Stories of Places, People and Photography in the Philippines and Beyond
Binondo is a really amusing place in this part of Manila. I enjoy the smell, the structures and especially the food. The old 16th century Binondo Church still retains its old stone walls. The interiors looks more grand than most churches and the altar seems similar to those in European design. Did you know the first Philippine saint, Lorenzo Ruiz, started here as an altar boy? I certainly didn’t. Hmmm… this would be a very interesting church to take picture of for Simbang Gabi.
I’m close to wrapping up my series of entries on Central Vietnam. And as 2nd to the last entry would be one of the most fun destinations in my opinion close to the city of Da Nang.
So there we were, riding on a back of a motorcycle on a 4 hour journey towards Hoi An from Hue. It was an exciting ride speeding through the hi-ways of Vietnam. I felt I was the young Che Guevarra (hoping to look as well :P) of Motorcycle Diaries who traveled from Argentina to Chile. But the problem was I was really feeling sleepy during the trip, which is kind of dangerous when you’re on the back of the bike. Good thing our “Easy Rider” guide gave me a bubble gum to chew on to fight the sleepiness.
I never thought that I’ll be back in Mt. Maculot so soon. But since I promised an old climbing buddy I haven’t seen for some time that I’ll take him here after seeing my previous post on Mt. Maculot, I scheduled our climb. Thanks to Cruise for inviting me here the first time around, it greatly added to my logistics of the area. Same as what we did, we went on a night trek, but the fun came much later as 2 new friends were added to our list during our climb.
I woke up so early today for some strange unknown reason. I looked into my phone clock and saw that it was 4:44 am which weirded me out and noticed there was no signal around with the “Emergency Calls Only” on the network status. Tossing and turning around to get some shut eye but the zzzz’s has already flown by the window and all I see is the deep blue sky at dawn penetrating this mind boggling early morning wake up call.
I wanted to continue on the blow-by-blow account of my day at Singapore, but I also kind of wanted to fast track it a little just to end the series. Taking off from Little India I headed to Orchard Road, Singapore’s famous shopping district to beat the afternoon heat. I checked out Kinokonuya Bookstore to pass time and later, ate one of those Waffle Ice Creams at the streets.
Another thing I learned about the Vietnamese is that they are very lazy when in comes to breakfast. Our guide Lee Tien, told us that most of them after waking up and before going to work usually just stops by at the nearest corner food stall and eat a quick breakfast.
