Subic Bay, Zambales, Philippine Islands (2005-04-11)

Today my Mom rented two Jeepneys to take a lot of our family to the beach. We were going to just go to a beach within the Subic Bay Freeport area (former US Naval base), but everyone said that the beaches in that area were dirty. So we went to one outside of the area (about 5 minutes north) which was pretty nice. The sand was a lot different than Boracay in that it was half black. During the day I stayed away from going in the water, or walking on the sand much because it must have been 90+ degrees.

So I though I would take two of my cousins flying over Manila and Subic since they haven't been on a plane before. I wasn't going to rent the plane on my own like I do here because I would need to convert my US license to a Philippine one and that would cost over $1000 to do. So I figured this would be a 'tour' type thing and maybe I'd ask to take off, fly, and land from left seat. I talked to a tour type person at Subic Bay who looked into plane rental, and eventually said I could just go there for a flight. When we got to Subic Seaplanes I met with the pilot who was one rude bastard. Apparently there was some miscommunication between the tour person and him. He talked to me like I was crazy for wanting to have a flight over Manila, normal people already know why it's cool to fly over cities. Then he said he couldn't do it because he had an appointment right then. If anyone ever wants an aerial tour in the Philippines avoid this rude guy at Subic Seaplanes... just go to anyone else in either Manila or Clark International. Or you can wait until I open my own air tour operation in the Philippines :) All the pilots I've EVER met are cool, nice people until I met this guy.

Back at the beach I rented a 'banana boat' and took 14 of my relatives to an island just offshore to hang out there for a little bit. Some of us started swimming to an adjacent island, but after a little bit there were some quitters who forced us to just turn around :) The rental was only a little over $10 for an hour... what a great deal! I was going to get a jet-ski for us, but the place stopped renting them just 10 minutes before I got there.

The 'older' and female relatives went home while me and some of my cousins stayed at the beach for a couple drinks (a couple cases somehow), followed by food in Olongapo at like 3AM. You all know me, I was the one who drank the least amount! If I had to guess, I had 1 bottle worth out of two cases.