Our Philippine Adventure...

Finally! A 15 year dream came true and I got to visit the Philippines again, this time with my wonderful husband. The last time I visited was in 1994. I was a very shy, homesick 13 year old girl. This last experience has topped the first. There are not enough words to explain our whole adventure, but I'm going to try my best to give you a good insight into our two weeks in the Philippines. To make for easier reading I'm going to break our trip down by category. I hope you enjoy the Philippines through our eyes...

The Journey: 

We left on December 12th, 2011 at 930am from MSP airport. We flew to Seattle, WA on an approximate 4 hour flight. We had just a long enough lay over there to enjoy one last American meal, cheeseburger and fries! :-) 
We then boarded a plane to begin a long flight (almost 11 hours) to Tokyo, Japan. We slept, ate, read, played games, and watched three movies. We were squished between an Engineer from Montana that Jared bonded well with. And an elderly Japanese woman who spoke no English.   Our butts and legs were so sore by the end of the flight, ick! 
 We only got a little time to stretch out while in Japan before we boarded yet another flight to our final destination, Manila, Philippines. This flight was another 4 hours long. Luckily, our flight was not full and Jared and I stole a whole 4 seat row to ourselves. I got three seats and he got one, LOL! :-) We both slept hard the whole flight and before we knew it, we woke up in the Philippines! And so our Journey began...

Instead of breaking this trip down day by day, I'm going to break it down by category for you for easier "pick and choose" reading. I am writing this blog as more of a journal for us about our trip, so some information may not pertain to all readers, just us. I hope you enjoy nonetheless! 

PEOPLE: 

Tito Ernie: My tito (uncle) picked us up from the airport at 11pm Philippines time. He was accompanied by three guards, armed guards! Let's back up a little and tell you about Ernie! He's kind of a big deal! Not only had he been a big time manager of many stars of the Philippines, including his eldest daughter and son in the past, but is now the chairman of his city, Malabon. There's really no easy way to explain "chairman of Malabon" to you because we don't have anything like it here or if we do, it's apparently not near as big of a deal because I don't know anything about it. In the Philippines though, it's pretty much like being "president" of your area in the city. The cities are big and broken down into areas and each area has a chairman and then council members that work beneath him or her. Above the chairman is the Mayor of each city and then the President of the country...so needless to say, it's a big deal. There are constant guards with my tito as well has constant guards at his home. Christmas eve night we went to church with him, this is when we really saw how important he is. We were caravan'd by motorcycles who stopped traffic for us as we made our way to the church. We were also accompanied by 4 guards in the van and two more who escorted us into the church and stood guard the whole service. We had a whole row reserved for us as well and he was introduced at the end of the service and applauded as he bowed to his people. Wowzers, we felt like we were accompanying the president of the USA! :-) It also made it a little more chaotic that his two celebrity daughters were with us. We'll talk about them later. Needless to say, it was quite the experience. 
My tito is a very giving and caring man. He has helped out a lot of our family members immensely in times of need, gives to his community day in and day out (rarely taking time off for himself), loves his children to no end and knows no meaning of the word selfish. He's the most giving man and treated Jared and I like we were his own children during our stay. He opened up his beautiful home to us (complete with maids, a house boy, guards, and home cooked meals 3x/day- Thanks Tita Azon for the wonderful cooking), provided us a driver and any other needs we had. There are no words to express our gratitude to him for everything. He's truly amazing and we will miss him so much. I bet you'd never guess by this picture that he's 61 years old, huh? Us dela Cruz's age well ;-) 

This picture was taken the night he took us to the Seaside by the Mall of Asia (biggest mall in Asia). We walked around and enjoyed the music and sights. 


My Dad: Oh my daddy or Tay-Tay! He's the main reason for our visit to the Philippines. My dad decided to retire and move back to his homeland in 1994. I went there a month after he moved and have not see him since. 15 years is a very long time to wait to see your dad. The following picture is from the moment we first saw each other. There would have been more pictures, but we had the whole room crying making it difficult for any one to capture the  special moment. Until this moment, I had never seen my dad cry. My husband managed to get this moment...

So why now after 15 years? Unfortunately, my dad has been suffering Alzheimer's disease for the last two years. He has also been battling sicknesses and in out of the hospital during that time. I wanted to be able to visit him before he completely forgot me or before something worse happened. I didn't know what to expect of him when I saw him. I had no idea if he would be having a good day and remember me or if he would stare blankly at me (this would have been heart wrenching). Luckily, it was a great day. He instantly started crying when he saw me and said, "My daughter, my daughter is here. Look at her, she is so beautiful." That was one of the best moments of my life. It took awhile for him to come around to Jared, but once he did his first question was, "What do you do for work? I can no longer work and care for my daughter". Still worried about his "little girl". :-) My dad is living with my niece, Irish, and her family (Thank you Salazar family). He also has the best care taker in the world, we'll get to him later. However, the home is about a 20-30 minute drive with okay traffic from where we were staying. We visited him as often as possible. We took him shopping at a large mall. He enjoyed being out of the house and people watching or should I say "lady watching". LOL. He's still a ladies man, even in his older years. My family tells me he was not well before my arrival. Just a month or so before he was bed ridden and being spoon fed. Too weak to even walk. They said his behavior during my stay was a true miracle. He was dancing and singing on more than one occasion, always smiling, and even able to walk up stairs with no problems. :-) Here is a picture of him with most of his children. We are missing my brother, Romie (deceased) and my sister, Ida. This is the first time all of us were together. My father smiled the whole time and ate like a king! Although it took him awhile to remember names, he knew all of us. I think he had been waiting years for a moment like this. 

Here is a video of him dancing and singing as well. Truly a miracle after the many health scares we've had from him in the past two years. Even more amazing is that he knew all of the words to this song. God really blessed us with some good memories with dad.  

On Christmas eve day we had our first Christmas celebration as a family. With all siblings, (except Romie) and their spouses and children. Unfortunately, dad was very ill that day. He had to stay in bed all day and could not enjoy the occasion with us. It was very hard for me to see him this way. He was vomiting all day and unable to even walk. It scared me. Now, I know what my family and his caretaker have to endure. Makes me so sad, but knowing he's in such good hands, make it a little better. I'm so thankful for the memories and times we got to share. Although saying good bye to him was the most difficult thing I've ever done and continues to tear me apart, it was worth it for the happy memories with him. 

Tita Angelka: Or better known as the best host ever. Angelika or "mommy gelle" is my aunt. We stayed in her home and she treated us like royalty. Anything we wanted or needed, she provided and refused to take any form of payment for anything. She went out of her way for us everyday. She's truly a selfless person. We spent a lot of time at home with her sharing stories and comparing cultures. She is originally from Austria and lived in Japan for years. So she had a lot of interesting stories! She is the mother of my Tito Ernie's children,  Sunny 31 years old (better known to the public as Angelika dela Cruz, she's a celebrity),Edward, would be 30 (killed in a motor vehicle accident about two years ago) Erick, 20 years old (my always "famous to me" cousin) and Mariko 13 years old, better known as Mika to the public. She is also a celebrity. We will get to these guys in a bit. 
Angelika is such a loving caring woman and I'm so glad we are family. Thank you mommy gelle for being you and for everything to you did for us. We cannot wait until you come visit us here so we can treat you! 

Sunny: Sunny is my cousin (daughter of Angelika and Ernie). Her and I are close in age and bonded very well the first time I visited the Phils in 1994. During my visit this time, we picked right back up where we left off as little girls as grown women. We jammed out to all the old school songs that were our favorite the last time we were together. We enjoyed a lot of laughs listening to songs from Ace of Base and Real McCoy! :-) Sunny and her husband along with her 2 year old, Gabby (named after our Lolo (grandpa) Gabriel), took us to the Batangas. A nice little provience just south of Manila. Orion's (sunny's husband) family owns a small resort there. It wasn't quite finished, but finished enough and we enjoyed a short stay there. We went boating, wake boarding, "island hopping", and swimming. It was quite the experience to boat in the ocean. One of the boats we were on was a Palm Boat, quite different than anything we have here in the states. After a nice nose dive during wake boarding, Jared got a huge gush of salt water up his nose. I can only imagine how horrible that was. He had a huge headache for about two days, and then what felt like a sinus infection. Really I think his sinus' were just clearing out after a nice flush :-) 
So back to Sunny. She has been in show business in the Philippines since she was just 15 years old. She's a top celebrity there, which is very impressive and I'm very proud of her. However, I won't lie, it really sucks to go out in public with her. People go nuts. They even bothered her in church. Here is a picture we took of the people taking her pic! ;-) About every ten feet we walked, this is what happened...poor girl. 

Sunny has numerous movies and tv shows. She's known as Angelika dela Cruz in showbiz, but to us, she's Sunny or Shine or Sunshine. Her actual name is Maria Lourdes. Did I lose you yet? ;-) She's a "soap star" which she explained to me that in the Philippines that means TV show star. The soaps in the Phils are not like the on going soaps in the states. They are really our version of a TV series. When I mentioned to Sunny that it was odd that everyone knew her even though she's a "soap star" she explained to me that the tv stars (soap stars) in the Phils are the most popular because it's a third world country and TV is free. Makes sense. Don't let that fool you though, she's more than just a TV star, she has numerous movies (award winning) and a few music albums as well. She also won the Filipino version of Dancing With the Stars, Shall We Dance, the first year it aired. Aside from being busy busy in showbiz, she's also a mommy and a wife. Thank you Sunny for all of your hospitality during our stay. It was so nice to see you again and catch up. I hope to see you in a year from now in the states at our house as planned ;-) Miss you already. Below is a picture of us with our "Kalbos". Tagolog for Baldy!

Erick: Oh Mr. Erick! My "should be famous, does't want to be famous" cousin. Although his life is surrounded by showbiz with two celebrity sisters, Erick chooses to lay low and just live the good life. The young 20 year old is currently in school for Restaurant Management and plans to pursue such a career after graduation or so that's his plan for now :-) Erick gave us many laughs while we were staying in his house. The funniest memory with him is when we were with one or both of his sisters and they'd get stopped to take a picture. We would start shouting, "Oh my God!! It's Erick dela Cruz!!!" and one of us would rush to take a picture with him as he's cockily waving to the crowd and brushing his shoulders off!! LOL, some even looked at him like, "is he really famous, should we ask for a pic too?" Too much fun. For a 20 year old kid, he sure is a considerate gentleman and we enjoyed him very much. And boy this kid knows how to bust a move! Teach me how to Duggie!! ;-) Last time I visited he was only five and missing his four front teeth, now he's a mature, young gentleman that we very much enjoyed spending time with. Thanks for the hospitality my "famous cousin". 

"Oh My God, It's Erick dela Cruz!!!"

Mariko: Oh my little Mariko. It didn't take me long to fall in love with this little munchkin. Better known to the public as Mika and to her friends as Mikz, Mariko is my little 13 year old cousin. This little girl warmed my heart and made me smile everyday. Aside from her adorable accent and charming whit, she is a bubbly, funny, smart, beautiful, and caring little girl. Jared and I both agree that if are ever blessed with a daughter, we hope she's just like Mariko. She taught us so much while we were there. And entertained us with many questions about the states. I pray she can visit us here someday before she grows up too fast. She taught us many Filipino words and sometimes even forgot we don't speak her language and would start speaking to us in Tagalog. LOL. She also made sure we tried all of her favorite foods. Jared especially liked the way she said, "bagoong" which is a shirmp based spread that they tend to eat on raw mangoes. We loved the way she said the word, but he became infamous with his pronunciation of Bagoong. :-) 

Mariko is following in her sisters footsteps, but purely on her own talent. She has already won numerous awards for movies and has a kids TV series as well.  On top of being an actress, the little one can sing too. She is releasing her first album in January 2012. One of the things I miss the most about the Phils is being at home hearing her walking around and singing. Such a beautiful little voice. We did get to go to what she referred to as "just a quick performance, no big deal". Come to find out it was a big deal and as we walked in with her, she was bombarded with kids screaming and trying to get pictures or even just to touch her. It was pure insanity and lasted until we drove out of site. They even banged on the van and tried their luck to get a peak inside the tinted windows. I'm not sure I could ever get used to that lifestyle, but it didn't even seem to phase her. Such a little star! 

Cutest Little Girl Ever!

Dan: Dan is the care taker of my father. I've never met anyone like him. He's a 22 year old young man that lives with my father and takes care of him 24/7. He doesn't just take care of him, he takes pride in his work and truly cares for my dad. My father is more like a little kid now. Sometimes he hallucinates and gets out of bed in the middle of the night trying to "go to America" or sees his parents and tries to "go with them". Dan is there every step of the way to ensure my father's safety. There are no words to express how thankful I am that God has made this kind of a young man. I don't know anybody at his age or any age for that matter that would dedicate their whole life to a "lost, old man". I could not be more thankful. One of Dan's dreams is to come live in the states one day. My promise to him is that I will make that dream come true for him someday. It's the least I can do for him for the care and love he gives to my father. He's truly an angel and I'm so blessed to have been able to meet him and now have him in our lives. Thank you Dan for being you. We love you. 

For some reason this picture won't flip :-(

Ruth: Ruth is another cousin of mine. She lives just next door to where we stayed. Ruth is a very intelligent, independent woman. She treated us to dinner and a night on the town one night in Manila. She introduced us to her friend Doris, who was named by google as one of the Philippines top 20 most influential women. WOW! Doris is a writer for one of the newspapers in the Phils. These women were so fun and generous. They treated us to dinner, then a different place for dessert, then a bar with live band for some drinks. The name of the bar was "Spicy Fingers". Funny thing? Jared remembered it as "Stinky Fingers", lol, what a dork. Anyway, they were so kind and smart and very interesting to have a conversation with. One example of how sweet they were: Doris had on a necklace that I absolutely loved. All I did was compliment her on it and she took it off and insisted that I have it!! Are you kidding me? Who does that?!?! The generous Filipinos, that's who. Just a small example of how smart these women are: Ruth is working on learning her 3rd language, Japanese. The kicker? She's learning it through using her second language, English! Wowza! I only wish I could do that! :-) Ruth also has her own successful home business. Here is a picture of us at the Christmas Light Show they took us to before dinner.

I bet you'd never guess she was 38 huh? Again, we age well! ;-)

Of course there are many more family members or people we met that I would like to tell you about, but I'd be blogging forever, so for now I'll leave it with that for people. I hope to add more later. 

The Culture: 

We sure were cultured shocked. It's so much different than ours of course, so it was really fun to learn about it. I won't go into too much detail here, but I would like to outline some of the things we found to be interesting or funny: First a few pictures and videos!

Our host family, minus Tito Ernie

• They couldn't believe that our fast food restaurants didn't serve rice. They said, "so how do you get it then?!?" Well, we don't eat rice 50 times a day! ;-)
• They literally eat alllllllllll the time. We have no idea how they stay so small. We would eat breakfast, go shower, come back downstairs and they'd have lunch waiting!! And then a snack, followed by another snack, followed by supper, followed by another snack, followed by another supper, then another snack...seriously!?!?! 
• You do not shake the hands of your elders, you put their hand to your forehead and "bless them". Jared never got comfortable with this, but for me it was second nature! :-) It's a sign of respect.
• Families are very very close. It's not uncommon to stay living with your parents, even after you are married. Or if you move away, you don't move very far. They are very tight knit and what's yours is theirs and what's theirs is yours. End of story, that's just how it is. 
• A lot of "well off" families have "ya-ya's" (nanny's) and maids. This is a common practice. Of course not all can afford help, but it's is very very inexpensive in comparison to the US. The average price we found people were paying for these services was around $6000 pesos per month. That's approximately $137.00 per month!! WOW. 
• Nurses make anywhere from $15,000-30,000 pesos per month pretty much working everyday. That's approximately $680 US at the most! And they work the first two years as a nurse for free! Yikes!
• Hospitals and clinics CAN turn you away if you have no form of payment. Other option? You die. :-(
• They eat with a spoon and a fork at the same time or just with hands. Hard to explain, but Jared and I became accustomed to it and plan to continue the practice of the spoon and fork. 
• There are "squaters" everywhere! These are "homes" built from scraps. Somehow they still get electricity in them, some even have TV's and they build them on top of each other. You'd never see me going on a second story one, there doesn't seem to be any sturdiness there. These are even common in areas where nicer homes are. I mean they are literally everywhere. Below are some pictures we took to try to give you an idea of what these are like. However, you really can't appreciate the idea until you witness it first hand. 
• You can get a massage in your very own bed!! We did this right before bed a few times. Talk about relaxing!! It was only $200 pesos each!! Translated? About $4.50!! Of course, Tita Angelika and Tito Ernie wouldn't let us pay, so we were able to tip them well, $1000 pesos! That made their night! :-)
• Manila and the metro area is about the size of the Twin City area, however, we have a population of around 2 million, they have approximately 20 million. Can you imagine? People are EVERYWHERE.
• Sadly, there is garbage EVERYWHERE too. And people are constantly going through all of it, even small children. Looking for anything that might be worth money or even food. Absolutely heartbreaking. 
• Public bathrooms do not provide toilet paper or sometimes even toilet seats. You can buy your own pack of tissue at some of them for five pesos! There also is no soap or paper towels for hand washing.
• Everyone has to go to the water station to get drinking water. 
• We found the house we were staying in a a few Celebrity Homes magazines. Even the very bedroom where we slept was featured! :-)

Pictures from the referenced above:

The Filipino Way: 

The people of the Philippines are so generous and giving. It doesn't matter how little they have, they will give you what they have. The people there did not let us pay for ANYTHING. Seriously, we begged to let us pay or tried to be sneaky and do it and they always found a way to not let us. They said, "you are our guests, we treat you. When we come there, you can treat us". Whatever we needed or wanted, they made sure we had it. There are no words to express our gratitude. Thank you dela Cruz family! Now come visit, so we can treat you! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

The Food: 

Oh boy! We tried a lot of things we normally wouldn't have. Jared was much more brave than I was. Things on our list that we tried included, Ox Tail, Golden Snails, Bagoong (shirmp paste), Banana-Q, Fried Oysters, Chicken Feet (not me), and Cow intestines to name a few. They kept trying to get us to try Balot (egg with a chicken fetus inside, feathers and all) but we absolutely refused. Jared was ready and willing to try horse and dog, but never got the opportunity. I would have never let him eat dog..sick. Here are some pictures:

 Chicken Feet

 Wasabi Fried Oysters

 Chi-Chi. A fruit that looks like a potato and tastes like a sweet potato with marshmallow and brown sugar already mixed in, yum!

 The Golden Snail

 Ox Tail

He actually played with the chicken feet (flipping me off with one of the fingers) before he ate it...sick!

Banana-Q!

 Yup, there's a raw egg on top of that food!

 Rice!!

 Fish and eggs with rice?!?

Herring! This is the same fish that Jared and his boys used as bait when deep sea fishing. Pictured is a meal!

Lunch!

The Driving: 

Oh man...there really are no other words for the driving other than ABSOLUTE INSANITY. There really are no rules. There are lanes, but no one uses them, there are stop lights and stop signs, but those aren't always obeyed either. People squeeze themselves through small spaces to pass, drive into oncoming traffic to pass, it's insane. They just use their horns and people move. Surprisingly there isn't much road rage there. I was losing my mind!

Places we went outside of Manila: 

We got to venture out a little bit. We went to Taal Volcano one day with my Tita Chit, Tito Baby, and cousins BoBit and Mariko. It was in a town called Tagaytay. Beautiful. We also visited Paradizoo while there. There were saw a five legged bull and experienced a fish pond that if you put in your hands or feet, the fish come and eat the dead skin off of them! We also saw "shy grass" touch it and it closes up!   Here are some pictures and video from the day. 

 They are making a baby...for the next 48 hours!

 Playing with tadpoles!

We also got to to go the Batangas. I mentioned this trip a little bit earlier. It was at a small resort owned by Orion's (sunny's husband) family. It was called the Blue Marlin and is scheduled to open in March. We left at 2am to get there and it took only 2.5 hours because the traffic was not so bad. However, we left at noon the day we went back and it was nearly an 8 hour trip with traffic. Needless to say, I was very carsick until the next morning. It was not fun, but the trip was worth it. We got to see a beautiful side of the Philippines. Deserted islands, a grave yard on an island, caves, and blue blue waters. 

The Store:

My tita Azon has a store on the corner of dela Cruz street just next to where we were staying. Every morning and every night Jared and I would go there for Coke's and sometimes snacks. A lot of the soda there comes in glass bottles, so they pour it into a bag for you to drink so they can keep and reuse the bottles! Below are pictures of us at the store. You can see Jared was too tall for the Awning and actually got a nice gash on his head out of the deal! ;-)

Fun Facts I learned while there:

• In the 1920's my grandparents won the lottery! It was around $3000 pesos, which now is about $68 US. Back then, it was a lot and enabled them to buy the neighborhood my family still resides in. Known as J delaCruz St. Named after my late uncle who died at a young age.
• My father was a very young police officer following WW2. He talked about how he had to shoot two men who were going to shoot each other...then he laughed and said he was kidding. He did say he's had to shoot a man before.
• During the time he was a young officer, he also played a role in a movie as an officer. It was a 1950's movie and I want desperately to find it.
• EVERY vehicle we saw or rode in was a 5-speed stick.
• There are no medical abortions in the Philippines and most do not believe in birth control.
• There is no divorce. If you want to seperate, you must file for an anullment, even after years and years.
• A few months ago my father was very ill and needed blood. There was NONE (in the US we are always able to get blood) at the hospital, my family had to come in and donate. Actually, my cousin Erick was first to donate and when his blood type didn't match, he lined up several friends to donate. Thank you Erick.
• People can make a living at living in "Squaters". They will squat for so long, then after some time the government will pay them to move and so on...
• During our Christmas Raffle, I won a 50kg bag of rice...lol. Only in Asia :-)
• One night we took my siblings out for dinner. We spent $10,000 pesos. A few nights later, we were at my aunts house and the lot across the street from her house was for sale. It was $7500 pesos!! In a gated community!!! That's insanely cheap, $170.00!!!!

Well, I think I've blogged long enough about this trip. I may update this and add more in the next few days, but for now you can have a brief overview of our trip of a lifetime! :-) I miss my family terribly already and hate the miles between us, but pray we will see each other again someday soon. Thank you again to everyone for everything. We very much enjoyed our stay! Soon I will post many more pictures to my Facebook page for you to enjoy!

I appreciate all comments! :-) If you are not a member and cannot comment, please do so on Facebook. Thanks for reading!