In making our way from Hanoi to Taipei for our flight home, we found that the easiest and cheapest flight option was through Manila. So we spent a week in the Philippines. Named after some king in Spain, this nation of 7,106 islands is pretty homogeneous. The jeepney (pictured above left) is a famous mode of transport, as well as the tricycle (pictured above right). Manila is not as bad as everyone says and Malate has great live music, and of course karaoke! Maurice, Paul's friend, met us in Manila and we traveled to an island together (pictured below left).
We stayed in Puerto Galera, on Mindoro Island. Our hosts Monica and Lars (in sunset photo above) are friends of Maurice and run a beach camp for street children from Manila called Stairway Foundation. Their work affects the lives of hundreds of kids daily. We stayed 5 days and had some time with a bunch of 10-year-olds fresh out of adult jails (because there is no other place for them). We did an impromptu yoga lesson and ate meals with them. Their stories are heartbreaking but, at Stairways they are just normal kids in school and going to the beach everyday. On the way back in to Manila we saw hundreds of street kids (there are 1.5m homeless kids in a total population of 86 million) and thought of the great work that Lars and Monica are doing and how lucky those kids are.
Some Phun Phacts:
Largest Export: Humans, 10 million living abroad and sending money home
Most Corrupt Government in Asia (as of last week)
Most musical nation on earth with singing and dancing everywhere
On the way back from the island to Manila, we visited the active Ta'al volcano (pictured above). It's massive! The rim is 30km with a lake in the middle.
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