Part 3 : February - July 2009

SINGAPORE : a "fine" city!

February 1 - 4, 2009

" Do not smoke, do not eat and drink, do not sleep on the benche, do not..." . Well, the first impression of Singapore was about how clean this city was. Normal! You get a fine for everything wrong you do! But, hey, this is not what we should remember about this culture mixed city. In Singapore you can find so many different towns: China town, little India, arabic town, etc. with all the goods of the respective countries! Excellent. We loved it! The only bad point was in the dorm: stupid young people with no respect were really noisy and we had some not so good nights of sleep. Why choose a dorm, then? Because SIngapore is an expensive city... =(
Anyway, this is more a "transit" city than anything else. So let's head to the southeast asian sea!

PHILIPPINES : the kindness of the people

February 5 - 11 and February 25 - March 7, 2009

During this year around the world, we choosed to travel mainly in Asia. In February, we could believe we kneweverything about the asian countries, its food, its culture, its transport etc. And then we arrived in the Philippines... no more tuk tuk but "jeepneys", no more fried noodles but "pork adobo", no more hassle but "nice and friendly filippinos"!

We started our trip in Palawan, the wild island.Maybe some of you heard about the Bacuit archipelago: some of the "Survivors" were recordedin one of these deserted and paradisiac islands. That's how we found ourselves back underwater: diving is one of our favorite leisure activity. But we did only one day of diving, for the rest, we preferred to go on boat day trips, much nicer to discover the archipelago. EL Nido, the fishing village from where everything can be organized, was not easy to reach: the roads are bad, and on the way back, it took us 14 instead of 6 hours because of flat wheels!

The second partof our trip in the Philippines brought us to the north: Banaue, Batad and the beautiful rice terraces. Willing to see them green and not muddy, we decided to do a two days trek through the terraces and the villages. We discovered some wonderful landscapes and interested kids!

After the north, we headed south to reach Donsol bay, where we could realize one of our dream: swim with the whale sharks! But that was in snorkel... next step would be to see them during a dive. Will that maybe happen once during our trip? We'll see!

MICRONESIA : Guam, Yap and Palau, 3 different paradises!

February 12 - 24, 2009