Colleen's Here!!!

As soon as we found out we were moving to the Philippines, Colleen said I will be there for the Christmas holidays.  And here she was.  I will document Colleen's trip in 3 posts because we traveled to 3 completely different regions of the Philippines.  After spending a few days in Manila, our first stop was Boracay.  We celebrated Christmas in Boracy.  After relaxing on the beach, we headed up north to visit the rice terraces in Banaue, Batad and Sagad.  That was the exhausting part of our trip and then we traveled back to the beach in Palawan for more relaxing.  We were in Palawan for NYE.
Our first night in Manila, we took Colleen to El Chupacabra since that is our favorite restaurant in the area.  We woke up early Saturday morning to do the Big Binondo Food Wok.  Binondo is Manila's Chinatown and is the oldest Chinatown in the world outside of China.  There were 5 stops on our food walk and we were stuffed to the gills by the time we finished.

All the proceeds from Cafe Messanine are donated to the volunteer fire, search and rescue.  Food is delicous!

Brian and Colleen took a tour on Sunday with Walk This Way but I was sick.  They thoroughly enjoyed this tour of Intramuros, the old walled Spanish town.  Monday morning we were up and at 'em early to catch our flight to Boracay.  We had a great time relaxing, drinking fruit shakes, and eating.
Below are some beach scenes

We got to watch this hermit crab change shells.  It was really neat to watch.

Hermit crabs new home.

For Christmas lunch we decided to splurge and enjoy the buffet at the Shangri La.  We loved the lunch buffet but we decided that where we stayed near White Beach was much better.  Here are some shots of the decorations at the buffet.

Parts of the beach were decorated for Christmas.

We stayed at the ultra cute Hampstead Boutique Hotel.  We thoroughly enjoyed our hotel.  Breakfast was delicious, the staff was nice, beds were comfortable, and the rooftop deck was amazing.

Stay tuned for the rest of the trip.

Northern Coast

aFor our first stop we stayed at Fort Ilocandia Hotel right outside of Laoag.  Fort Ilocandia was built to hold the wedding reception for Marcos' daughter.  It totals 77 hectares of land and sits right on the coast.

If you walk a bit south of the resort you reach the sand dunes which have been used in several movies such as Mad Max and Born on the Fourth of July.

That night we had the most amazing sunset.

After a much needed greats night sleep we started working our way south.  We stayed in La Union at the The Little Surfmaid Resort.  What a cute little place it was and with amazing food.  I don't have any pictures of the resort because as soon as we checked in I planted myself on the balcony.  I sat on the balcony for hours watching the surfers.  

Then we witnessed another beautiful sunset.  

On the way home we stopped at the Ma Cho Temple.  Ma Cho Temple was built for Taoist and Catholics in 1975. It was a breathtakingly beautiful place.  I could have spent hours there but we needed to meet the Manila traffic.  

This concluded our 2 week trip up north.  Stayed tuned for our trip with Colleen and Christmas decorations at the malls.