After a week in the Philippines’ golden nugget island of Boracay, we decided to leave the beaches behind for a while, and headed off to the remote corner of Palawan.

A 5 minute tricycle, followed by a 10 minute boat, followed by a 6 hour bus, followed by a 20 minute taxi, followed by a 34 hour ferry! saw us landing on the rainy shores of Puerto Princesa!

So far it’s been pretty cool…everyone’s a lot friendlier, the food is great (fantastic meal at the what-seems-to-be-famous Kalui restuarant tonight: seaweed with king prawns and fish soup, followed by whole fried fish in pineapple sauce and fish steaks, finished off with a fruit salad served in a half coconut!), and generally there are less tourists so things are cheaper and we don’t get hassled to constantly buy this, that, this & that etc (you get the picture!).

So…tomorrow we’re off to investigate the longest underground river in the world! Sounds like an adventure!

Sadly i didn’t take any photos of the palm tree rimmed white sand beaches (use your imagination, or Google Malapascua!) . However, i did take a few snaps underwater during some amazing dives! I dived with Thresher sharks which was rather spectacular, and saw some devil rays which was also pretty neat!

I’ve also put a few photos on Flickr, and you can check them out by clicking the photo below.

However, Sylvester Stallone has recently returned from filming on the Thai/Burmese border and has spoken about the atrocities which he saw. I have little doubt that by the time the smoke clears and democracy is restored to the country the world will learn of truly the appalling abuse of human rights which i believe happens there daily.

On the plus side, the UN Special Envoy met with the government today. So far there’s little news about the meeting which may even still be going on, however i imagine the outcome will be somewhat similar to the foreign minister’s announcement that the government reacted adequately to political activists who were exploiting peaceful protests to destabilize the government.

Feel free to check out some of my pictures of the country here, or as a slideshow here, and ponder the situation like this little fellow below!

Having been there and met Burmese people, it truly saddens me to think about this happening. I’ve chosen my words carefully here and i can honestly say that without exception we did not meet an unpleasant Burmese person. Everyone we met was overjoyed to see us and we didn’t notice a hint of aggression, anger or hatred in anyone we met for the whole time we were there. The worst thing was that we were so popular that everyone wanted to talk to us to practice their English and wouldn’t leave us alone! Life in the spotlight is hard i tell you!

They are marching from the outskirts of Yangon, to Shwedagon Pagoda in the centre of town. It’s the holiest shrine in the country and is said to house relics of four Buddhas within it. It is historically been used as the gathering point for protests and gatherings, and has seen both General Aung San demanding independence in 1946 and his daughter Aung San Suu Kyi and over half a million others protesting for democracy in the 1988 uprising. Unfortunately, 1988 ended terribly with thousands of monks and civilians killed or put in prison. Hopefully these protests will have better results.

I urge everyone to take an interest in this case. The situation in Burma today has been described as the worst abuse of human rights anywhere in the world. Millions of people have been moved from their homes, imprisoned, tortured or killed. The economy is in shambles, save for a few countries (mainly China) which still do business with the military junta government. Check out the Burma Campaign website and join the fight to help restore democracy in Burma. This is in no way the same as the western pseudo-democracy that is being imposed on Iraq, Burma held legitimate elections in 1990 which saw the National League for Democracy win roughly 80% of the votes. Currently i believe that Burma holds the record for the highest number of legitimately elected members of parliament currently held in prison, never mind the scores more that simply disappeared.

Please publicise this issue so that it can be changed for the better.

Initially i was overjoyed to hear about this. They are protesting against the military junta government’s refusal to apologise for raising the tax on fuel and subsequently for breaking up a peaceful protest staged by students and pro-democracy activists last week. This comes just days after they announced that NLD spokeswoman Aung San Suu Kyi will remain under house arrest for another year.

I hope that this doesn’t end in a bad way for the monks. They are revered in Burma and therefore hold a great deal of weight with the general public. The fact that they are taking to the streets shows just how drastic the situation has become, and how the rest of the world needs to stand up and take notice of the unspeakable abuses of human rights which occur in the country on a daily basis. I hope that the government don’t come down too harshly on them, although i fear that if they do that the country will rise up against the government and civil war will break out. The consequences of which may be beneficial for the country, but the process will most certainly end in huge loss of life.

Very little setup required, you just need to know the IP of the machine you’re connecting too, have the server program running on it and boom – you get a window on your desktop of the remote desktop and your keyboard and mouse control that machine.

The screenshot takes a picture of both of my monitors here so you can see me writing this post on the right, my start bar on the left, and the remote desktop in the middle of the screen on the left. Very cool stuff…thanks bro!

It’s a US territory so has great services, with heaps of Spanish Culture! No more time to write anything….but simply amazing so far.

Our band’s called XS Energy but we’re not wearing costumes so that we can roam around all the other bands to take pictures etc – if we had costumes we would have to stay in our designated areas.

Will upload pics and more details soon – check out facebook for more pictures.

Should be interesting….meant to be a relatively cloud-free night…so get out and have a look up to see if you see anything interesting!

The first is the cover shot for their upcoming ‘Cuisine and Culture’ trip around Asia in 2007, and features as the first photo displayed on the website, and the cover shot on the print version of the brochure.

The second shot is used on the last page of the print brochure.

Feel free to contact me if you would like an electronic copy of the print journal.