Two Weeks In The Philippines

It’s great to be home! I was off adventuring in the Philippines with my friend Sarah for the last couple weeks. It’s an incredibly beautiful place with over 7100 islands. We found travel there to be extremely challenging: getting there took over three days, we missed flights due to things out of our control, storms cancelled boats, and almost all of our plans were changed or missed but I would still do it all again, in fact I hope to go visit there another time in this life.

The Filipino culture is amazing in that most people really don’t have anything, but are willing to give you whatever they have. They are some of the kindest and most sincere people I’ve connected with. I met a few people who only make $2 Canadian a day and work for 12 hours raking sand with no teeth, yet seemed to be quite content with where they are in life. The juxtaposition between tourism and how people actually live their lives there is extremely humbling. It really puts into perspective how lucky we are here in Canada and reinforces why people immigrate here from all over the world in attempts to have a better life for themselves and their family.

The coolest thing we did, when we weren’t riding in a van, car, plane, or boat, was visiting about 50 waterfalls in one day, cliff jumping and gliding down the river. I also tried scuba diving for the first time, swam with sea turtles, and slept in a traditional Filipino nipa bamboo hut.

Here’s a video mashup that I made of some one second clips to give you an idea. Have you ever been to the Philippines? What’s the most challenging place you’ve traveled?