So it has been awhile since I have written. It’s because I have been a little busy
traveling. A couple weeks ago I booked a
plane ticket and then a few short days later I flew down to the Philippines. The Philippines is a country that does have a
mix of influence from different countries some of which include: Portugal,
Spain, and United States. The main
language of the Philippines is called Tagalog and it does have the influence of
the different countries. So for example
the numbers are the same as in Spanish and also some of the colors are the
same. Besides that Tagalog is its own
language with different dialects for the different area of the
Philippines. I particular was around the
Cebuano dialect because I went to Cebu Island.
Even though I didn't know any Tagalog before going to the Philippines I
was still able to communicate and get around just fine. That is because English is the second
official language of the Philippines.
Heading down to the Philippines I had a couple of things in
mind to do. First thing was to find a
warmer place for vacation, which wasn’t that hard to get out of the daily
freezing temperatures in Korea. Another
reason for the Philippines was for the scuba diving. I flew into Cebu City and then headed to a
small town to the south west of Cebu City.
This town is called Moalboal. It
is a small town where people mainly go to scuba dive. I ended up staying in the small town for
seven nights and tried to scuba dive as much as possible. I ended up not diving that much because the
weather was bad the whole time I was down there. There were about three days in a row where
the dive shop I was at nobody was out diving.
In Moalboal it is possible to do shore dives but with the strong current
and waves the visibility wasn’t good so that is why not much diving. The dives that I did do were considered wall
dives where we either swam out or jumped off the boat and went down to depth
and followed this huge wall with coral and life on it. With the overcast skies it was usually dark
down at depth but I was able to see some neat things. Some of the smaller things were: Pygmy
seahorses (the two I saw were smaller than my own thumb), anemone fish, banner
fish, porcelain crab, nudibranch, stone fish, scorpion fish, sea fans, eels,
and various other coral fish. A bigger
thing that I did see was a bait ball. I
did see it a couple times and it is a big school of sardines that swim together
for protection. One time watching them
there was some bigger fish trying to eat and the sardines would all swim as one
avoiding the big fish. It was this big
huge shifting cloud that stretched for some time. That was neat to see but I think the neatest
thing was this:
I have seen turtles before and this was the third one while
in the Philippines but I think this one was the neatest. This particular turtle was sleeping and
didn’t even know we were around. Plus
the turtle is resting its head right next to some anemone and so the anemone
fish were swimming around looking scared.
It was a good size turtle but simply the circumstances we found it in,
sleeping was real neat.
Whale sharks have been hanging around Oslob for some time
now. There were about four different
ones and were pretty big. Also the same
day of the whale sharks I did visit a waterfall:
The water fall is known as Kawasan Falls. It is a three layered waterfall system but I just saw two of them. It is about a ten minute walk back to the first fall through a jungle type atmosphere with lots of green trees.
After spending a little over a week relaxing and hanging out by the ocean it was time to fly back to Korea. The last couple of days there hasn't been any work. School starts back again on Monday for everyone. Tomorrow there is a group of us who will be going snowboarding and skiing. I will write later. Here are some more pictures from the Philippines.
Typical dive boat |
Eel |
Porcelain crab |
Lion fish |
They feed by sucking in water like a vacuum and releasing out gills. |