Halfway Journey in Philippines....

Day 5:
- Arrived Bagiuo at 6am in the morning. It was freaking cold!! Thank god most of us did a survey about the weather in Bagiuo. Baby Blue didn't know that it is going to be that cold, hence he didn't bring any jacket with him. Pity him.. Luckily Alex brought an extra jacket and lended it to Baby Blue. As for Charin, she was wearing a mini skirt at that time with her small jacket. Can see her shiver like hell. Waited for a gypnee ( equivalent to "tuk tuk" in Thailand ) to go to the hotel. Guess what?? A gypnee isn't big, but we manage to cramp 14people with our luggages in it. We could hardly move, bags all over our body. Lol. Too bad I lost my camera, no picture to show you how me managed to survive on that ride. U really could not imagine how cramp we were... After a 5-10minutes ride, we finally reach our hotel, went to the lobby and noticed that this isn't the hotel we were supposed to stay. According to the receptionist, they changed their hotel to Summer Place Hotel. Sigh... So troublesome, now we need go back down to our actual hotel. However, this time we did took a cab instead of a gypnee... can't bear the journey with all our luggages over us again. 15minutes later, we reached our destination. It's a so-so hotel but it claimed that it is a 5star hotel ( which I rate it as a 3star hotel only )and the best hotel in Bagiuo City. Hmm... maybe... it's possible because I didn't see any hotel nicer than this so far. All of us were so tired and we could not check in the room yet. What happened was we decided to walk around the city. Our aim is to SM Mall. So we took a map and off we go.... we walk and walk and walk and walk for kilometres but we still didn't see any sign of SM Mall. Guess what?? we took the wrong direction from the beginning of our journey. Smart! My friend read the map wrongly or should I said that she doesn't know how to read a map. Nvm, at least we had a great walk along the highway, saw some beautiful sights of Bagiuo, nice weather... don't mind walking another few kilometres with this kind of weather. :) Soon, our stomach started to make some noise... yea... all of us were hungry. We stop by a shop and had our lunch. Nice and cheap. :) and the people there are so nice and friendly. Time to check in our rooms. wee!! we got a president's suit!! Nice!! Awesome! Too bad..... :( it was just temporary happiness because we had to change to another room which is much smaller. The room we got was small, there's no cupboard, no towel rack, and the toilet got flooded whenever we take a bath. After much complains from us to the organizing committee and to the hotel staff, they finally willing to change our room to a much nicer and better room!! this time it was GREAT!! SUPERB!! I like this than the president's suit actually though it's smaller. Why? Because we have big big cupboard with huge mirror on it. Well, we are girls.... girls are vain. U know... we need mirrors! LOL. and guess what guess what??? We have a bath tub!! woohoo!! even the president's suit doesn't have one. Kekekeke... that's about it for day 5 in Phlippines.

Day 6:
- We went for a tour to Tam Awam Village where they displayed all the old huts that were used by certain tribe. Here's the best part, they have weird carving of a guy's "ahem" on one of the hut and our tour guide named it as the "door bell". Haha.. and there's a hut called Fertility Hut where couples who failed to produce any children come here to have a ritual ceremony and to "ahem ahem". If the wife still fail to pregnant, the husband is allowed to find for another women to ahem ahem. If the husband still fail to make that women pregnant. Then it's the time for his wife to find for another men to try it out. Interesting.... hehee. Anyway, all these hut are actually for rent. People can actually experience it by staying there for a couple of days. Next, we headed to the Philippines Military Academy. Nothing much actually. The only interesting part is their obstacles course. They have rope climbing, comander crawl, rope swing, rope bridge and others which I do not know what they call. It's fun! Alex said that he wouldn't mind doing this everyday. Hmm... By the way, the scenery there is nice. It's surrounded by mountains. At times I do felt like I'm at the place where the movie " The Sound of Music " were film. It was so so so nice. Pictures? Sigh.. told you I lost my camera. Now I really feel frusfrated because there's lots of nice nice picture I took. :(:( After our half day tour around Bagiuo City, we were back in University Bagiuo. Had our lunch, followed by a short briefing for debaters and adjuricaters. Then we had our adjuricating exam. Yes! There's an exam for it. U know what? They did it in the hall and most of the adjuricators can't even get each debaters said in the video clip because of the echo. My result? Of cause it sucks to the max. I can't even jot down anything from the video. How sad. As a result, HR and I were trainees for the first round, and the second... and the third til the fourth round. I don't really mind being a trainee, since I'm new to debate and this is actually my first time adjuricating. I know I did badly, but I'm still trying to improve and learn how to make a wise decision. Moreover, we were guided by the adjuricator's core ( higher lvl adjuricators ). They did tell and explaine to us why this particular group deserve to win and bla bla bla. They only had 1 round of debate on that day. At night, they had opening dinner, it was suppose to be formal but since time is tide, everyone didn't went back to the hotel to change. Events on that night were dance, singing and more dances. Oh my.... UB ( University Bagiuo ) choir can SING!!! They really can SING!!! it sounded so so nice and pleasant and they sang their national anthem so so so so nice! All of us wanted more from the choir. It's difficult to describe la~ Then they had more traditional dances during that night. Oh ya, the male dancers were half naked ( u know, they dressed like how the org Iban dressed ) haha. Melanie was busy taking pictures of their butt. Haha.. some of us wondered if they wear underwear during the performance anot. Haha.... okok... I know we are sorta " gehteh " ( a word that I learned from Mel which means horny. haha ) at that time but really couldn't help it not staring at their butt! At the end, all of us were so tired and went back to the hotel and zzzzzzz.

day 7 :
- Woke up at 7am, ate breakfast at the hotel and off we go to UB. Pity all the debaters, there's 3rounds on that day. Most of the motion are pretty Philippines centric. Everything about Philippines. Here's one motion, " This House Regrets Jose Rizal's Place of Pride in the Philippines Consciences. " Hmm... Who's Jose Rizal? Sound familiar to me.. oh ya... we studied about him in our Sejarah during Form 3. I was quite worried about our MMU debaters since this motion is..... hmm... wondered how they debated this motion. Can't deny, many of MMU debaters lost that round. Yeap, I was still a trainee at that time. Glad that I gave a correct judgement on each group. :) After the rounds over, we had our dinner and back to our hotel.

Day 8 :
- More debates. Another 3rounds. The final 3rounds before the Octofinals. This time I'd been put as panel. Hmm.. surprising. Not anymore.... final round, round 7. The match up was put up on the big screen and suddenly I yelled. " Oh my god! Alex! Alex! I'm the chair for this round? What? Siao ah? I'm just a trainee le... I can't do it le... Chair le. Need to decide le. How How..." this went on and on whining about it. Okay, I know it's a good thing to be a chair but hey I'm a first timer, you cant put me as a chair for first timer! Well, haque and my other members did congrats me and gave me support, asked be not to be worry and just do the right thing. While Alex gave me a final tutorial on how to make a decision. Was kinda panic and tense at that moment, thank god Disco Top ( one of the Cyberjaya adjuricators ) is one of my panelist. She has more experience than I do and I can seek for help from her. Hoo... Overall the last round isn't that bad because it's a lower level debate. So it's pretty easy to determine who won the debate, plus with the help of Disco. We managed to decide the rank for each team. Thanks Disco! ( Note : for round 6 and 7, the result will not be announced to the debaters after they finish each round. These last two rounds called silent round where the debaters will only know their result at night during the party at one of the pub. ) So, later that night, we went to Red Lion Pub to partyyyyyyyyyy!!! Wee! all of us got one free drink! 12am sharp. The adj core called out teams that manage to break to the octofinals. 32teams break. 2 teams from MMU Cyber break but they couldn't proceed further as the rule stated that only Philippine University were allowed to break. We went back about 1am and that's the end of day 8.

Day 9 :
- Octofinals. 32teams compete to proceed to the quater final, then semi final and the FINALS!! For the final rounds, the debate were excellent! Too bad that my english kinda sucks and I didn't know some of the vocabulary that they used. Sigh... sad. Basically I didn't know a single thing about the debate. The result for that round will be announced after the closing dinner. All of us went back to the hotel to prepare for the closing dinner. All of us thought that it would be a formal dinner and we spended hours preparing ourselve, looking at the mirror ( yea.. being vain again) and wondering whether our clothes is formal enough for the event. All of us dressed so nice and went for the closing dinner. When we reached there, to our surprise, we were the nicest dressed debaters there. Oh I can tell you that if they had this best dress competition, MMU could have won! hahha... Everyone looks normal, some even come with t-shirt and jeans. Hump! I thought it was supposed to be a formal event!! No standard langsung! After the dinner we headed back to the hall for the prize giving session and the annoucement of the champion. Sharmila from Ateneo De Manila is good! Fantastic and she won the best debater for this NDC, but this time she gotta share it with another girl from UPD who is very good at the finals too. However, Ateneo De Manila failed to grab the win this year ( they were the champion for past few years. ), the champion falls on UPD. They screamed, laughed and cried of happiness. After the ceremony ended, all of us went back to the hotel. This is when MMUians invited all the debaters to come over our room to party!!!!!!! We bought lots of alcohol and cokes and more alcohols. One by one they came, we sang and sang all night long and we have UB choir with us! and... and... they willing to sing for us!! yipee!! some got really drunk on that night. Well.... something did happened that night. See, we were lack of alcohol at that moment, and MMUians can't afford to fork out anymore money for more alcohol. What we did is................ **********........... Nah, we did smtg so that the other debaters will donate us some money but I'm not going to expand further about this. :P Anyway, while partying, my friend told me and Alex that someone just asked her something. Here's the conversation :
"guy" : Hey, is Alex one of ur fren?
Popeye: huh? yea.. why?
"guy" : Is he..... that one... same kind as me?
Popeye : ( Acted as if she dunno what "he" meant ) huh?? what do u mean by this?
"guy" : I mean.... is he a gay??
Popeye : what??! NO! he has a gf.
"guy" : Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww..... i feel so sad.

Get what I mean? LOL. That "guy" is a gay and thought Alex is a gay too. Hmm.. Hey Alex, how come people think that u are a gay. hump!! Jealous jealous. hahahaa.

Anyway, back to what happened next. I saw this guy.. he's the dancer that performed during the closing dinner. He dances latin dance. Wow! Nice. They didn't had much practice though for that performance but it's still nice. and guess what guess what?? I asked him whether he's willing to teach me how to dance and he agreed!!! wee!! So, he thought me the basic walk of the cha cha. Nice.. I love the cha cha. Hmm.. not boasting around but I think I learned pretty fast. Even some of my fren said I'm a fast learner in dancing. ( dancing only) then we move on to the next step. and then a simple whole routine of the cha cha. I can dance!! not really well though. It's tough to dance well because you have to take note of ur posture and every single step u move and ur expression. I thought knowing the steps is enough last time, but now I find it a little bit difficult. Every single movement have to take note. Besides I only learned it in less than 2hours! mine you, the time was 4am at that moment the dance practice ended. :P I know we were crazy. Later on, Alex came and joined me, he's my patner. The dancer, Edwin taught him my routine so we can practice together. Alex learned pretty fast actually but well... not as good as me. :P:P:P hahah... kekekee. But true ma.. I dance better than you ma Alex. Then we practice til 4.30am and continue partying. Oh ya, the hotel security guard came and warned us for being too noisy countless time until he " beh tahan". haha... this is so so so fun!!! never had so much fun as this before!! I dozed off around 5.30am that morning while others were still outside partying. hehehe.

Day 10 :
- Time to go back to Manila. Oh.. I miss Bagiuo so much. I prefer to stay there than Manila because Manila is so congested and dusty and polluted. Bagiuo? Less traffic, nice weather.. fresh air.... nice! hehe. But before we go back, we managed to visit some of the tourism attraction. We went to the Botanical Garden the other day, but this time we went to the Mines View and The Mansion. Mines View is a place where we can enjoy nice sceneries of mountains and shop for ur souvenirs. There's lots and lots of shops there and you can bargain like hell! We bought this strawberry wine for 75pesos which is about RM6 or RM7. Cheap rite? Unfortunately, during our way home, the wine over turn and 1/4 of the wine gone. :( Supposed to give it to you Kirks, but now.... sigh. Sowie ya! The Mansion, nothing much, it's just a house where the many Philippine President stay when they come to Baguio. Just take a quick picture and headed to Mines View. At 7pm, all of us went to SM Mall again to have our dinner. We then went to the bus station at 9pm and bidded goodbye to Baguio...... sob sob.. Baguio.

Day 11:
- Reached Manila. Stayed at Rex's house. Rex's made us a true Philippine breakfast. After breakfast we took a nap til noon. Basically we went around Manila. Rex brought us to the worlds 3rd largest shopping mall, Asia Mall. It was huge! It has everyting you want. 2cineplex, 1ice skating ring which is much bigger than the sunway pyramid, all kinds of shops and food outlets. Amazing! and it's by the beach. Opposite the mall is a church. It is so so nice. The architecture is so fine and nice. I teman-ed Alex for the mass and their choir sounds so nice..... later on we went to the beach for a walk. It was so windy that day. After that we headed to another beach-side to have a drink. OMG!! the wind is so strong and the current of the sea is so strong. Sea water splashed against the brick wall and it almost got us all wet. We stayed there for quite some time, not until there's a sudden change of weather. It's so windy.. I suddenly felt as if a taufun is coming. Lol.. well, no taufun just extremely windy. After that we headed to Tia Maria again to drink. I was pretty tired that day, so I didn't drink nor dance. Just slept there, for hours... :p LOL. and then home sweet home ( back to Rex's house and dozed off ). Back then, all of them enjoying karaoke and had supper. Too bad for me, I'm too tired to wake up. So I just slept til the next morning.

Day 12 :
- Had breakfast and went for shopping!!!!!!! Went to Greenhill where they sell lotsa of cheap stuff ( not actually very cheap though, I find it quite expensivve especially the clothes there. ) Well, the clothes there are rather expensive. So I didn't get any shirt there instead I got myself a pearl necklace. Alex bought it for me, it's genuine and cheap! okok, maybe it's a lower grade pearl but who cares. It's still a pearl. It's about RM 13.50. Cheap rite? Hmm.. something did annoyed me that time. Not going to mention what happened just in case he/she reads it. Hump. Oh ya, I bought a hair curler too! only RM7.50. Haha. I'm a happy girl! oh ya.. I forgot to mention that I bought some cheap cheap stuff at a place called Ukai Ukai in Baguio. 75cents for a pair of earring!!! RM5 for a button up shirt!! double wow! and at Botanical Garden I bought 2knitted cap black and white for RM2 each!!! Wow wow wow!!!! Shopping!! Enjoy shopping in Baguio. okok, back to Manila. We continued our shopping spree at a place call.... oh gosh.. I forgot the name of that mall. Rex said that this is a high class mall, everything here is expensive, and there's not much crowd here compared to other malls. So Alex and I just did some window shopping while the others bought tons and tons of books. bookaholic. Is there such word for someone who addicted to books? LOL. Before that, Rex mentioned that the day before we came down to Manila, Baguio got hit by taufun scale 3, the highest scale is 4. Imagine trees falling down, massive landslide that blocks all the road down from Baguio, floods, heavy rain... gosh.. I'm so worry about other debaters who haven't come down from Baguio and those UB people. Hope they are fine.. really hope they are fine. When Rex told us about this, I told to Iris, Disco and popeye that it happened to me once during the Tsunami case. I was merely hours away from penang. I was in Langkawi a day ago and I was at the beach in Penang few hours ago. How lucky I am!! This time I was one day away before taufun hits Baguio. Popeye jokingly said that I bring bad luck, because whenever I go something bad happened. But then Disco debated and said " No, she's the lucky star, maybe because of her we are always safe. ". Haha.. everyone laughed and agreed. We were catching our next bus to Clark now. Bye bye Manila..... 1more day to go.

Day 13 :
- Reached Clark and send the Cyberian to the airport. Their flight is one day earlier than us. After bidding goodbye to them, we went straight to the inn that we stayed on the first day. Take a short nap and went to SM Mall to do our final shopping. Had KFC for lunch and then went for a movie. Then went to the arcade to spend our time there. Then more shoppings..... until night and we went back to the inn, took bath, and slept.

Day 14:
- Time to go home. Woke up at 7am. Packed out stuff, and headed to the airport. On the way, I felt uneasy... I felt that.... I lost my camera. Straight away check my luggage. Yeap! it's gone... sigh.... not going mention it all over again. 11.45am board the plane and tata Phillipines!!

That's the end of my 2weeks trip in Philippines.

What I like about Philippines?
- Food. ( awesome!! nicest food eva!! )
- People ( They are all so frenly.. I mean all!!! )
- security guard ( there's security guard everywhere from range from malls to shops in the mall to 7-11 to fast food restaurants, everywhere.. and they'll open the door for u and greet u. How sweet.. )
- Baguio's weather ( cold and nice )
- Cheap stuff!! ( bargain til "kao kao" )

What I hate about Manila?
- dusty
-Congested

To sum up, I pretty like Philippines. Everything is nice there. :) Hope to go back there someday to see my friends again. To all my Philippine friends, Selamat Po!! ( means thank u)




In one of the high class shopping mall.

Me at one of the garden in Philippines Military Academy ( PMA )