5 do's for Cebu City, Cebu, Philippines

1. Learn more about the special bond Filipinos have to prisoners. Unlike in Palawan where you can go see prisoners work on a farm, in Cebu City you can go watch them hip hop. They promise you mass murderers! Now if that's not an enterprising approach to tourism then what is? Serial rapists square dancing? The show goes on every last Saturday of the month and you can watch them dance to Bonnie Tyler's I need a hero here.

2. Do the sights (shabby castle on the left) in like 5 minutes. Then get completely lost and wander around for six hours in blazing heat. When you finally get to Osmana Fuente Circle, from where you know how to get home, realize that the only proper landmark in the city, the casino tower which you've been seeing all along, is there in the circle.

3. Have one of those only in the Philippines candle lit dinners at a restaurant complex which wants to be a car park. While you eat watch cockroaches climb up and down the wall. And what is that smell, poo?

4. Learn a new way to define fish: "semi-boneless". Dread the prospect of once getting semi-bony fish on your plate.

5. After some serious misbehaving: Retreat! Catch a slow boat to Tagbilaran in Bohol and lounge on the deck beds for the 4,5 hour journey on a calm sea.

5 do's for Port Barton, Palawan, Philippines

5 do's for a few lazy days in Port Barton, Palawan. This is a vintage post from February 09.

1. Finally get some serious tanning done on the picture perfect beach of Port Barton. It was about time!

2. Join a bonfire party of local boatmen and a few random foreigners on the beach. Grill fish and drink rum with Nestea. When sufficiently drunk, sing along to a campfire version of Zombie, the ever lasting Philippino favourite.

3. Try finding yet another waterfall and a white beach. Fail miserably as the thought of leeches still creeps you out, but hey, in the Philippines there is always a waterfall in the next town.

4. Remain in an oblivious state for a few days as there's no internet connection nor coverage for the phone. Wonder when was the last time when you actually managed to stay out of it all for so long. Then gorge on a two day old newspaper, the Philippine Inquirer, when you finally manage to find one. Read about basketball.

5. On the last morning get up before sunrise. Pack your gear in the dark. Wake up the sweet lady downstairs so that she can whip up some food. Have a candle lit breakfast while watching the night turning into morning before embarking on a five hour banca boat ride to El Nido. Try to get some sleep.

Some people do manage to sleep on the bancas. Lucky bastards.

Yahoo confuses me with a murder convict - 3 blogging do's

1. After checking how well (or badly, to be more precise) your blog is doing in Google's search engine try to cheer yourself up by switching to Yahoo. As your blog's Yahoo performance is even worse, see if Yahoo can even find you. When it does, repeat the search on images. Be blown away by the fact that Yahoo produces three results: an image of you, another very shady image of you with some sort of Finnish celebrities and an image of a Finnish woman, who was convicted of a tripple murder in Sweden nearly 20 years ago. Sweet. Click here to see the resemblance.

2. Become a Facebook slut: Approve all friend requests from people who've shown an interest in your blog even if you've never heard of them, let alone met them. It's for the greater good of the blog! And you might find some interesting reads in the process, such as my new friend Ade's blog which features graphic presentations about everything ranging from phases of the moon to the pattern of how dental caries is formed in human teeth. Who would have thought it starts from eating. Sweet tooth. Click here, if you want to see what it does to you.

3. Excuse yourself from getting farther and farther away from your blog's designated topic as it still is quite hard to write a travel blog when your flight is six weeks away, and the only traveling you do is walking from home to work - something you admittedly did twice within the last 13 hours as you had to walk back at 2 AM in order to send an important e-mail you somehow managed to forget to send when you left. Not so sweet.