About Calmness and Prices

It's been an activity filled 5 days, I havent spent a single afternoon or morning just laying on a hammock reading a book.
But it means I'm a certified advanced open water diver now. Wonder what good that'll do me, it's hard to picture a situation that would call for a certified AOW diver. Apart from signing up to take even more advanced diving courses, where it is a must. The most advanced level means you become a diving instructor, and then you make even more money for them by not just giving it to them yourself, but also by taking other peoples money and giving it to them. Nice scheme that PADI organization has going there.
Today after the last dive the divemaster congratulated me on moving very slowly and deliberately and staying still on the bottom, observing, while others were doing excercises. My reson for that, though, wasnt the concentration on teaching or trying to conserve air, I just felt like having a minute to myself in total calmness. Sometimes it apparently takes getting to the ocean bottom to have that.
Today is also our final night in Panglao. By coincidence, there is a big party right here at our villas, which we will attend and attack with full force. Might need to continue the party until very late (or very early) to get everyting partied properly. After all, we are partying for an open water certification, 3 advanced OWD's (Rami and Olga had completed theirs, too), and our going away party.
The going away will commence tomorrow morning, with a taxi, a ferry, another taxi, a plane and a taxi. We would've liked to travel by surface, but that would've taken more than a day with 10+ changes of modes of transportation, so we'll fly.
After we finish flying, we should be in Boracay, which is said to have one of the best beaches in the world. Of couse it might be just the boracayan tourist officials saying that. Tomorrow we'll know.
Boracay will also probably be a bit more expensive (and touristy) than Panglao. Here a beer costs somewhere around 50 cents to 1,5€, and our Christmas dinner at a beachfront restaurant (toes buried in the sand) cost something around 12€ per person. And we really tried to eat as much freshly barbecued everything (including squid, lapu-lapu, beef etc.) as possible, complete with appetizers, flushed down with beer, caipirinhas and wine (which is relatively expensve here).
Today I had lunch in a local eatery; fried rice and vegetables in coconut milk cost all of 23 Philippine pesos, which translates to the same amount of money that i get back home if i take 2 empty beer cans back to the store.
Our transport here has been two almost new Honda XR 200 trail bikes, which have served us well in the sometimes undescribable roads.
It is 2.30 pm now, and I think I finally have the time to hit that hammock now and wait for the party buffet to start.
The others are wathcing tarsiers (kind of very tiny monkey), which, being very unbarbecuable animals, dont interest me in this state of mind at all.

Christmas Eve with Lapu-Lapu

China was left behind and we're in the Philippines now. Came via Manila where we only stopped to change planes and get our security checked for the umpteenth time.
Long story short, around 20 hrs of travelling after leaving our hotel in Guangzhou (taxis, 2 planes and and a ferry), were greeted in Tagbilaran city by Jorge, the driver for the villas we're staying at. By this time, we had joined with Rami & Olga who came via Hong Kong. We have a 2-bedroom villa for ourselves, and there are 3 pools for us, a smaller one, a bigger one, and the one called the Bohol Sea.

So now I am writing this at Danao Beach in Panglao, Bohol.
and the subtropical part of the holiday has truly started. We know this mostly because of the kids coming around singing Christmas carols, and expecting a few peso in return (acknowledged by an appropriate Thank You Very Very Much -song). These kids are of the maximum age of 10 yrs, and down to the age where the smallest of them is still in the innocent age of wiggling the penis while singing Christmas songs to travellers. Too bad the camera wasnt with me just now. I'm unfortunately sure some of you would've enjoyed that kind of pics.

So it is Christmas Eve now. The eve's eve was celebrated yesterday by some Christmassy BBQ on our lawn, and later by joining the villa's staff Christmas party. Which we revived, but only for a moment, since this morning we started our scuba lessons.
For tomorrow, we took a day off the lessons, because today we have a plan of pulling some traditional Finnish Christmas Faces (perusjoulunaamat). And we'll have the tonttulakit (tont lacks), too.

City of the Affordable Shoe and Every Other Manufactured Thing

Took more than 24 hrs to get from home to Guangzhou. The financially wise route is not necessarily logistically clever; about 9 hrs after leaving home, we flew nearly right over it. I promise to offset the CO2 emissions by slowing my metabolism to near stop when we get to Philippines.

Guangzhou, formerly known as Canton, sits right in the middle of the area in the world that makes all your Things. Your iPods, plastic christmas trees, shoes, shirts, laptops, webcams, ashtrays, batteries, car wiring harnesses, measuring tapes, kitchen scales, backpacks, blinking led -signs saying OPEN and CAFE, table fans, hearing aids, wallets, extension cords, toys, sunglasses (that you think make you look cool), belts, buttons on your jeans, safety deposit boxes, electrical switches, pens, walkie-talkies and business card holders were all made here. Even if it doesnt say so on the package.

Our hotel sits at the relatively charming Shamian (Sand Surface) island. The island carries influences from overseas trading history, when it had the exclusive position of housing the warehouses of British and French trading companies.

The hotel is nice-ish, and it comes with a complimentary, very much government-controlled, internet-access. I had to resort to level 4 internet communications witchcraft to get around the government sencorship forbidding the access to dangerous and revolutionary websites such as facebook.

Arriving from our hotel at the relatively charming island towards the hard trading core of the city, we came across some shoe stores. And when I say some, I mean around 20 blocks of them. On several floors. Unfortunately for me, none of them dont carry the size "canoe for children, ages 8-12". One outlet even made the effort of having someone ship the largest samples from the factory (fifbeen minid, fifbeen minid) but unfortunately the shoe doesnt get bigger by stamping a larger number on it.

We only stay here for two nights, which is good for now since a city with population of 10,5M is too busy at this early point in the vacation.

Tomorrow, we're off to somewhere completely different.