Philippines 2

A few more pictures of our few days in this lush country.

The view overlooking Taal volcano (the smaller mountain in the middle of the lake - an active crater which goes off semi-regularly).

A pineapple plantation - each pineapple grows in the center of a plant on the ground. We ate our fair share of pineapple while we were there - delicious!

We went for an afternoon boat ride on Monday. It was supposed to be an hour of checking out the islands nearby, but after a five minute ride, the driver turned off the boat because he thought we might like to go snorkeling. We didn't know how to do that with Chelsie, so we told him we'd rather just go on a sight-seeing drive. Then the boat wouldn't start again! After fiddling and trying to fix it, he got it started after 10 minutes of sitting there and brought us back to the resort. Our trip was free of charge since we didn't exactly complete it! This picture was when the driver was trying to restart the boat - we were over some coral and the water was crystal clear - we could clearly look at everything under us!

We walked to another resort for dinner and enjoyed the business of the locals on the beach. We were definitely the foreigners in a crowd of Philippinos!

Chelsie's favourite part - the giant 'sandbox' :) The pool and shower were required to get the sand off of this sandy little girl!

On our trip back to Manila - pictures of road side stands and homes - all very simple shanty's, some with tin roofs, some with palm leaves. Some made of wood and plywood, some made of tin, some of bricks.

Our last night was spent in Manila as we had a 9:00 flight back to Beijing. A helpful woman booked us a room in a hotel and when we arrived at the hotel, I laughed out loud - LPL Suites! I was always proud to be LPL before I got married - Oma and I shared these initials. I didn't get a good picture of the place itself, but here's the evidence:

These jeepneys were great to see bombing around. They were similar to a bus system, I think, although more casual. We didn't really know how the 'system' worked. If you look closely, this one is pretty souped up and many of the ones we saw were pretty fancy. We saw some that were loaded with more than 30 people!