Today I will tell....

Tagaytay & MOS

We have an itinery full of activities today. First, we're going to see an active volcano for the first time in our life. It's called the Taal volcano. It's the smallest active volcano in The Phillipines. It's located in an island, within a lake, in an island, within a lake, in an island. Hahahaha...look at the map of The Phillipines and try to figure that one out! To get there, we have to drive to Tagaytay, take a boat to the island, then proceed to the volcano.

Before setting off, a shot of us together in the room with her b'day cake, card, and rose.

Tagaytay is situated about 2 hours away from Manila. For 4000 pesos (ard S$130), we rented a car (Toyota Corolla Altis) with a driver who drives us around the whole day. On the way, we saw more colourful jeepneys and other forms of .... public transport.

Our driver, Rommel, introduced us to one of the small industry here; making furniture out of timber for export. So we stopped by to take some photos.

This uncle asked us "You want to take a picture of me? Pay 1000pesos"
I laughed with him (actually, at him), snapped a picture, got into the car and left without looking back.

View from mountain roads overlooking Taal lake, where taal volcano is. We were unlucky today, it was very foggy. Can't see a thing!

Along the way, there're a lot of touts attempting to stop your car to 'persuade' you into taking their boat. It's actually not their boat, they're the middlemen. They take your money, and will leave you with the actual boat operator. Being the middlemen, they take commission for 'bringing' tourists to boat operators. I've read about this in lonely planet. The advice is to bypass these ppl, head straight to boat operators. Our driver advised us the same thing.

Unfortunately, the boat operator doesn't look any more honest than the touts. So, some negotiations went on...

Our driver said Japanese & Korean tourists gets 'slaughtered' the most here. I told the boat operator we're from the poorest country on earth, Ethiopia. I'm supposed to be poor, but my wife had to whip out our Panasonic FX-9 digital camera to take a few shots of us bargaining with each other. You tell me, how to be convincing??? He looked at me, then slashed the price further - 3200pesos per boat. The boat will take us to the island, abt 20mins away, then wait there for us until we're done, bring us back here. According to our driver, the whole trip will take around 3-4 hours. So the boat will have to wait for us the whole time. OK, deal. Let's go.

The ride...

Racing with another boat...

Wooohooo...get a better boat next time, buddy!

Reaching the island soon

Alighting the boat. The uncle behind us 'si beh boh song' like that. As if we wasted a lot of his time posing for photo. As if he has a lot to do on that little isolated quiet island.

Boat-building in progress..... progress? nobody is working on it right now though.

Local "products". We see this all over the place. We had to be very careful walking around this place.

Yucks...where do they come from?..

Horses! Ei Amigo, ready for the ride?

From here, you have 2 choices. Either you walk to the volcano. Or you take their horses. Together with a guide for each horses, it costs 1500 pesos per person (S$45). We rode for half an hour before reaching the top of the volcano. It was tough riding the horse. My butt hurts. My wife enjoyed it very much. She was giggling giggling the whole time like a school girl on her first horse ride.

Finally, we're there.... that was tiring. I estimated if we walk, it would take around an hour, and two cramped legs.

The view of the volcano.

Can you see sulphur fume escaping a vent on the ground down there?

Mind you, this is still an active volcano, that's why the sulphur fume escaping vents all over the mountain.