01.15.10

Mabuhay from the Pines!

Posted in Playing the Tourist at 2:33 am by Administrator

Wow, where to begin?  Well, first off, thank God we arrived safe and sound.  We were pooped, and still are a bit, but at least we are slowly finding our bearings and just today I got a neat little device that gives me a sort of pay-as-you-go broadband connection.  How cool is that?  What you do is first purchase their modem, which looks like a flash drive device.  They insert a sim card, then you purchase your hours.  Here’s what the device looks like.

Hmm.  A little hard to see, but maybe this will be a better visual with the device plugged into my netbook.

And viola!  I’m online writing this very post. . .  Too bad we don’t have one of these at home.  This device is only good in the Metro Manila area and locations with a strong enough signal.  I guess that means that we’re getting zapped all day with radio waves just like back home.

So now that I’ve shared the nice stuff I’ve come across so far, I want to step back and rant a bit regarding airport travel.  And yes, this is my same beef each time we travel–the price of water at the airports!  This little gem cost $2.25 at LAX.

Since our family regularly buys bottled water at about $1 a “gallon,” this tiny $2.25 bottle makes me go grrrrrr.  Can you say “GRRRRRR?”  And if that wasn’t bad enough, when we got to Taiwan, I was out of water again, and you guessed it, I had to buy another bottle of water at the airport.  And that gem?  Yes, the bottle was smaller and it cost me $3.  GRRRRRRRRR

Gee, what happened to the day when illegal drugs were the only thing suspect at the airport?

Then we finally got on the plane and all was forgotten when I got to watch four movies since the flight was so dang long.  Here were some of my choices on page one.

I watched Inglorious Basterds (strange movie), Michael Jackson’s This is It, Love Happens (”eh”, movie, I generally don’t watch girl love story movies as it’s not my favorite genre), and Surrogates (that’s more like my kind of movie a little action adventure type thing).  Maybe some other time I give my movie review, heheh.

And just because I really like that planes have GPS for us “are-we-there-yet” type-of-people, here’s a pic of part of the flight path we took.

Oh, and Andrew, remember how airport in Taiwan had that “relaxing center?”  Well, they’ve changed the theme, and this is how it looked like when we got there.

See how relaxed Aaron looks?

And finally, here’s a pic of one of our chariots.  Somehow pictures don’t give size justice.  This looked so much bigger to me in real life.

Okay, that’s it for today!

Marlakins

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