Nick the burned

I fixed the laptop after about a week of it being unusable. Hurray.

We spent 2 relatively uneventful days in Manilla. 9 hour daytime flight leads to arrival in the airport, met with a big crowd of people, many holding signs, and none with our names. After more than an hour and several attempts to contact our host we eventually found him and got driven to our bnb. What I saw of Manilla was different that what I've yet experienced, definitely a mix of very poor and wealth, but with a twist of wartime leftovers thrown in. We were there for 2 days but we never really got out and did anything. Our first night we slept through breakfast, the curse of jetlag I guess. We went to the mall, bought some groceries and some clothes, made ourselves dinner, made plans for our next nights stay, tried to fix the laptop, failed, went to bed, back to the airport... 2 nights 1 day with flights on both ends and timezone changes makes getting anything productive done pretty impossible.

We arrive in Puerto Princessa and things start to settle down a bit. Our hotel is pretty cheap, food is cheap, beer is cheap, lots of things close by. After the hustle of Italy and a few days of flights it's nice to finally be able to settle down a bit. We did a tour through the underground river system which was pretty incredible. It's a bit diminished by being crammed in a boat, with dozens of other boats going through, but still cool. Kilometers of cave covered in flowstone, stalagmites/tites, and full of bats. The boat tour guide telling us what all of the stones look like... Basically all of them were mother marry, jesus, last supper, angel, a little weird but you could see the resemblance... sort of. The spotlight we used to see was being operated by the tourist sitting in front, being directed by the tour guide, it would have been nice if half of what was said wasn't "forwards, down, up up up, now down...

Now we are 5 days in El Nido, a bit of a tourist spot, but very lovely. Good weather and view. We did a Kayaking trip yesterday, Mom wasn't planning to go due to her lacking of sleep, and joint issues preventing hero from being able to paddle. So while signing me up our guide asked if I wanted tandem or separate kayaks. I wanted tandem, I don't have great upper body strength and hours and hours of paddling seemed like a deathwish. However, learning there was a tandem option mom decided to come, so I was pushed to following by myself. After 40 minutes of nonstop paddling my arms were burning and we got to rest for a little while at a secluded beach. Well, we were far from done, after another stop then rowing home I barely made it. I could hardly lift my arms, and I was sunburned head to toe. Well, my toes aren't burnt but the tops of my feet, my ankles, my shins and knees, my belly my back my shoulders my arms my face my neck... All horribly burnt. I don't think my lower shins or ankles have ever really seen much sun so being badly burnt is awful. I did use sunscreen, spf 35 it said, waterproof it said, I put it on twice... I'm pretty sure this was some sort of knockoff Chinese sunscreen or something, we did buy it from a shack along a dirt road...

I'm spending today inside, I went out the door for about 5 seconds earlier but the moment the sun hit my legs I had to run back inside. My arms are sore, but no longer hurt but my burns are worse. Tomorrow I have a mountain biking trip planed, I don't know if I will be able though. We still have 2 weeks in the Philippines and I'm looking forward to it, well, at least to these burns going away. I'm not sure if it's the burns, or my poor sleep, but my mind is in the clouds today... Hard to make thoughts, mom was able to do currency conversions before me and I got them wrong, pretty embarrassing.

I seem to say this every weekly post, but I will try to make these daily/bidaily posts in the future, too hard to write about a whole week.

Made of fire
nick the burned