Balut, Balut (don't read if you have a weak stomach)

I have safely arrived back to the Hong of the Kong after THE most incredible weekend of my entire life. I am sure words, videos and pictures will not be able to justify just how awesome it was but I will try my best regardless.

We left early morning on Friday for our adventure to the Philippines. We first went to Manila, had a few hour layover, and then arrived at our final destination in the late afternoon. Everything in the Philippines is ridiculously cheap, and the exchange rate is about 50 pesos to 1 American dollar.

We actually stayed on another island in the Philippines for the first 2 nights, so we had to take a 2 hour fairy ride to get there. We entertained ourselves with the beer that cost about 12 cents a bottle...good ol' San Miguel carried us through. The group for the weekend was: Nikolas from Norway, Ali from the UK, Alejandro from Costa Rica, Lena from Norway, Joe from Texas, Me, Ian our tour guide, Amy from Canada, Lena from Sweden, Kimmie from Denmark and Jess from the UK... quite the diverse bunch

So once we got to the island (which was extremely remote and almost never has tourists) our tour guide for the weekend, Ian, told us to get out of the van. We got out and approached a street vendor that was selling balut, a delicacy in the Philippines. Balut is duck fetus that has nearly reached maturity. It is the most GOD AWFUL THING I HAVE EVER TASTED, and I can't believe I willingly did it. To give you an idea of how far along the duck fetus is, Balut is eaten at day 18 of the development stage and at day 21 the duck begins to develop feathers!

This is what it looks like, seriously I don't think any of you will want to claim me as a friend or family member after this....

Yeah, pretty much the grossest thing in the world (actually according to the Internet it is number 2 on the list of most disgusting things to eat after Snake blood and bile). Needless to say I won't be eating eggs anytime soon! All 10 of the guys and girls that went on the trip tried it and all of us but one guy from the UK were successful. How it works is they crack open the top of the egg and you have to drink the juice out, then they put a little salt and vinegar on it and you crush the egg into your mouth. Here is the video.... (watch at your own risk)

What you can't really see in the video is that there are about 50 locals cheering us on to try it, if it wasn't for the peer pressure there is no way I would have done it (by the way I look relatively normal in this video but this is actually the second time I tried it because the first time I didn't keep it down). These were our accommodations for the 2 nights during the adventure tour, much better than I thought they would be!Our tour started out by our group walking through a local village, many of the kids in the village had never seen a tourist before, everywhere we went we had a huge following. In the village we met some local farmers, saw rice fields and tried cacao (fresh chocolate from the trees). Aren't these boys the most adorable kids in the world? This picture was taken the first night when we arrived in the village. I was getting into the van and looked behind me and these three musketeers were standing at the edge of the van watching me so contently!
This is one of the rice fields we visited.

After meeting the "village people" (get it, like the singing group haha) we continued trekking for about an hour through the woods. We stopped along the way to overlook a cliff and decided to go for a swim so we all made the 60 foot plunge into the water! We finally made it to our spot for the next few hours. It was a really cool river so we camped out there and just enjoyed the sunshine, lunch and swimming. We then repelled into the water. We had to use the roots of the trees on the side of a cliff to climb to the top (almost like rock climbing). Once we got to the top they strapped us on and we repelled ourselves into the water, using our hand to control the speed at which we fell.
You can see how intense the hiking was, and we were not hooked up to any rope! Thank goodness we had good traction on our shoes!

After the repelling, we headed for our cave tour. He told us not to bring our cameras because they "might" get a little wet so I was not able to take any pictures with my camera. A few of the others had underwater cameras though, so once I get the pictures from them I will post them.

We hiked up to the cave and when we got to the entrance I could not believe what I was seeing, we had to single-file crawl down about 30 feet by rope. The cave was only discovered 2 years ago so it as very clean and had beautiful formations since it had not been disrupted by humans. Now, I have been in a cave before, but usually it is well lit and there are walkways...NO... this was absurd (the only way to describe it).

The only thing lighting our path was the little light on our helmets. As far as the "might" get a wet thing goes, we had to SWIM IN CAVE WATER UP TO OUR NECKS! It was absolutely amazing though, and although I was a little scared at first, by the end of the 2 hour trip I was one with the cave. When we got to the halfway point there were TONS of bats! You had to move your head really slowly and could not make sudden movements because they are blind and if you moved quickly they would hit you (at one point 2 bats flew by about 2 inches in front of my face).

After the cave we continued up hill to the most intense part of the trail which was all up-hill. We came to this waterfall and literally climbed up and through the waterfall to continue on the trail!

Finally we reached the end of the trail and the views were breathtaking. We could see where we had been hiking earlier in the day and truly appreciated what we had accomplished. Later that night I got a much needed massage (by a 60 year old man). It cost me 3 American dollars for an hour full body massage... not too shabby!

The next day we started our early and headed to yet another island. We first went to Chocolate hills for a brief visit and view of the scenery. The hills are famous for their unique shape. There are about 2000 that all have the same general shape that was formed by the way the ocean currents pushed through.
Of course I couldn't resist sticking my head in this for picture (the little one is Joe)

We got to see a Tarsier which is local to the Philippines and is pretty much the cutest thing I have ever seen. They hop around and bounce almost like a Kangaroo.

Next stop was the Beach! It was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen and I got to go SCUBA DIVING. I absolutely loved it (it was really really cheap too, 40 USD for an intro dive, gear and all day snorkeling and diving on the water). I definitely want to get my Scuba license and might do it while I am over here because it is much cheaper than in the US. While diving I saw lots of the fish from Finding Nemo, and saw a HUGE school of fish (each fish was about a foot long and there were probably 500). I didn't see anything too scary, which is good! I was hoping I wouldn't see a shark, and I didn't :) Scuba diving was hands down the most thrilling experience in my life. It really is like another world down there and there is so much beauty! My favorite part was when we were down by the coral and I could look out and see the drop off! The depth was endless!

The water was very salty and so you were much more buoyant in the water, it made snorkeling a lot of fun! We were all so exhausted after the day at the beach! We went back, cleaned up and had an outstanding dinner right on the ocean (literally we sat about 15 feet from the waterline). We had fresh seafood and not only did we have a beautiful view of the ocean, but it was a full moon so the sky was so bright you could still see how blue the water was!
It doesn't get much more fresh than this!

I think I will stop it there because this was the longest blog ever. There are so many other things I want to tell you all, but I guess some things will just have to wait until I get back. Once I get some of the cave pictures I will post them! That's all for now!