Homeward Bound

Well, it's hard for me to believe, but Marie-Liesse and I are actually leaving the Philippines tomorrow to head back home. Due to a snafu that I think I already explained, I think we have to spend one more night in Bangkok tomorrow, but then we'll be off to Kunming the next evening. After six weeks of travel it's somewhat of a relief (to the pocket book at the very least!), but I'll miss the excitement of seeing new things every day and being in a new environment. At the very least it should be a bit cooler out, and that I will appreciate!

Things have been going well here in the Philippines though for the most part. I must admit that I indulged last night and went to the ritzy downtown super-developed business part of town known as Makati (where the bomb went off) last night to enjoy a sushi dinner with a martini and later off to a place for a heavenly chocolate cake (called, and I'm not making this up, a wet dreams chocolate cake. I was a little shocked and even a touch embarrased to say the name to the lady working behind the counter, but it just looked so delicious I had to go for it!).

We've mainly stayed around Manila while here, and there has been much to occupy us. Between parties and polo matches and lunches with important people, there hasn't been a need to go much farther. Marie-Liesse and I did manage to make two excursions however out to Corregidor Island in Manila Bay (the last place to fall to the Japanese back in WWII), and down to the Taal Volcano. The Taal Volcano was interesting because it is, as Ripley's Believe it or Not describes, "a lake within a volcano within a lake within a volcano," which indeed is what it was. It was actually very cloudy there and it even spat at us at one point but it was a generally enjoyable excursion.

It has really been a different experience here than all the rest of our travels. We've been staying with Chesa's grandmother who is a simply amazing woman with lots of good stories. She likes to describe herself as a "relic of the Spanish-American War" as she grew up in Cuba and the US then married a Filipino and moved to the Philippines. She was here during the war, moving through eight houses before she landed at the house where she remains at today, and at which she has been welcoming numerous guests since. It's really quite an honour to be on the list and I can only hope to go on and accomplish things like some of the other guests she has been telling me about (like the owner of the Atalantic Monthly for example).

But for now, I guess I'll just have to go back to Kunming and go forward from there!