Flowers and Camping

Even though we’ve been home long enough to need to do laundry and grocery shop, we are still beaming from our trip. While images of open-air markets from Vietnam and temples from Cambodia are still swirling, we would be remiss not to write about and share images from Singapore and the Philippines.

Singapore

While on the bus transit from the airport to our hotel, I spotted an elevated highway with the lush fuchsia bougainvillea flowers hanging off the railing. I squealed at Daniel to turn and look at the flowers flinging themselves off the railing, but we had passed them. I was disappointed that I had enjoyed the view too long and did not make Daniel look at the flowers until it was too late. As I chastised myself for missing a flower opportunity, I saw the bougainvillea again…and AGAIN. Every overpass had buckets of hanging flowers, vines, and leaves just dangling off the sides of the railing. Once I realized this I became absolutely silent. Daniel knows that when I’m silent I’m either angry or so happily overwhelmed I do not know what to say. He knew it was the latter after a few more bridges and started to take pictures of me to document the moment I realized we were in Julia’s dream destination: a country that was a botanical garden. It was incredible.

The next day we actually went to the National Botanical Garden of Singapore. It is the most visited botanical garden in the world and was absolutely spectacular. There was an orchid farm, entire plots of flowers along winding roads, and greenery exploding next to benches and coming out of every twist and turn of trees. We sloooowly walked through the tropical rainforest and orchid enclosure and then took a break. It was at this point I realized that either we needed to leave or I needed to spend a week in the botanical garden alone to study and take a picture of each specimen. We chose the former…it was a good choice. A week would not have even been enough.

We did not know what to expect from Singapore and it was certainly full of surprises. Singapore felt like the pace of New York City with the flavor and texture of Hong Kong. We met-up with a friend of Daniel’s from summer camp who works at the highest grossing casino in the world—Marina Bay Sands. We went to the casino/hotel’s roof and we could see almost each of Singapore’s borders. We stumbled across an outdoor market of food vendors called Gluttons Bay where we ate Hainanese chicken and rice dishes to our heart’s content. Across from our hotel we found a local dim sum restaurant with bao (steamed rice buns) that even I could eat—they were delicious. Daniel was almost as happy to find this restaurant as I was in the orchid enclosure.

We only stayed in Singapore for a few days, but the humidity, lush botanicals and delicious street food were all highlights of the trip for both of us.

Philippines

The last stop on our honeymoon were the 7,107 islands of the Philippines. Each of the island regions had their own culture and feel. We started in Cebu in the Visayas. We spent a few nights lounging in a resort over Daniel’s 31st birthday. That was rough. From Cebu we flew to the island of Palawan on the western coast of the Philippines. We stayed in Puerto Princesa a few nights island hoping and seeing the sights before heading to Fort Barton on the northwest coast.

We decided to take a risk and hop on a bangka from Fort Barton to a campground called Toby and Thelma’s Island Adventure. We thought we had a reservation—the telephone connection was dismal—and so we decided to take the bangka out to the private island campground and check things out for ourselves. A bangka is an outrigger canoe, but bigger, with two pontoon Catamaran-looking bamboo-winged sides coming out of the boat. It is quite the motorized contraption and glides over the ocean like an insect striding just above the water. 

The campground was tucked under a canopy of leafy palms and thatched roof huts with tents underneath them that blended in with the rocks and sand from the beach. The boat stopped short of the shore by…a lot, eight-massive-waves-crashing-on-you-short. Daniel was able to take his pants off and hold his backpack above his head and walk into the campsite, but I just got wet. There were only about six hut/tent set-ups on the beach and everyone had their own piece of beach and ocean front view from their tent. It was outrageously beautiful. The tents were HUGE with a full bamboo bed inside. Three meals a day were provided and the food was delicious. We now realize that this was all basically glamping, but the lack of running water and electricity still made it feel like real camping.

The highlight from the camping expedition was a natural stream coming off a set of rocks near the campground that Toby and Thelma made into an outdoor shower. They added a piece of carved out bamboo and the water streamed through the bamboo to make the most incredible jungle shower. It was complete with trees on all sides, an ocean view, and monkeys eating breakfast.

Once back on Luzon in Manila we took a city tour with a real-life character: Carlos Celdran. He took us on a performance art walking tour of the Spanish forts and cathedrals. The tour and Carlos himself is worth an entire blog post, but suffice it to say that he was very entertaining. We actually learned quite a bit about Filipino history and language on the tour. Carlos explained that in Filipino language, words for universal concepts tend to be native, while words for most objects are Spanish. For example, the words for love, sadness, and happiness all pre-existed the arrival of the Spaniards, but the words for fork, church, and statue all derived from the Spanish roots. When the Americans came to the Philippines, the word for facial tissue (Kleenex), the verb to take a picture (to Kodak), etc. were all added to the Filipino vernacular. The linguist in me found this fabulously interesting. Surprisingly, I also understood much more Filipino than I expected since the root for many words were in Spanish.

Daniel also really enjoyed the Mega Malls in Manila—who knew Daniel liked malls? I think he really just wanted to visit the food courts since they were teeming with lechon (whole pork roasts) at every corner. I would not be surprised if the malls had multiple zip codes for different floors or areas of the mall…it was insane. Finding the same door to exit where you entered was a full time job.

The Philippines were incredible and we still have 7,102 islands to visit. We would love to go back…any takers?