East Africa

A small presentation to sum it all up

East africa Slideshow: JP’s trip from Manila to 6 cities Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali, Kisumu, Nakuru and Narok was created by TripAdvisor. See another Kenya slideshow. Take your travel photos and make a slideshow for free.

I am not a bag

It's a rainy wednesday afternoon. I took a break from work and opened my facebook account. At the home screen, I saw that my sister was tagged in an album.

Note: Once you are tagged in a photo, when people look at your pictures, the photo that you were tagged will appear in your "photos" .

I scanned through the albums, and there wasn't a single photo of her. It was an album of signature branded bags for sale.

Looking at it, It got me into thinking the reasons why we create our facebook profile and how it became a universal website (except in china, where facebook is banned).

Facebook is use to connect with other people.

Facebook is to tell other people of what is happening with our lives now

Facebook is boast to other people of our latest travel pics, to boast to other people of pictures that we look good in. ( most of us even have different albums to arrange our photos).

Now as I scanned through the album where my sister was tagged into. It was purely 127 pictures of different overpriced bags.

When I checked into my sister's profile page, It says that she has 200 photos. When I clicked the photos, they were different photo collections of travel pictures, family pictures and some beach pictures. Since she was tagged in an album full of bags, there were at least 13 pictures of different bags included in her photos.

I wondered if she is okay that she became an overpriced ordinary looking bag in 13 pictures in her profile.

What's worse is that because of a lot of fake designer bags being sold. These albums want to make sure that their bags are "authentic" they also post pictures of the receipts and some helpful logos to attest to the bag's "authenticity".

Now check your profile pictures, you might be a designer bag now, or maybe a korean fashion dress!!!

Just thinking aloud

(This is my sister, turned into Ferragamo)

(she is not fake. Check the logo)

(still not convinced? she was bought in a ferragamo store. look at her receipts)

It's sunday and It's Complicated

It's sunday.

The first Sunday I challenged myself to update more often.

Nothing much really happened this week. Though there were occasional mood highs and lows during the week, but nothing really significant worth noting down.

Right now, I am just trying my best to let the feeling of excitement of going to Africa sink into me. Last night I printed my Tickets and Visas just to let it all in, but it didn't really do much.

Today I booked my accommodation for my first night in Kenya. ( I normally just book an overnight accommodation and feel the place and see things from there.)

For this trip, I am planning to try some homestays, wherein in locals would open their house for travelers to stay for a minimal fee. I got an account via www.homestayweb.com for me to contact families willing to accept me in their house. This for me is a good way to experience the local's culture and way of life.

After I paid for my accommodation I got a confirmation email and a follow thru mail offering for an airport pick up.

Hi JP

Thank you for booking accommodation with us. Your reservation for a double garden tent, arriving on SATURDAY, 3 JULY, for 1 night has been confirmed.

If you would like to book an airport pick to bring you to our camp, this will cost 1,700 Kenya Shillings (for a saloon car) from the International Airport . To arrange this all we need is your flight details (flight arrival time and number). If you plan to make your own way to our camp, please advise of your arrival time, as all rooms, even if previously confirmed or paid for in full, will only be held until 16:00 hours. If your plans change, and you no longer require this reservation, please let us know via the contact details below.

Dinner is served (buffet style) at the camp at 19:00 each evening. If you would like dinner, please advise in advance. For guests arriving in Nairobi after 20:00, it can be difficult to buy meals, even takeaway, so it is good to plan in advance if you think you might like something to eat on arrival.

Accommodation, camp, and travel services can be paid for with cash (Kenyan Shillings, Euro, British Pounds, US Dollars), credit or debit card (visa and mastercard only), or bank transfer prior to arrival. If you plan to use your credit or debit card here in Africa , don’t forget to advise your bank before you leave home. If you are bringing US Dollars, ensure that the ‘series date’ printed on them is 2000 or newer (notes printed in the 1990s are not accepted in East Africa – even by banks).

We have a travel office at the camp which can assist with booking day tours, safaris, trekking, beach accommodation, bus and train tickets and much more. Please visit our website below or email us for further details.

Thank you again for your booking and we look forward to welcoming you to Wildebeest Camp.

Kind regards
Daniel

I am not so keen on getting picked up in the airport. For one, I am not comfortable of someone waiting for me specially if there are flight delays. Secondly, 1,700 kenya shillings is too much! The site says that they are located about 2 km from the airport, and there are reviews saying that the camp's airport pick up is a ripped off money! With this, I am going to brace myself with my bargaining skills to take a cab to bring me to the camp, anyway I am expecting to arrive at 2:24 in the afternoon.

I want to share some photos of the camp I will be staying, which I got from www.hostelbookers.com

(Indoor accommodations are inside the house)

(outdoor accommodations which I will be staying by the garden)

With that, I am starting to feel the excitement build up now!

It's complicated

This morning I got hold of a movie titled It's complicated.

It is an entertaining film. More of a mature sex and the city style. A break also from the usual teens to 20's 30's cast in a romantic comedy which is we commonly see in the movies.

The story tackles 50 year old divorcee Jane and how the romance with his husband rekindled after being separated for 10 years.

I got the notion that hot steamy sex are just good on the first few years of being married. But this story got me to thinking. Does sex actually still exist at 50?

A funny scene was when the divorced couple had sex for the first time after 10 years. After they orgasm, the panting husband touched the groin of the wife, who was also still catching her breath saying " home sweet home!"

Here is the link to the official trailer of the movie

Have a good week ahead

Need to write more

This is it.

I am challenging myself to write more.

I will try to set a day, or every sunday of the week to update this blog. Be it something new that I experienced during the week or something that would just spark an interest in me.

Let me share an interesting email I got a few weeks back.

Here goes:

Dear Jp,

I am the Dallas artist who about a year ago contacted you for permission to paint from your photos. I finally got around to posting some paintings on my Facebook page. You can see it in my "Painterly Musings" album. I hope you like it. It is hanging in a Dallas gallery I co-own! I get many nice comments on it, too. I used to do portraits in oils about 25 yrs. ago and this is the first watercolor portrait I've attempted and I hope to do more.

Thank you for allowing me to be inspired by your talents! I also hope you pursue your gifts. You have such sensitivity in your photography!

Sincerely,
Marianne Phelps

(unedited photo taken 2009)

(painting inspired from photo above)

I hope she did justice to my picture. You guys be the judge.

I have added a small feature on this blog called "fishes" . Please take time to feed the fishes, specially the black one. That is ME.

This made my day

My Friend E, an ex addict, HIV positive, gave light to me today.

I have been feeling down the past few days.

While chatting with E, I asked for an inspiration. I told E to recommend a song for me to listen and to get inspired.

He gave me a youtube link which directed me to this song.

By coincidence, I have this song in my ipod already, but I have been figuring out the song's title for almost a year now. The lyrics are in foreign language, and it is hard to hum the song and ask people if they are familiar with the song.

Thus I named the song "unknown song" in my ipod.

(my ipod with a picture of me and the unknown song)

This song made my day. Specially in times like this, that I feel stuck and contained. It just gives me hope that whatever situation we are now, we can make things happen.

With this, I am telling myself. One day I will resume flying again... And when that time comes. I gonna be flying for good

Cheers everyone

Captured Highlights of my Sem Sem trip

Last Month I went a place I want to call "Sem Sem".

Sem sem is close to my heart because, this is the country where my "itchy travel foot" started to itch. My traveling senses awakened in this country as I saw many backpackers in this hub.

This country started it all.

I wanna share some of the highlights of my short, much needed and enjoyable trip to the land of "sem sem".

1. Airplane food

I would have to say the Philippines has lost it's glory of carrying the first airline in Asia. With the steep competition of cheap airfares in our country, one could not expect the royal treatment that we use to experience on our glory days. Aside from flight attendants are getting dumber and uglier each flight. It is only in our land that cabin food are sold at a whooping price.

It has been almost a year since I took a decent (my standard of decent) flight. I miss the times when I was traveling like crazy and taking pictures of airplane food for me to blog about.

I booked my flight thru Kuwait Airways, that flies from Manila to Kuwait with stop over at sem sem.

Over my excitement I made sure to take a photo of my airplane food, no matter how blunt the food taste. It is still airplane food and I love airplane food.

(I'm loving my blunt airplane food)

2. In flight entertainment

No. not the typical "show me" game our local airlines use as their inflight entertainment.

But real inflight entertainment which shows movies and plays games and music while flying.

Even if the screen was small it was ok. I watched 2012 during the flight.

(can u see me at the screen's reflection?)

3. My name's new spelling

While I was waiting for my flight, I decided to kill time and kill myself with a single serving of Yellow cab's hotwings.

Having nicknamed JP. I am use to people from starbucks writing JT or Jaypee in my coffee cup. My eyes widened when I saw the name written on my receipt. This was the first time a person misspelled my name this way. I wish I can commend her for being different, or in our local dialect "iba ka"!

(I can't believe my name can be spelled this way)

4. The Sex show

Sem sem is known for it's red light district. The 1st time I was there, I went to a ping pong show, where unbelievable objects came out from unexpected parts of a woman's body.

This trip I went to Pattaya, the sin city of asia. My friend and I booked a ticket for their famous sex show. After seeing the show, I can say that the ping pong show is nothing, I mean NOTHING compared to the sex show. I was corrupted that night. Dang it!

Sorry no cameras allowed.

5. Jetski

I know it sounds so lame, but it was my first time to try riding a jetski. As lame as it sounds at least I had my first jetski in semsem.

After my Sem sem trip. I am now in saving mode again for my holiday this July.

I am studying interesting places to go in Nairobi, Kampala and Kigali and Dubai

I am going to try my best to squeeze in 4 countries in 2 weeks. Goodluck to me

(thanks to ronell for buying latest addition to my collections)

turning japanese

As promised I just finished changing my room's floor from hard marble to wood. I took this photo 10 minutes ago..

Finally I can say my room is turning japanese!

Konichiwa everyone! Hai!

I am now debating whether I would need a headboard or not. I am also contemplating if it would be nice to put some of travel pictures I took and mount them in my wall.

What do you think?