Transfer

Am leaving this site for awhile. Am now located at seaphilippines.wordpress.com. Hope this one works out better.

It’s Southeast Asia from a Filipino’s point of view.

Paul Theroux and other ramblings

Normally, when you really, really hate something in the beginning, you eventually like it (eventually).

I picked up Paul Theroux’s book, The Great Railway Bazaar recently and was immediately sucked into it.  It’s a story about one man’s solitary (but rarely alone) train journey that starts in London, goes down through Turkey, unto Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Vietnam, Japan and finally the Soviet Union.  It’s a great and inspiring book that every hardcore traveller should read.  I personally am not as hardcore as this, but it is nice to live vicariously through another person’s experience.

What’s nice is, Theroux has actually already been to the Philippines and his article about it is still availabe online here

http://outside.away.com/outside/magazine/0998/9809islands.html

Reading Theroux will give you a serious case of wanderlust.  Which is pretty good when I expected him to be a pretentious writer at first.  It is quite amazing that he does his journey’s alone.  I have never been entranced by the idea of travelling solo but it seems that a camaraderie is built by travelling alone.  People will talk to you when they normally wouldn’t if you were in a group.  But backpacking communities tend to be terribly loquacious to begin with. Besides trains, it seems like Theroux also took to kayaking which he wrote about in The Happy Isles of Oceania (I do not own or have read.)

I’ve also read The Lonely Planet Story by Tony and Maureen Wheeler.  These two travelled by car and what not from London to Sydney, wrote a book about it and eventually started the Lonely Planet empire.  Either way, it’s a great book.  I have dreams one day of driving from Hong Kong to London.

Both books I got from Fully Booked, The Lonely Planet Story is available in probably any Fully Booked branch (or Power Books for that matter, and even National Bookstore!).  The Great Railway Bazaar I found (only copy) in the Power Plant branch.  Fully Booked is a great bookstore but it’s not as complete as Barnes and Noble (or maybe even Kinokuniya).  They would best be able to fill up this gap by having a counter where you can actually order books through them (parang like the way CD Warehouse used to fill the CD gap here in the ‘pines.)

Fully Booked High Street (Serendra) also has copies of The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria.  With this book and The Lexus and The Olive Tree, you will be able to capture the zeitgeist of globalization that is sweeping through the world right now.  I can not more highly recommend a book right now that you should pick up than The Post American World.

OTHER RAMBLINGS:

Also I would recommend The Case for Goliath, but that book I have never seen here.  I did see it once in multiple copies in the basement of the NYU student library but that’s the first world and we still live in our first world country with a third world distribution network.  I wonder when we will be incorporated more completely into the global supply chain?

It would be nice to be able to get books, movies, concerts on time if at all without having to resort to piracy, Amazon, flying to other countries or relatives in other countries.

Now that’s what I’m talking about

Harold’s Mansions

“Any cheaper and we’d be sluts”

Haha, now that’s a tagline.

http://www.haroldsmansion.com/

Too bad it’s all the way in Dumaguete.

Virtual Backpacking

Okay, I’ve spent the last two days surfing the Lonely Planet Thorntree Forum on the Philippines.  This is what I’ve picked up from it. 

There is an island in the NE of the Philppines called Fuga Island that I want to check out. 

There is an island in the the SW of the Philippines called Sitangkai in Tawi-Tawi that I want to check out. 

In Cambodia, they have Khmer440.com and in Thailand they have something called thaivisa.com.  In the Philippines we have thephils.com, dumagueteinfo.com and cebuliving.com. 

We also have this travelphil.com run by this guy named Jens Peters who just loves this country. 

From ROX I picked up bugoybikers.com, another Philippinophile, who wrote a book about biking the Philippines. 

I don’t know where I’m going with all this information but something is bound to happen.

Pinoy Backpacking Renaissance

Either this is a sign that backpacking culture is taking root in this country or Rox’s is going out of business, lol, but either way they are now holding a backpacking festival.

http://roxphilippines.multiply.com/calendar/item/10026/Pinoy_Backpacking_Festival?replies_read=14

Can’t get enough of the Backpacking 101? We hear you and we have now made it into a full festival!

For two days on October 17-18, catch exhibits of different countries and lectures on backpacking, travel photography, travel sketching, packing 101….and a lot more!

It’s now time for you to discover the world!

Hosted and lectures to be given by Robert Alejandro and Jethro Rafael with other guest speakers.

This event is made possible with the support of Robert and Jethro, The Travel Club, Ayala Malls and tourism boards of Singapore, Guam, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Announcement of registration procedures and program of the event to follow.

Log on to www.roxphilippines.multiply.com for updates and details.

———-

Actually, I’ve been so atat to go backpacking again that I’ve been reading Lonely Planet PHILIPPINES!  I actually have a half a mind to stay in Malate and see what foreign backpackers have to go through in this country.  It would make an intersting article (and waste a whole lot of money).

Anyway, I guess it can’t be helped that Malate is the ground zero for ”backpacking” in the Philippines.  I was hoping to develop the Vito Cruz area of Makati.  It’s interesting that Pasay road is becoming the place for cheaper hotels in this country.  It makes sense, I guess.

Sleep Procrastination

What I would really like is a newspaper that would cover the art scene of Manila.  Not a pretentious one, mind you.  Just an alternative one.  We really don’t have a venue for the art scene here in Manila.  We have lots of places and spaces but no published spaces.  Inquirer?  Pffft.  And much less the Star.  In Bangkok they have this nifty newspaper called the Bangkok Nation and they also have an alternative newspaper that I think comes with it called Daily Xpress (www.dailyxpress.net).  It’s the shiznit.  In the States they have The Village Voice and the Boston Phoenix.  I think there is a big enough market for this kind of media already in the Philippines.  Somebody just must be brave enough to take the first step.  I would, but I don’t have the time or the money right now.  Perhaps during summer break. 

We just must coalesce our different art into a movement not driven by egos but by a genuine desire to make our country better.  There is simply too much pretension out there.  Too much grandstanding.  The movement must be sincere.  When we get out there and get to do genuine work we will feel it.  Though lots of people working for themselves can make a movement, uniting would even be better.

But who cares about the uniting as long as we are working.

Backpacking Around the World: Pinoy Style, part 3!

What the heck do you write about when you aren’t travelling?

Nothing at all.

Luckily this came around.

Backpacking Around the World: Pinoy Style

Start:	Aug 12, ‘08 7:00p
End:	Aug 12, ‘08 9:00p
Location:	ROX -CORE (Center for Outdoor Recreation and Expedition)

Due to public demand, we are doing the backpacking talk for the 3rd time! Learn expert tips and hear stories of our Pinoy backpackers on Aug 12, 2008 at ROX.

Register by emailing us your full name and mobile number at rox.cs@primergrp.com.

Admission is Free.

Well this is one ride I won’t be taking

Or nobody else should for that matter.

Here is the list of the 45 accidents Sulpicio Lines have had in it’s 28-year history.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080713-148117/www.lloydsmiu.com

Actually, Inquirer had a nice little box inside the newspaper listing all the accidents in a more organized manner.

Liquid Jane

What’s a traveller’s blog without some music.

My friend Chading, finally released a video of their song Botelya

I don’t think this is it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPDpK1hhwn4

But when I do find the link.  I’ll get you to it.

Or you could just go to

http://odysseylive.net/liquidjane

and look for Botelya, Hollow Tree or Newspaper, Bottle.

Addendum: I just bought a copy of Newspaper, Bottle in Music One Greenbelt in the OPM section.  There was only other copy left.  It is supposedly also available in Fully Booked and Astroplus.

Backpacking Pinoy Style!

One of the problems of having a backpacking website, is what do you write about when you’re not backpacking.  And seriously, I’ll probably be on the road only once a year, so what do I do in the meantime?  I geek out, of course.

I’ve been trawling the Internet for information and due to a tip from a friend found out about the ROX Backpacking Pinoy Style lecture series.  It’s an informal gathering of backpacking afficionados that they’ve held twice.

Here are eyewitness reports of people who were actually there

http://agam-agam.blogspot.com/2008/07/backpacking-pinoy-style.html

http://justwandering.org/index.php/2008/05/28/backpacking-pinoy-style/

or you could simply Google “Backpacking Pinoy Style” to find out more.

or just go to the ROX Multiply site

http://roxphilippines.multiply.com/photos/album/22/Backpacking_around_the_world_Pinoy_Style

http://roxphilippines.multiply.com/journal/item/19/How_do_we_help_create_a_Backpacking_community