fergyboi

The Burma Campaign UK, along with a number of other organisations, are holding a global day of action for Burma’s cyclone victims. I’m sure that this situation is not far from anyone’s heart.

It’s reported that over 1.5 million people are at serious risk from diseases such as cholera, dysentery and malaria and may die if aid is not delivered soon. It seems that the number of dead cannot be accurately determined at this time, but i am confident that this disaster is on a par with the terrible earthquake in China. It’s rather strange then that China sent 50,000 troops to Sichuan province to help with the aid effort, but is blocking UN sanctions to force the Burmese government to accept foreign aid! I understand the principal that the Burmese should decide for themselves, but i think that when this many lives are at stake - there’s not really much time to look at everyone’s principals.

China broadcasts to the media globally that it would appreciate foreign help; unsurprisingly everyone scrambles to show them how much they can do…and maybe they can get a few new trade agreements next year, but at the same time they block aid from going to Burma! It doesn’t really make sense in my head.

So…what can be done. On Saturday 17th May, the Global Day of Action for Burma’s Cyclone Victims will take place. The emphasis is on getting the rest of the world to enforce aid upon Burma to save literally millions of lives. I don’t agree with this tactic as it will only worsen relations with the government, but then i also do not have a better solution to propose!

Protests are taking place in London as follows:

French Embassy: Time: 12:30 - 13:00
Address: 58 Knightsbridge London SW1X 7JT

American Embassy: Time: 13:30 - 14:00
Address: 24 Grosvenor Square, London, W1A 2LQ

Foreign Office: 14:40 – 15:10
Address: King Charles Street London SW1A 2AH

Click here to view a map of the day’s protests.

Other protests across the world can be found here.

After being talked out of starting my own online travel guide by my older sibling, i’ve decided to more actively participate in wikitravel.org. My first article can be found here. Not bad after only being there for 3 hours!

We enjoyed a 3 hour bus journey today aboard a beast of a bus, run by the D’Christ Bus Company (as in ‘Da Christ’ - a bit of ghetto slang mixed in with strong Christianism going on there i think!).

We were making our way to the longest underground river in the world. By the time we got there - we were met with a hail of rain, crashing waves on the beach and a lot of flooded roads! Turns out that the weather we were faced with was considerably better than the last few days! We later found out that there is at least one typhoon in the area that may be heading towards us!

So…a swift change of plans, back aboard the same bus for the 3 hour return to the city…and think we should check out weather reports and possibly flights out of the country! No point sitting around for two weeks until the rain clears!

I realised today that unfortunately this site doesn’t display correctly in Internet Explorer. My apologies to my readers who use IE, I did not notice this as i always use Firefox.

I will look into this problem sometime in the near future, however, for those that can’t wait - I would highly recommend Firefox!

You know i couldn’t resist the white beach photos at some point! Click the photo for more pics…

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!

We spent a week on Panglao Island, off the island of Bohol. Panglao itself is really touristy, and we arrived during the first weekend of the Philippine school summer holidays - so it was very busy. However, we found a nice hotel and chilled out for a few days, during which we were paid a visit by a large crab which Emma spotted trying to claw its way up onto her bed!

Panglao Island, Malapascua before it, and Moalboal before that, have all really been pretty much the same. They’re all beach towns, with lots of tourists and lots of restaurants serving a mix of Western and Eastern dishes. Not that we have not been enjoying it, but at the end of the day - we really could’ve been in Spain, France, or anywhere else - as the beach-front tourists town is essentially the same across the world.

However, a chilled out few weeks on the beach has been a great way to start the trip. Getting anxious for a little more adventure…we hired a motorbike for the day, and set off around Panglao Island and Bohol. We visited a cool underground cave which was linked to the sea and had a quick swim (after getting a little bit lost on the way there!).

In the afternoon we were hoping to head to the tarsier sanctuary, the Luboc river and the Chocolate Hills. Unfortunately, the rain came on a bit heavy around 1pm so we ran for shelter in a bus stop for an hour or so until it passed:

We made it to the tarsier sanctuary and saw these cool little dudes:

After that, we had a really nice drive through the country, before arriving at the river, and making our way back. I really felt that the whole day was a completely different experience to the rest of the trip so far. It felt like we were doing something new and seeing things which we wouldn’t normally see.

I just overheard a guy offering his very small child (probably 2ish, definitely not talking yet!) a drink of his coke as he couldn’t reach his bottle of milk. Now i’m not sure if he was being serious or not, but as i had a computer at hand, i thought i’d Google the ingredients of coke to find out what is actually in it, and i came across this interesting site.

I’m not sure if it’s all entirely factual, but it is interesting reading, and it wouldn’t take much to convince me that it’s all true!

We spent a glorious 10 days on a small island called Malapascua, just off the tip of Cebu island at the top.

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.

Big thanks to my big bro for buying me a Flickr Pro account for my birthday. This removes my upload limits, and allows me to show more than 200 photos, and to create more than 3 sets. So, due to this, i’m going to be uploading more photos to my Flickr account, and i’m going to organise them a bit better into more sets so that it’s much easier to browse my work.

Despite the 200 photo limit being lifted, i don’t want to end up with a stream of 000’s of photos, so i will still be selective in what i’m uploading.

You can check out my Flickr photos here.