From Poverty to Paradise Island and few life lessons learned!!!

After a long day travelling, class, Tai Chi, and a group meeting I decided to finally update my blog.

This morning I came back from a 5 day trip to the Philippines. Our trip started in Hong Kong airport from there we flew for 2.5 hours to Cebu city. We got off the plane and were ready for the adventure and as you may guess adventures were on the way. Our hotel booking was incorrect and we could not get our room (i.e. we arrived at 5am) so we decided to take the taxi and head to Malapascua Island. We arrived to the northern bus terminal to take the bus to Maya and here I experienced the first cultural shock. Once we got off the taxi 10 men run towards to us and were all screaming something, for the moment I thought they will kidnap us, but I was wrong they just wanted us to take their bus and not the proper city bus. Somehow we escaped from them, and got on the regular bus to Maya (takes 4 hours and costs $2.5). The bus station is full of garbage and dirt and you see people on the streets cooking,seating, and eating on the floor. 

Once we departed I saw a very small boy on the street, roughly 5-6 years old with no shoes ,no shirt walking on the street with stick in his hands, and a lunch was tight to the stick. The worst part was that he was smoking a cigarette. On the same street there were bunch of girls walking to school in pink uniforms, no one walked them to school and they were very small and school starts there pretty early (we were on the bus at 6:30 am). The traffic in this city is insane everyone honks like there is no tomorrow, and people hang out of the cars. There are almost no traffic lights, and you can just imagine what is happening on the streets – enormous chaos. The city smells really really bad because they burn everything and anything from tires to food derbies. I wish I had once of those SARS masks over there. During the 4 hours we passed through many villages and I have not seen anything like that in my life; lots of slams and poverty. This trip really made me appreciate what I have, what my parents and life has given me. People cross the street wherever they want, they drive the way they want, just to conclude no rules. After a four hour bumpy ride, we finally got to Maya but we had very little cash on us, thinking there will be an ATM over there. BIG mistake, no ATM, no money exchange nothing. Luckily we got to buy local sim cards to call our friends to bring us some more money (they were coming the next day). People in the Philippines are super nice and friendly and always ready to help, especially the once who live on the Island. 

To be continued