When diving I am always alone with the guide which is not a too bad thing either since I can take my pics as long as I want. And I am getting better at spotting the nudibranches myself. Yeah, I AM proud of that... :-) Just came back from an island tour on Bohol. Will have to check the pics when I am back to my room. The Philippines are a fascinating country though! Last edited by Andiline; 03-12-2008 at 02:20 AM.. |
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03-12-2008
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#79 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Cologne, Germany
Posts: 9,886
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Since it just started raining like a waterfall I can add a few things: looks like I am not used to being one of the few europeans in a ressort. Of the remaining westerners a lot are men with philippine women. Close to the restaurant where I usually have dinner there is a space which is used for group functions. So in the past day a group was doing karaoke there while a band of guitar players was singing in my restaurant. So I had karaoke in my right ear and the band in the left ear. That was not really funny... My room is rather big and with the air condition I am comfortable at night. But the kind of this ressort is like an AI (just without being AI). Diving here is different than on Negros. Different coral, different star fish but lots of fish I know and some I have never seen before (like the hammerhead shark - my first one *woohhooo*). Looking forward to diving again tomorrow. On friday I hope to be going dolphin watching but not sure they will do the tour since there was none planned when I asked yesterday.
And the only thing I DIDN't bring here was an umbrella - bad mistake!!!!
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03-12-2008
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#80 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Cologne, Germany
Posts: 9,886
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Well, when I left the business center earlier today they told me that the WiFi connection works even after their business hours and it is free... so I worked on some more pics for your. First of all my favourite. That cutie pygmy seahorse... please remember that it is only as big as the nail of your thumb.
 As I wrote earlier, there are different seastars here. They come in all different brown and white colours...  Another lionfish. Before I came to the Philippines I had never seen them move so I thought they would just lie there all the time and wait for their prey. But they CAN move. And how fast....  Isn't that a white beauty?  And I am a little bit ashamed of telling this but I kept my mouth shut when I saw Rino (my dive guide) putting two pieces of bred in this jacket when we went for the second dive. What followed was that we were surrounded by fish which obviously were waiting for food. Took me a couple of minutes to figure out why they were following us. The first two minutes I even laughed since they were looking in my mask and swimming around my head all the time. But after a couple of minutes it got annoying since they kept me from seeing anything on the reef and when they started to eat my hands I was only mad. They even tried to eat my camera...   These pics are from Balicasaq. I don't have that many from there since from the beginning of the first dive there was a foggy spot which can be seen on the pics. This is a black beauty I would say...  This one was very small (and I detected it myself!!! ) I believe I can fly... *sing* And here is a big group of barracudas. Unfortunately the housing was very foggy by then and we went up soon after that since water kept coming into the housing and I really didn't wanna ruin my camera.  Here is a first impression of our beach here in Bohol. 
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03-12-2008
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#83 (permalink) | |
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Non-aggressive Dutch dude
 Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Posts: 8,168
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Quote:
It's kinda hard to pick any favourite with the sheer amount of great pics you're sharing, but I agree with you: this would be one of my favourites as well!
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03-13-2008
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#85 (permalink) | |
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aņejo
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Cologne, Germany
Posts: 9,886
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Quote:
Within the next hour or so... Had to flee from my room, those guys from Philip Morris drive me insane... 
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03-13-2008
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#87 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Cologne, Germany
Posts: 9,886
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Thanks Anna.
Here is the entry which I posted in my blog earlier before the moscito-attack made me flee again... the rest will follow soon, I am working on it right now. Well, the weather I have here is not quite good (but it was worse last week in Dumaguete). When we came back from diving we could already see the dark grey clouds from the distance. And in fact it started to rain before we got back to our beach. Once back in my room I heard 'soundcheck, soundcheck' and this sounded like another sleepless night for me. These guys from the Philipp Morris-group are driving me crazy. They are soooo loud. I was sitting in my room working on the pics to publish today when three of them started to play with mini-cars. That noise is even worse than a disco. When I get back to my room I might ask at the front desk to get a different room since I dove with two swedish guys this morning and they told me that their part of the ressort is perfectly quiet. And I never sleep (although I am toast at 9 PM) because I have those groups around me and the guys from Philipp Morris seem to be much worse than the avon-girls earlier this week. If I'd be a smoker I would stop now just to give that company no more money to pay their employees trips to beach ressorts! They are easy to spot since they all wear the same t-shirts... Well, let's talk about nicer things. Got some overwater pics for you (sorry, but actually I haven't seen much over water... ). They are from my island tour yesterday.Our first stop was at the oldeststone church of the Philippines. It's been re-built in the 1700's out of black coral stone. This is the bell-tower.  Jeez, have to come back later, the moscitos start to eat me... |
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03-13-2008
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#88 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Cologne, Germany
Posts: 9,886
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Since I made that prior entry a couple of things have happened: when going back to my room I ordered a Mai-Tai just to have something NICE for a change. I sat outside my room working on a couple of more overwater-pics to upload since I had been asked for that while the Philipp Morris-guys had some team-games going on. That was not too bad but as soon as this was over, the crazy guys got their little cars back out and it was like a formula 1 race. I was getting more desperate any minute since I had booked a QUIET vacation (at least that's what I thought). On my way back to my room the girls at the front desk had confirmed that there would be a party tonight which would end at 10 PM though. Around 6 PM when I went over to have dinner the music started again and it was so loud that something inside me just snapped. I went to the front desk and told them that I would NOT sleep in that room tonight. The girls were helpless (not the first time I see them helpless) and started to phone around. Finally I was asked to wait for the manager at the bar. When he came he told me that Philipp Morris is here with 480 persons some of whom are staying outside of the resort and that unfortunately there was no other room available for me. I told him that this was already the second night this happened since 3 days ago the same thing happened with the Avon-girls. He offered me to transport me to another location just for sleeping there (without aircon though) and transport me back in the morning. I didn't really want that. So in the end I had dinner on the house. Still.... this is not the place I had thought I booked and can certainly NOT recommend it (sorry but I am still sort of mad at them that they put me in the wing where the groups are staying in the first place...).
But let's continue with nicer things. Here are more pics from Bohol over water. This is inside the church...  And this is the saint the sick are praying to (this comes from the time when people still suffered from lepra).  This carriage is used for all sorts of processions...  Continuing our trip we saw this woman working on the palm leaves.  On the way to the chocolate hills we passed through Lomboc for the first time. Janice, my tour guide, told me proudly that not only Pisa does have a crooked tower...  Then we left the coastal road and went into the interior of the island. Along the way at some point we started to see more and more people drying their rice along the road. Janice told me that it is forbidden to do so but nobody cares...they have to be careful since as sonn as it starts raining they have to cover the rice. And it does rain a lot these days.  This man was working in the rice fields with his buffalo.  And this is a typical scene along the road...  Climbing up to the hill from where to see the chocolate hills best I saw this...  And then I could see them... the famous chocolate hills. They all have more or less the same shape and there are more than 1,700 of them. They have no trees on them and if it hadn't been a little but foggy the ones in the distance would have been better visible.  But I liked the view as well since there were a couple of farms visible from up there.   On the way back towards Lomboc we crossed the the man-made Mahagony-forrest again. It is an impressing forrest since the road seems to be very dark. The trees are not crooked and planted close to each other in order to have them grow slowly.  Then we were back in Lomboc and went to the river for our cruise...  First we had lunch and there was something interesting I wanted to show you: algaes-Salad. The day before I had seen the dive-guys collecting algaes and they were eating it raw....  We saw some beautiful houses in the middle of nowhere...   The forrest along the river was once again very impressing. I sat there and just admired the scenery....  Once we arrived at the waterfall we turned around and went back. Janice later on told me that from the waterfall falls fresh water while the river we were cruising on is salt water. Kids use to take long ropes on the plam trees, swing on it and jump into the water when cruise ships approach. Then they try to reach the boats and climb on them. Not sure if there is any meaning behind since they didn't ask for money but just watched us.  Once back in Lomboc we went to see the Tarsiers. Unfortunately I don't have good pics of them since they are rather night creatures and they were protected from light. Using the flash was not an option either... they really look like an child of E.T. and a gremlin...  This is one of the small shops you can see everywhere along the roads....  And here something useful in the mall...  This is called 'shrine' to remember when two people had exchanged blood to establish their friendship (I just don't remember who with whom... ). And then we went back to the resort where - once arrived - it started to rain cats and dogs.... Here are three more pics from diving this morning (won't bore you with more dive-pics today... ).This one is a blurry frogfish. I know this pic is a bad one but there was a very strong current on the first dive and I was sooooo proud of myself that I spotted the froggie!  And here are two more nudi-beauties....  This here is a very special one. It is called 'spanish dancer'.  Will go back to the pigmy seahorses tomorrow morning before I spend the rest of the day just doing nothing (and hopefully relax some since the Philipp Morris guys will leave *wwoohhooo*). Tomorrow I will post some more beach pics. Haven't downloaded them yet though since I took them with the other camera. Last edited by Andiline; 03-13-2008 at 08:43 AM.. |
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03-13-2008
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#89 (permalink) |
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aņejo
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: One foot in WI, the other in PDC
Posts: 6,196
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So glad to see you are able to post again!! You are quite talented with the camera! The pictures are just simply amazing! I do hope you can get some rest. I know that lack of sleep would cause me to snap too!
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