Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, is a very busy city. The central part of it is really big, noisy, crowded and full of commerce - from tiny coffee places to hardly walkable day-and-night market streets. The streets are colorful, bright, full of food smells and people chattering. 

In the middle of the old city there is oasis of calmness though - pond with a temple on an island, surrounding park is a great place for watching people doing group aerobics, young couples posing for wedding photos and old men playing chess. One more nice thing to do in Hanoi is to go to water puppet show - an ancient tradition of entertainment for farmers. In ancient times flooded rice paddies served as an excellent stage for such shows. 

Pho is born here, in the North, and in Hanoi you will see probably the highest concentration of Pho places in entire Vietnam. It seems like every eatery in Hanoi must have Pho, fried rice and Banh Mi (sandwiches, most often with pate and veggies) Fresh spring rolls and Do-it-yourself rolls are popular too. One of the best meals we had in Hanoi was in Hue cuisine restaurant - their rolls are piece of art.

Hanoi has its own famous Hanoi beer - the cheapest draft beer in the world, you can have it for about $0.20 a glass in the street bars and eateries. It's amazing to watch how these street bars fill up with locals from the very morning and sometimes it seems that all Hanoi's men do is spend their days in those street bars drinking Hanoi beer (while women trade, maintain household, cook and take care of the kids)

Generally, accommodation and clothes are much more expensive than in Saigon. You'll pay minimum $15-20 for a pretty shitty room, and things like pants, shorts, jackets, shoes will cost not less than $10-15. We also noticed that the choice of clothes is very different from Saigon - it's mostly the same stuff everywhere and kind of old school and conservative.

The city is not very traveller friendly, most tourist offices will try very hard to rip you off and it's not easy to organize anything yourself. Taxis will try to rip you off constantly as well, people on the street might not be very nice to you. Often local people do not make you feel very welcome in Hanoi, they sort of "tolerate" you. In Hanoi, in comparison to Saigon, communism is in the air. After visiting Hanoi you can literally see how different were Saigon's democratic and Hanoi's communist paths. Hanoi is worth a visit though, it's big enough for everyone to be able to enjoy all sorts of activities, sighseeing and Northern Vietnamese food.

Mui Ne is a small resort town about 6 hours from Saigon. It's famous mostly for 3 things:

- kitesurfing

- Russians

- kitesurfing Russians

Kitesurfing is indeed spectacular in Mui Ne. The wind almost never stops and some days the sea and the sky is just covered with colorful kites and tiny human figures. Swimming in Mui Ne is hard though, the waves are so strong that you can't stand on your legs for more than 10 seconds, and the rest of the time you feel like you're in a spin-drier. Lost bikini parts & swimming trunks, naked butts is common.

Mui Ne is Russian 99% - Russian shops, restaurants, hotels, you'll probably hear more Russian on the street in Mui Ne than in Vilnius. Signs, menus, flyers, ads - everything has a Russian version which was source of entertainment for us and many other Russians as the spelling, grammar and vocabulary used was just hilarious bordering ridiculous. 

Accommodation varies a lot - you can stay in beach bungalows for $10/night or in a $100/night hotel. Food is great - lots of seafood, lots of cheap places to eat, almost everything is on the beach. Our favorite hangout place in Mui Ne was Кружка (The Mug) - a very chill cafe owned by very cool young Russian couple Xenia & Sasha who just left everything at home and moved to Mui Ne to open their own place. Кружка is definitely a must visit - pelmeni, mashed potatoes, tasty cocktails and nice company guaranteed!

Another nice thing to do in Mui Ne except hanging out on the beach and at Кружка is to rent motorbikes and go to see the huge dunes about 15km from Mui Ne. On the way to the dunes you pass long strips of empty beaches, quiet fishermen village harbours, serpentine roads and desert-like landscape. Such a pity that all this beauty is getting destroyed more and more by huge new hotels and villas.

The dunes are beautiful and almost surreal - just huge piles of white and red sand in the middle of the plains, not even close to the sea. As I understand the dunes were formed when the sea was covering this territory and just stayed there up till now. 

This was a great trip, so close to Saigon, yet almost another world. Next in the line - Hanoi and Cat Ba Town in Vietnam.

Saigon...my first love in SE Asia (Bangkok is the second)

Saigon was renamed to Ho Chi Minh city on the day of the Fall of Saigon but still affectionately called Saigon by the locals and to this day it's an amazing and wondeful flux of seemingly contradicting ideas. Thriving international business center, strong communist heritage, food lovers paradise, keeper of French colonial architecture, expats nest, dirty and glamorous at the same time, buzzing and busy city where cars are third to motorbikes and bicycles and where tiny smelly lanes full of local indecipherable businesses running are mingling together with global brands and skyscrappers - I love this place!

The city is full of life - bicycles, motorbikes, street vendors, kids playing shuttlecock with their feet, glamorous ladies, green taxis, people drinking vietnamese tea or coffee on the sidewalk everywhere, hobbit house + french + chinese architecture - all makes this city simply ALIVE. All screaming "if you're alive, live here!!!" Oh, did I already say how much I love this city?

Getting around Saigon is very easy - the city is divided into districts numbered from 1 to I think 12, and everyone knows them, you can easily take taxis and pay around $2-4 to get anywhere or if you're adventurous - ride on the back of a motorcycle ($1-3), the traffic is so crazy that a dose of adrenaline is guaranteed.

You can buy almost anything on the street. Vietnamese are hard to bargain with, but they enjoy persistance if you have one, they enjoy doing business with someone who is willing to bargain hard. Vietnamese hats are very useful as it gets painfully hot and sunny during the day.

We stayed at Ly Loan's house located in a small lane in the Pham Ngu Lau district - Ly Loan is the best host ever. She is a 60 years old (or should I say young) Chinese lady who looks like she is 38 - super active, super caring, speaking almost no English, but enjoying to really and thoroughly take care of you. For $ 15/night it was also one of the cleanest places we ever stayed at - Ly Loan was obsessive about keeping our room as clean as possible. At first you get thrown out of your comfort zone when she appears at your door with cleaning kit and starts cleaning without much attention to you sitting bewildered on your bed watching her. She won't hesitate to command you to get off your bed so that she can change the sheets either. We tried to tell Ly Loan several times that we don't need cleaning, clean towels and new bedsheets so often, but after a while we just submitted to her half Chinese, half Vietnamese, half English commands :) She was owesome!

Food in Saigon is amazing - favorites are fresh spring rolls and Pho Bo, Vietnamese pancakes are awesome too. Best spring rolls option is Roll It Yourself - they bring you rice paper, rice noodles, cucumbers, carrots, shrimp, salad leaves, sauce and you just practise to do it. We arrived to Saigon from the Philippines and for us the variety of food and vegetables was overwhelming after Philippines. One of the best places to eat in the travellers district is Cafe Lam (serves cheap, delicious, huge portions of Vietnamese, Thai and Chinese dishes) and the restaurants in the small lanes along Tran Hung Dao street. Some interesting things to try is different color rice near markets.

Special attention - Vietnamese coffee - one of the most delicious coffees I tried, the secret is in the way they brew it (special coffee pots) and in the condensed milk. Addition to the secret is the Vietnamese coffee itself, they are big coffee growers and they like to make flavored ones - moccha, chocolate, vanilla, etc. Here is our first try of it - spilt it, but in the end got it right!

Shopping in Saigon is great as well (not as humangous as in Bangkok though) - they sell very fashionable stuff both in the malls and at the street bazaars. You can also dive into communist vintage relics - posters and clothing.

One of the coolest things about Saigon is that the city is full of French style cafes - very cute, very French-like, serving good bakery and having wifi - if you're remote freelancer, you can really enjoy working in Saigon's cafes.

The downside of Saigon is that is it's really polluted even though it's very green. In general the city is quite clean, but if you go in smaller streets you may end up with looking at this:

One day walking through the city can get you coughing a lot or in my case can get you pneumonia for a month. I was lucky enough Ly Loan took care of bringing me to the hospital and getting me prescriptions. 

About the Vietnamese: some highlights:

- Vietnamese English is the English I bet you never heard before. The way Vietnamese speak English is just frankly, destroying the point of speaking English :) In Vietnamese they swallow a lot of the endings of the words, they do the same with English. In addition, Vietnamese is tone based language, so they are used to attach certain sounds to the syllables in English. To an unexperienced traveller Vietnamese English will sound like half coughing half singing. Sometimes it's quite hilarious to try to understand a Vietnamese person.

- Vietnam is probably the only place of Earth where most women walk around in pajamas and most men dress Michael Jackson style. Quite literally the every day dress for women is pajama like 2 piece dress - colorful top and pants in ridiculous patterns (old school flowers, baby bears, lolly pops, etc.), and there is absolutely nothing wrong with wearing that anywhere they go. Men very often dress in communist style suits with (!) white socks and dark pants & dark shoes. 

- The Vietnamese are generally very different from other SE Asians. Some may say they are rude. It's true that sometimes Vietnamese can be quite upfront and quite straightforward, and politeness in the Western sense may not be the first priority. In Saigon, however, people are much nicer than in the North of Vietnam. Not sure if this can be explained with explicit communism in the North and more open mindedness to the West in the South, but the difference is very obvious.

However, in general we felt that Vietnamese are nice, smiling, sincere and fun loving people, even though their history is not one of those nicest ones.

Next story - Vietnamese seaside, very close to Saigon by bus. Btw, Vietnamese sleeper buses are the best, the bus literally has beds instead of seats :)

El Nido is a small sleepy town on the Northern coast of Palawan island. It's quite remote and getting there is nothing exciting.

To get there you need to take a minivan (overpacked with people and stuff of course) from Puerto Princesa (costs about $12 pp) and take a trip through mountains, rock formations, virgin jungle forests, and about 40km offroad. On the way the driver will probably pull over to show you the Avatar rocks where Cameron had his fun filming the movie in 2008. It's truly impressive and in combination with wild wild jungle it does create a very surreal picture, just imagine Pandora in real world.

El Nido has about 4-5 streets connecting the beach with the number of shops, eateries and even bars. Accommodation is mostly on the beach which makes it a great chillaxing place, we stayed at The Alternative guesthouse and paid about $10 per room with private bathroom and veranda facing the sea - one of our favorite places to stay. The scenery is amazing - every day you wake up and enjoy the sea, white beach, huge rock formations hanging over El Nido and crowning the horizon. The electricity in town is limited - you can only have it from around 4.30pm to 6am, this means that during no electicity time there is no Internet, no music, no fan or aircon, no fruit shakes (or anything that needs blender or other device) We used this time to go walking around and to kayak to the closest island which was really fun. I even saw a giant turtle swimming about 5 meters from us.

Our favorite food place in town was Marber's place on the beach - the owner is German living in El Nido with his Filipino family for a long time. Their pancakes, curries, grilled fish and home made spaghetti are great and reasonably priced. If you visit them you'll probably meet Monica - a cute little beast, granddaughter of the owner, who will be at your table the moment you have food on it - she just likes to eat!

We made friends with the owner of our hostel as well - Jun (from Junior) and his brothers, especially Israel and Apokalypsis (yes, those are their real names) and cousins took it as their own personal responsibility to entertain us. We used to sit together for a long time on the veranda and just talk, tell stories and laugh. The guys could easily finish 2 bottles of Tanduay (Filipino rum), go for the third one and feel fine in the morning - quite a competition to Russians :) Jun has 12 kids, aged 1 to 15 years old, and he has recently lost his wife during child birth, nevertheless he is an amazingly fun, kind and sincere guy who just likes to see you smile. 

Jun has organized us a 2 days trip to his family owned beaches on more remote island where they treated us like some VIP guests. They sometimes take tourists there and provide a quite expensive trip package for 2 days. We got the same thing but at a ridiculous discount as friends of the family - so nice!

We did some shopping before going and bought some food and drinks, the food was unnecessary, they tried to feed us at every opportunity even when we insisted that we have our own stuff (which eventually got all chewed up by a sneaky chipmunk)

The trip was truly amazing - I can't even describe how beautiful were the islands, rock formations, beaches and marine life. The trip to Jun's beach takes about an hour by a small fisherman motorboat and during this journey you'll see an overwhelming amount of spectacular sceneries, you literally can't put your camera down.

The beach where we stayed was surrounded by cliffs and had a beautiful emerald color lagoon with plenty of coral life underwater, and a cave where people say the Japanese used to hide their gold during WW2. When the boat was heading toward the beach we had to ask several times - "Are you serious? Your family lives here?" as we couldn't believe it. The beach had 3 bungalows at the back, a kitchen, couple of tables, outside bathroom, hammocks and that's it. We chose to sleep in a no-walls/open bungalow right on the beach - this was just a bamboo platform on stilts with a palm leaf roof, matrass in the middle and mosquito net around. Waking up in a place like that at sunrise is something unbelievable. 

We kayaked a lot around the nearby beaches, the guys took us to a more distant fishing village, Snake island and freshwater spring. We also did a lot of snorkeling and since we were surrounded by massive cliffs the seaworld beneath was just amazing - it looks like an ancient city with stone carved castles, seaweed forests, coral barriers and alien looking mushroom-like formations. All this comes with plenty of colorful fishes, sea stars and sponges, mini jelly fish and all sorts of other creatures. Highly recommend for snorkeling!

In the evening the guys made a big bonfire on the beach, cooked us fish and rice, sang songs for us and generally made it a cool party by the bonfire. 

Next day on the way back the guys also took us to see the famous Big Lagoon - narrow water tunnel through huge majestic cliffs - really impressive.

El Nido is definitely high on our list and its mostly because of Jun and the family's hospitality and kindness. Same as with Charlie and Tailana we hope to see Jun and the family again.

Next - Saigon, Vietnam.

Last island we visited was Palawan. Palawan is amazing - breathtaking unspoilt and undeveloped landscape, jungle forests, all sorts of flora and fauna, majestic caves, surreal limestone rocks, perfect white beaches, perfect emerald waters, nice people, awesome fish and fruits. 

Palawan's capital is Puerto Princesa - a very sleepy and peacesful town that was ranked the cleanest city in the Philippines. It's actually the only city where you can get fined for littering on the street (about $30, but still :)) You can go anywhere in the city in a tuk-tuk for about $0.3-2 and it will take you about 15 minutes to reach next village/town. This is not a very tourist oriented city - not so many touristy food places, not many souvenir shops, the services are painfully slow, disorganized and sometimes hilarious. The immigration department in Puerto Princesa for example is a shabby 2nd floor office with chickens and a motorcycle repair stand on the back. And I already told the story of my visit to Puerto Princesa post office here.

Puerto Princesa has an awesome market though - anything you want you can buy there, the fish is so fresh it's jumping and wiggling on the tables. I used to pig out on papayas, mangos, watermelons, pineapples, mini bananas, grapefruits, avocados every day. One other thing you can try in the market is salted egg and the Balut - embrio of a duck, tastes like an egg yolk AND chicken. Also, most places where you'd eat have garlic rice - steamed rice, lightly fried with A LOT of garlic, a bit of chillies and soy sauce, there's nothing simpler than garlic rice, but it's really really tasty the way they make it in Palawan. 

We stayed right next to the Puerto Princesa Bay. This area on the water is literally covered with small chubby huts on stilts where local villagers and fisherman live. The streets here are wooden boards built on stilts over the water connecting numerous houses. Naturally villages like this look poor, but it's interesting to spot that almost all houses have satellite TV, laptops, even washing machines (I'm surprised how this shabby construction can hold washing maschines) People as in any small village were really nice and friendly. Here are couple of shots from the village.

Very close to Puerto Princesa is the Underground River - one of the candidates for world wanders. It's a huge river tunnel under a mountain that connects numerous caves full of stalactites and rock formations. You can go on a small paddle boat inside the caves and tour around for about 30 minutes. The Underground River itself is spectacular, but we didn't enjoy the experience as much because this whole tour thing was meant for very cheesey tourists, to the point that the guy who paddled/tour guide treated everyone accordingly - every 30 seconds there was at least one cheesey joke about the shape of the stalactites and rocks - "look, there's a penis! look, there's a Virgin Mary,..." etc. Felt like you're part of a circus.

We did sneak away from our group to explore the rocks nearby, went all the way up until 2 unfriendly monkeys stopped us. In case you're wondering - wild monkeys in most cases are not exactly furry cutie pies, they're sneaky aggressive bastards with rabbies who will try to steal your bag, camera, glasses, bracelets, bag of chips, etc. even if you hold your belongings tight.

The beach next to the Underground River was quite nice though - perfect if you remove all cheesey tourists around :)

Next - best place for us in the Philippines - El Nido, Palawan.

Sugar beach on Negros island is a really secluded beach located 5km from Sipalay town and locked in between several huge rocky cliffs. We were coming from Bacolod, so we took a bus to Sipalay and asked the driver to drop us off by the local road that leads to Sugar beach. When the water level increases it's very difficult to get there as first you need to take a tuk-tuk on a very very bad road that constantly gets flooded, then take a small boat to pass a canal to the beach village, then climb a cliff on your own to get to the accommodation on the beach.

There are about 5-7 accommodation places with bungalows on the beach and in the garden ($12-15 per night with hot water and private bathroom), but due to the location there are not so many visitors there. We stayed at Driftwood Village, and had a really good time with the owner Peter, his friend, their staff and dogs. Food is a little bit more expensive on Sugar beach than in other places in Philippines ($2-5) but the beach itself is definitely worth a visit. Here is our little bungalow. 

The beach itself is really relaxed - almost no people, hammocks, driftwood, nice breeze, peace of mind.  

While we stayed there Peter, the owner, saw on TV that a 900km large typhoon has struck the Eastern part of Philippines, and said we might feel it as well - awesome news for anyone on a secluded strip of beach with jungles behind it! We were lucky it was moving toward the North Luzon and Vietnam. Even though geographically it touched us indirectly the storm we got was a pretty scary one, the sea just looked horrifying, and in the night it felt like we're gonna be blown away by the wind.

A much bigger problem for us was the increasing water levels, the cliff you're supposed to climb to get out of the beach was unclimbable because the waves hitting it got too high, and the local road on the way to the main road was flooded. People who tried to get out of there right after the first day of the storm were just returning back with no luck.

All in all, it was a very cool experience that combined both relaxing and worrying for your life :) definitely recommend! 

Next - Palawan, the most amazing island in the Philippines.

The main means of transport in the Philippines is either flying or taking a bus/ferries to travel inside an island and hop to other islands. So we tried the bus/ferry thing. We traveled from Kalibo to Iloilo, then from Iloilo to Bacolod, then from Bacolod to Sipalay, then from Sipalay to Dumaguete City, then from Dumaguete to Cebu City. 

Traveling by bus in the Philippines deserves it's own post, but I'll squeeze it in here. Generally the ruling principle is that no self respecting bus or mini bus driver will move until the vehicle is filled up to overcapacity. A bus will generally have 3 seats where in Europe it would be 2 seats and in the space between rows of seats there will be another reclining chair or even just a backless stool. So the bus will be literally full before it leaves. 

The driver always has an assistant who collects money from passengers and generally regulates letting people out and letting people in. This assistant will bang on the rails in the bus every time someone needs to get off and the driver hearing this sound will stop immediately, and he will arrange more stools for new passengers, sometimes literally shoving them inside. 150km distance takes about 5 hours just because the bus will stop every time there is someone getting off and on the bus and that can be 10 times in 1km. This can become quite annoying.

Most of cities are very similar to each other - standard cities in the Philippines: crowded, dusty and hot. A normal street would include a church, some fruit and roasted pork stalls, chickens running across the road like retarded, bunch of kids hanging out on every corner playing card games for money, dusty old bike or shoes repair shops, local eateries, phone shops, hair salons, tricycle drivers sleeping in their vehicles or in hammocks hanging wherever it's possible to hang them. 

Dumaguete is a bit different - it's a student city and has a very cool vibe. The central market is amazing - piles and piles of fruit in one section, piles and piles of fish, meat and seafood in another. And Dumaguete is also one of those places where tricycle drivers or sellers at the market won't go crazy about trying to rip you off - you'll pay 8-9 pesos for a tricycle ride and 30 pesos for a papaya - fair price. 

Be sure to visit and stay at Harolds Mansion - backpackers and divers favorite hub - nice cheap rooms ($10) with airconditioner, wifi and cable tv. In addition there is a roof top terrace where the owners regularly organize BBQ parties. All you need to do is to want to have a BBQ party, they'll drive you to the central market where you'd buy what you want to grill, they'll teach you how to make the famous Filipino sauce/marinade Adobo (soy sauce, garlic, chillies, lime) and they'll grill for you. Awesome! 

Cebu is also a bit different as it's much bigger. In general it's a very active city with a lot of partying and dining. The city is full of strip clubs and Go Go bars, the entrance is free, the show is not that great, but it's worth visiting. 

Be careful about being overcharged by tricycle drivers in cities like Iloilo and Bacolod, they will try to tell you that where you need to go is much further than it is in reality, shop around and repeat agreed upon price several times before getting in. 

Thats it about the cities, next - Sugar beach!

Boracay is a tiny island south of Luzon (where the capital is) and kind of in the middle of the Philippines. It has a small sleepy town and a long strip of bars, clubs and restaurants along the perfect white beach. The water is not just transparent, it glows with emerald colors and in combination with white sand, palm trees and green hills on the horizon it's a perfect spot for paradise post cards. I'm not kidding, the water is really that green!

It's a popular destination for Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese and Russians, and it's definitely not a backpackers spot as most places there are quite expensive and targetted at well paying "all inclusive" type tourists. Nevertheless, there are a couple of cool bars, buffets and souvenir shops. In the afternoon it's very nice to chill on the beach with happy hour cocktails and snacks like fried bananas and roasted peanuts. In Boracay we tried famous Filipino beef bone marrow soup - thats basically a stew with a huge bone floating in it, spicy but quite tasty.

We stayed at a small bungalow style hotel near Station 3 (the cheapest area) and paid $12 per night for a room with fan, wi-fi and cable tv. Station 3 is where it's also going to be less people and generally more chillaxed atmosphere. 

We didn't do much in Boracay - just working, swimming and relaxing, so that's the whole story. Next story - Iloilo, Bacolod and Dumaguete cities.

Philippines for some reason is the country that South East Asia travellers skip very often. Maybe it's the right thing to do. We visited Manila (the capital), Boracay (party island), Negros (slow & quiet island), Cebu (bustling & buzzing island) and Palawan (wild jungle island) and Palawan is the only place in Philippines where I'd actually go again some day. 

Manila is huge, very industrial, dirty and loud. There seem to be several things that make it not so pleasant. First, the Filipinos especially in Manila try to mimic Americans in anything you see - fast food & junk food chains, huge malls, highways & concrete jungles, huge cars, music & TV, fashion, etc. Their famous jeepneys are actually a parody of American military jeeps. Jeepneys are a sort of public transport, each customly decorated, each has the destination painted in curly old school fonts on the sides and the front. You shove yourself in, pay $0.10 and enjoy the crazy ride.

This all of course results in no problems for travellers as everyone speaks English, but all this American parody just doesn't feel good.

Second, majority is Christians which automatically means lots of drinking, partying, sexual harassment, transvestites and very naughty clothing. Not exactly the best feature for a city. 

One of the very authentic Filipino things is karaoke bars. They love it. You literally can't walk a block without hearing some 80' music hit being sang and yelled on repeat. Filipinos will sing or at least hum anywhere and anytime, even in sleep (imagine 20 Filipinos on a bus, all sleeping and singing at the same time) And yes, the karaoke or humming music will always be from the 70' - 90'. If you need to tell a Filipino from other South East Asians, just put on Dangerous by Roxette and the person who starts singing is a Filipino. 

Nevertheless there is some charm to this city - colorful decorated jeepneys trying to make their way through traffic jammed streets, tiny bars & lechon stalls everywhere, Chinese district with colorful shops, Spanish influenced architecture.

Less cheerful is of course the sight of luxury SUVs and gold covered fashionistas right next to sick, skinny, naked, dirty kids and their moms picking food from trash. Religion is a big part of people's lives here, but the Catholic church prohibits both abortion and contraception, and sexual education is close to non-existent. So those women who already live way below poverty line with their 3, 4, 5, 6 kids are likely to give birth to a couple more, causing more and more children being born into poverty and a very sad and dark world for them.

We stayed in the Ermita area, it's the party hub, other parts of the city didn't seem anything special. Prices for hostels are generally quite expensive if you want to stay close to the center (around $15 per fan room) and it's probably a good idea to take an air-conditioned room because Manila is mercilessly HOT anytime of the day/night. Prices for food are quite reasonable ($1-4 for a meal), alcohol is cheap (San Miguel beer at a bar costs around $0.5-0.8, Filipino rum at a store $0.5 for half a liter!) 

We didn't really like Filipino food - it's mostly meat, especially pork in a fatty sauce, sausages, eggs, potatoes, and almost no vegetables. On more remote islands fruits are awesome though. Balut is definitely something to try - tastes exactly like what it is - egg and poultry. 

Girls in the Philippines are generally very pretty - a mixture of south east asian and spanish features, in combination with flirty dresses and makeup - true asian chikitas. Guys are funny - a lot of them have a very big and round belly, and they often walk on the streets with shirts pulled up to expose their treasured bellies, the bigger belly - the better. 

Thats it about Manila. Next on the way - Boracay, the beach party town.

Our last place to visit in Indonesia was Lake Toba (Danau Toba in Indonesian) - world's largest volcanic lake (100km long, 30km wide) in the Northern Sumatra.

You can reach Toba by taking minibus or kijang from Medan to Parapat, small town on the mainland. You can stay in Parapat as it's also on the lake, but the best thing is to take a ferry to Samosir, an island in the middle of the lake. The lake is very calm, the water is smooth, and Samosir is a very beautiful place. Here is Lake Toba and Samosir island in different weather.

This is definitely the place to kick back, eat delicious food, watch the lake or just sleep in a hammock all day. Lake Toba among some other regions is home to Batak people, famous for their music and dances. They are mostly Christians and after being mostly in Muslim communities you can see it right away - locals drink a lot, play guitar and sing really loud when drunk. They make their own "jungle juice" - a liquor made from palm tree juice, and thats what on the table every evening. 

Bataks are also famous for their traditional architecture, their traditional houses are very beautiful - all wood is carved by hand and the roof is a true piece of art. For staying in Samosir we definitely recommend Liberta Homestay, you get a 2 floor traditional Batak house in a beautiful garden on the lake only for $6/night and their food and atmosphere is amazing. Here is our house.

For eating we recommend Liberta's kitchen and Today's cafe - the host, Juliet, speaks several languages, cooks very good curry and will gladly join you at your table for a chat.

Lake Toba is definitely a must see in Indonesia.

So this is it for Indonesia, we'll be back again! Next - Philippines!