Puerta Galera

Great weekend away with friends from Manila - only 2 hours drive and then 1 hour boat ride to the island of Mindoro and the area Puerta Galera. We went with The Spencers - Yoko and Nick and Kai and Liana and the Sowers - Joe and Erin and Penelope.  Luckily we chose a decent place to stay - not in the main areas of Puerta Galera - which we later discovered White Beach (SHite beach) and Sabang are full of very colourful characters.  To mention a few - all sorts of lady boys, old western men with young filipinas - a common site here in Manila - but more common in Sabang.  Anyway - we were tucked away in a beautiful resort - very family friendly with the best views!  Did a boat and snorkelling trip and found the best pizza in Philippines - thanks to Julia!

Kai and William 

Waiting for the boat to pick us up - waiting is nothing unusual here!
William and Charlie with their doll Liana and Erin an Penelope in background

Martin, Erin, Joe and Nick waiting!

Nick and Yoko and Liana

Finally on the boat!!

Straight into the pool!

Joe trying his hardest!

Got it!

everyone had a go - here is Kai!

William and Martin!

Flying!!

View from our bungalow

Cock fighting is meant to be illegal over here - I think they should check this guy out

Apparrently even the police have a bet.  30 fights a night...

that view again

Charlie would love a little sister!

pyjama swap

finished swimming - drinking on the agenda!

Dancing before bed!

festival celebrations at the beach

more festival - firecrackers were very loud!!?

They had free cocktail hour every afternoon from 5 to 6pm!!

Pinto Art gallery and Hong Kong

We finally discovered a building in The Philippines worthy of an architectural review! (I wrote an article about it for ANZA mag/!1).  The Pinto Art Gallery - about 45mins drive from Makati.  Unheard of by most people - it was just lucky our friend Julia who has lived here for 5years has her contacts!  We went there with Nick and Yoko and their kids Kai and Liana.  It was a refreshing day out - great to get away from the concrete jungle and check out something inspiring.  The next weekend we went to Hong Kong - what a great city!  So much culture interweaved with modern high rises. It was great to get back to a first world city again - although the english is not so good.  We stayed at Dave and Lynette's apartment and were very lucky to have their helper Hazel at our service (they were away on holidays).  Disneyland was an experience - unfortunately we were there at a busy time and were not very happy about spending alot of time in queue's.  The boys did enjoy it though - the highlight was the Donald duck 3d movie - and small world.

William, Liana, Kai and Charlie

art at the gallery!

simple, understated gallery spaces

artwork

one of the courtyards linking the galleries

another one

and another

Me and Yoko at lunch at the Pinto Art Gallery

WIlliam loves Hong Kong

Pinnochio

small world

Charlie's favourite Winnie

Fantasyland castle

Waiting time at Toy Storey Land the reason we didn't go on any rides there

Checking out the oversized toys was good enough!

 

The Filipino maids on their day off in the streets in HK.  There are hundreds of them all hanging out it is quite a sight - apparrently the reason is that they don't have their own rooms - some of them have to sleep in the kitchen!

In a Kowloon Street

Funeral decorations

walking up to the giant buddah (better than DL)

peace shanti shanti shanti

the cool rainy day gave it alot of atmosphere

Catching the cable car back down - much safer than the local bus we caught on the way up

about to tuck into the giant muffin!

apartments only in HK

Kowloon street

IM pei building

Chilling out at Dave and Lynette's place - great to have some cool weather!

Shanghai Tang store