We arrived in Asia

Batangas, Philippines January 12, 2009 We came to the Philippines at 22:00 after 55 hours of travel without hotel reservations, no plans, with a budget of 30 per day (15 per person) and diving instructors licenses expired, and so far, no we have suffered hunger:) We spent the first two nights in Manila at Green Mango Inn, a hotel that you recommended a trio of Norwegian backpacking could find at the airport. We pay 5.30 per night for a shared room for luck that was empty. Nothing wrong with the hotel, very clean and well maintained. Manila is a huge city with 9.5 million residents among which a couple honduras / Netherlands who walks the streets of the city, alias Richard and Janneke.Everywhere we go people just stared with curiosity, trying to sell us food, passenger tricycle, jeepney fare (I owe the pictures), meal, and often help us with luggage without expecting anything in return (very different from Egypt) . To our surprise, many Filipinos speak English. Guards, bus drivers, taxi drivers, passengers, pedestrians, etc.. speak English, including basic and intermediate, so we had no problem to enlist public transport. What more would like to highlight in this article is that Filipinos are very friendly. When we ask directions in the streets always spend a few minutes to make us understand his instructions, whether given to us in English or Filipino. On our last day in Manila, a co-passenger jeepney, talking in very good English, deviated from its working path to take us to the bus station to bring us up to Batangas, a port city located some 120 km south of Manila .This Filipino, with not even exchanged names, we devote approximately 30 minutes of your time and effort to the passenger jeepney pay us until we left tackle in front of the bus. Thanks buddy! Finally I give a few interesting facts from the Philippines: - The Philippines is composed of 7,107 islands ... - The Philippine Peso currency and is called for every 47 dollars you get 1 - A large part of the signs and traffic signs are in English - The Philippines was a Spanish colony, the Philippines named in honor of King Philip II - Is there no overweight people in the Philippines ! We have seen hundreds of people in the streets we have not seen a single person as overweight. Today we saw the streets of Batangas three plump, but any person with excess weight so far. - Few Filipinos know that is Honduras and many think I'm in Israel! - The Filipino language has a lot of English and Spanish also ... have a news program called "Twenty Oras. We also saw some signs written in Spanish. For while posteo again babay (adios in Filipino) Until next week!