Philippine May 2012

This is the first time I go travel with my schoolmate and lecturer. How am I going to describe the trip? I can only said it was unlike the trip that I used to go, is not about shopping and food. It makes me want to know more and visit Philippine again.

It surprised me that Filipinos are so friendly and warm hearted. They will give you a big smile even you did not know who are they. I was just love the warm and culture there.

The Philippine culture defines the unique distinctiveness of Filipinos from the rest of the world. Its richness in culture makes it highly different and more prominent from other countries. The Philippines have diverse cultural heritage, arts, traditions and spoken languages. It was so interesting that there are some words is similar to our Malay language.

The country has innumerable museums that take account to the wide historical and cultural evolution of its nation with churches, museums and galleries available throughout the Philippine Islands. During the trip, we had gone through few museums and gallery. It was fun and I really into their culture and definitely will visit again to dig more!

 The months of April and May are considered to be the hottest season in Philippine, and then I can feel what is so called summer. Where temperature reaches 36 degrees Celsius, almost like having a mild fever and where we can cook a raw egg yolk just by placing it under the sun for about 15 minutes. During this hot weather, I was just want to stay in an air-conditioned room.

Food in Philippine is nothing much different from Malaysia. It was like mix of Chinese and Malay food. There is one special food that I would want to mention about. I’m always curious why people enjoy eating it. What I am saying is Balut. A Balut is composed of different parts inside it. These are the duck chick, the stone or the white slightly hard part then the yellowish soft part which is call “pula”.  The Balut also has a tasty like-soup fluid content that is called “sabaw” in Filipino. This is also found in some countries like Thailand and China. The Balut is a hard boiled duck egg with a twist. It has a twist because of the little duck chick inside it. They say that it’s tasty and delicious, and tastes like chicken. But every time I see the little bird, I always have the thought of “Oh My! I’ll never eat this little feathery duck with kind of black in colour!”

 
(from Google image)

We were staying at Philippine Rice Research Institute (Philrice) for the first two days, the cordial atmosphere and hearty hospitality makes me feel like we are VIP. The whole team of development communication department did a brief talk and tour to let us know what Philrice is trying to do. PhilRice is putting effort on helping to attain and sustain rice self-sufficiency; reducing poverty and malnutrition; and achieving competitiveness in agricultural science and technology. Basically they are doing research on everything about the rice which is the main food for Filipinos.

We head to Baguio in the early morning at the third day of our trip. 1,500 meters above sea level, it took us 4 hours to reach the city. It was so amazing that everything is on the mountain, the whole city can survive on its own. It was so unlike Genting Highland or Cameron Highland in Malaysia. If you did not travel with to 2 hours mountain road, you wouldn’t even realize you are on the mountain top.

Baguio City is a famous Philippines travel destination up north. Baguio is fondly called as the summer capital of the Philippines because tourists flock to the area during summer. Then we found that it is much cooler to spend summer in Baguio than any other place in the Philippines. The trip end in the fourth day, we woke up at 4am to catch the flight in Clark. Is time to say bye to Philippine, and it gave me a chance not only to know Philippine but also to get to know more about my classmates.

 I travel to learn, to experience new cultures, to see as much of this world. I travel for Knowledge and I found the pleasure (quote from somebody~).