The Philippines - Day 8

Yooo, sorry this one's a little late, we got back pretty late last night and I was wayyy too tired to write and upload everything, heh.

Anyways, yesterday, we all went to Malatandang Beach in Unisan, Quezon, a good 4-hour drive south-west of Manila. My grandparents on my mom's side, Lolo Ben and Lola Gely, own a small beachhouse out there, not to mention, they're both from the nearby town of Lucena, which is also where they first met, back in their teenage years.

The drive there wasn't too bad, the first 7/8ths of the trip was the usual highway driving, with relatively light traffic, luckily. The final 1/8th of the drive, on the other hand, got pretty technical: one bad-ass Philippine touge road course

lucky us, Kuya Gerry is an equally bad-ass Filipino driver :)

After that it was trees, trees, and more trees...

The most lush, green trees I've ever seen.

Had to take a little ihi (pee) break along the way...

right there on the side of the road, haha

Once we arrived, it was straight to boardshorts for us.

It was a ridiculously hot day, and even with just shorts, we were baking in the sun. A perfect day to go to the beach.



But before we ran out on the beach, we had a nice lunch prepared by the house care-takers



Mom was definitely enjoying her time there


Riz was just farillin' and chillin'


We'd been to this beach house plenty of times before; i think we've gone every time that we visited.


And besides the beach, it's surrounded on all sides by trees,

trees,

and more trees...






I promise you, the trees are even greener in real life than they are in these pictures, and these pictures are already pretty green to begin with :P

Speaking of trees, we were able to get our hands on some coconuts


Their uses range from cutting them open and drinking the milk, or eating the inner core

to using them for our Aliga Coconut Workout Regimen. What started out as a playful game of catch due to lack of a real football, turned into the my brothers and I tossing a 13-lb coconut at each other, not to mention coming up with our own P90x with a coconut :)

And the view of the ocean is just as beautiful from inside the gate...


as it is from right outside the gate


And lining the beach is a bunch of coconut trees


We spent a lot of time out there, swimming, running, chilling, and collecting shells


and posing for the occasional picture, of course. Man, I really need to stop taking pictures next to Xavi... or start working out again :P



Before we left, we ran into a kid on the beach who was playing with a spider on a twig


He would freely manipulate its web and let it crawl on him and everything... crazy by most people's standards :P

After that, we headed into the nearby town of Lucena, where Lolo Ben and Lola Gely grew up.

Hella crackin in the backseats of the van... that's why they call it "Fiesta Class", right? haha

Here's a view of the intersection out of Lolo Ben's old house


We even found a nice little homemade kite

intricately designed

My mom also pointed out that the window "glass" was made from shells

very innovative, effective idea. Sounds just like my family :)

Before setting out on our trip back home, we snapped a few shots in town


And part of the way back we stopped at a rest station and had some Jollibee and Chowking



While the trip down was about 4 hours, the trip going back was a rigorous 5.5 hours because of all the traffic. While we left at 5, we didn't come in the door til about 10:30, and I was tired as hell... it's hard to get comfortable in a backseat full of people when you're 6'2" xD

As soon as we got in the door I showered up, and went straight to sleep.