Philippines Highlights!!!!

This trip was awesome!!!!!! Who knew that the Phillipines were so cool?!

So, the people: we decided that Filipinos look like brown white people. They look slightly Mexican and maybe just a little Asian (we're so used to Chinese people that it's hard to tell if they looked slanty or not – hahaa!) but they definitely dress, eat and talk like Americans.

Most importantly, the food in the philipines was AMAZING!!! We've been stuck in China where there's literally nothing but Chinese food, McDonald's and Chinese food for a hundred mile radius from our apartment so when we got to the philipines and saw Mexican food, Italian food, American food and Indian food – we freaked out. Nelly and Brandon cried a little when they saw a Wendy's.

Here are some of the craziest things from our trip:

1) We had to fly out of Hong Kong to get to Manila. At the boarder between China and Hong Kong, we had arranged for a company to pick us up and take us through the boarder in a car and drive us straight to the airport. To our surprise, the car was on time . Nelly, Josh and I jumped in the car but a little, ancient chinese bitch literally pushed brandon and cut in front of him. We told her to get out and the driver told her to get out but she wouldn’t. Since having that old bitch in the car made it so that there wasn't an available seatbelt for Brandon, the driver said that Brandon couldn't come with us (in china, no one wear seatbelts but in Hong Kong there’s a different government thus different laws so seatbelts are required. So, we all had to get out. We were told that another car would get us in a minute. We waited for 1 ½ hours. For 1 ½ hours the words “old ” “Chink” and “Cunt” were used well over 900 times. Then, of course, there was a HUGE delay at the border. We were 2 ½ hours behind schedule and I was 100% sure that we were going to miss our flight. We knew that if we missed this flight, our specific airline wouldn’t have another Manila flight until the next night which would mean that we'd miss our flight to Cebu – so we'd have to cancel everything. When our car pulled up to the airport, it was ten minutes before our scheduled take-off time. We ran, and ran and ran. SOMEHOW there was no lines at the security check and SOMEHOW the plane was a little delayed and we ended up making it just in time. GOD!

2) We swam with glowing plankton!!!!!!! We were walking in the water at night on Boracay's White Beach and we kept seeing little, glowing, green and blue flashes in the water. We waded out into the deeper water and we saw thousands of them!!!! We stayed for three hours! It was magical and beautiful – totally like something from Avatar!!!!!!!

3) We spent four hours on a boat going from island to island and stopping for snorkeling at the best reefs (I saw angel fish and Nemo fish!!!!!!!!). It was fantastic!! But then, that night, it turned out that Josh, Nelly and Brandon had gotten terrible, crazy-red sunburns! And me: I got an awesome TAN!! JEW POWER!!!!!

4) So, I didn't get a sunburn but two days later I got something waaaaaay worse. My back was itching like crazy but I didn’t think anything of it until nelly saw my back and freaked out. I had this DISGUSTING, SICK, GROSS rash thing on my back. A 6”x6” spot on my back was covered in gazillions of red and white and NASTY bumps. YEAH! It was insanely itchy and painful. I begged Brandon to just get a knife and cut my back off. It was awful. AWFULLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know when I got it too. At one of the hostels we stayed at, we all had separate beds and we were sure that our sheets were dirty. I guess I just got lucky with the diseased ones. Brandon thought that I should just consider myself lucky that those bumps didn't happen on my chest – he said he would have left me for sure. Anyway, it has been almost a month and the rash is almost gone. I don't know what it was and it's not like I can go to a Chinese doctor about it. They'd probably tell me that it was caused by eating too many cucumbers and not enough turtle feet.

5) We saw the Chocolate Hills which are one of the seven wonders of the world! It was so awesome – there are over 1,000 of these perfectly shaped hills – you just have to see it!

6) Brandon got his tattoo finished!!! I think it's the coolest thing in the world that he got his tattoo in Boracay, on the most beautiful beach in the world!! Finishing the tattoo took 5 ½ hours! The first half of his tattoo was done in Phuket on Patong Beach and took 4 hours.

7) One of our hostels had a killer spider in it! It was enormous – like massive – like almost as big as a tarantula!!! Josh, Nelly and I were so scared!!! We just stood on one of the beds while Brandon went after it for us. It took an hour but Brandon finally beat it to death with a broken toilet seat lid that we found. I'm still having nightmares.