Just because you’ve settled doesn’t mean you have to stop moving. Find us moving it in Philly, making art, connections, and memories.
Sorry (not sorry) we haven’t updated you in awhile…we’ve been beach jungling. While we shake the sand out of our brains and reacclimate from a life where the most work we had to do was climbing up the stairs to another spectacular vista, enjoy these photos of where we were.
Our new friend, Brian from Manila, gave us lots of fantastic recommendations: where to find things, where to unlock my still-under-contract phone (screw you AT&T), where to go in the northern Philippines, and best of all where to get a traditional tattoo from “the last tattoo artist of the Kalinga tribe”. We boarded the overnight bus to Banaue then caught a van through Bontoc to Sagada (a story for another time). We were apprehensive to make the rest of the trip up to Kalinga as it meant going back down south just to catch the bus up north. This we found later, would be a theme in our Philippine travels, but having already come that far, it seemed somehow wasteful to not keep going. So we took the 4 hour journey to the village of Buscalan, where Whang-od has lived for all 98 of her years. add some pics of buscalan…Continue Reading
Manila is a mad place. Like New York City, it’s loud and busy and everyone is bouncing around and working whatever angle is out there for them. It’s not a place anyone would find endearing but it is a place where a 6-year-old beggar boy called Boy Alex a “motherfucker” so it’s not without its charms. And the sunsets are pretty legit (thanks pollution). There are certain sounds that dominate our soundscape. The calls of “Hello, Sir/Hello Ma’am” by every tout, restaurant purveyor and taxi driver, the relentless pounding of pop music, the dramatic reality of rain, and the constant clash of horns. Come into our parlor and stay for a while. If you close your eyes and – wait don’t close your eyes this next one is a video. The traffic in Manila is infamous. One could surmise that it’s their fault given that they regularly employ maneuvers like…driving…Continue Reading
Drawn by the hollow stares of skulls and enticed by the shiny, handcrafted jewelry, we met Michael, the artist behind this voodoo inspired art. Even though the macaque skulls don’t look very lucky, he ensured us that they are good omens.
Sometimes we go fishing for interesting people and other times they jump into our boat. Our tattoos, colored hair, and generally loud personalities are like fishing with dynamite. While I was sitting outside enjoying the beautiful patio at Spin Designer Hostel in El Nido, Brian sat down next to me and said, “I couldn’t help overhearing you talking about happiness earlier, and you look interesting…so I’m curious what your philosophy is.” I didn’t expect a question like that from someone who looked so jovially unassuming, so naturally we dove straight into a deep conversation about happiness, god, religion, and what I like to call the Radiohead dilemma: “What the hell am I doing here?” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk) My basic Epicurean answer (with the tangents peeled away) is that we’re here to pursue our own happiness, while not diminishing others’ happiness. And the pinnacle, the nirvana if you will, is adding to other…Continue Reading
I could tell you about all the absurdly gorgeous places we’ve been, but I’m a storyteller so I’d much rather tell you about the absurdly wonderful, and sometimes just absurd people we’ve met along the way. (You’ll hear a bit about the places too.) Girl Alex and I have a un-plan in place to hunt out the weird side of each place we go. Whether it’s a back alley or a penthouse, if the strange people are there, the ones with stories to share, that’s where we want to be. Strangeness comes in many flavors, but it is always honest – those people who can’t help being themselves. So we go looking for the alternative people, the tattooed and the pierced, the artists and the musicians, the writers and the philosophers. We want side ways. Going looking for the unexpected means we’re getting better at expecting it. We’re both already…Continue Reading
Sometimes crappy things happen. At best, we deal with it and try to get on with our lives. For some of us though, it can send our brains spiraling down a rabbit hole of insults, accusations and self-flagellation. That feeling which should only reflect the now feels like it has always been, will always be, and is true, completely. It's a lie. All of it.
Our first stop in the Philippines landed us in Coron Town on Busuanga Island, part of the island hat of the much larger Palawan Island on the Western Coast of the Philippines. We took an hour flight from Manila into a small airport followed by a scenic van ride into town. My favorite part was the very tiny but absurdly formal one-plane airport. We collected our luggage at the charming baggage claim, which proudly sported a wooden platform shaped to look conspicuously like a conveyer belt. The airport staff bring the luggage directly to it, through a door, often moving slowly enough to make eye contact with someone claiming their luggage and deliver it right to them. Everything about this pleases me. Coron Town is a tiny fishing village that has seen a boom in tourism, though not for the town itself, rather for the beaches, lagoons and lakes of nearby Coron…Continue Reading
“I’m not on vacation… I’m traveling for a year.” “Why?” asks every new face. That simple question begs for a much more complex answer – one that I’m not even sure I’ve answered for myself. Suppressing my urge to mischievously dodge the question with a smirk and a “why not?” I reply by attempting to break down the series of decisions that brought me to conclude, “why not,” to my own question of “why?” The first urges of my wanderlust began with the stereotypical desire to travel the world, that wish-I-could-do-that fantasy that never gets any closer than years of flipping through in-flight magazines and getting lost in Jetsetter daydreams of exotic escapes. Those dreams of giving in to the glossy sunsets and saturated beachscapes evaporated as quickly as my bank account. I kept forgoing world adventures with the excuse of not being able to afford it, yet I knew…Continue Reading
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