La Union

We arrived in Manila on 8/9 June. Fe and William were held up in Nagoya for several hours waiting for their plane to arrive from Detroit. We had carefully planned our arrival within an hour or so of each other; but the fates would not have it. I checked in to Swagman Hotel, which we had carefully selected because we trust them to pick us up at the airport based on our experience in 2004. Well, my arrival was not included, so I had to catch a taxi at 500 Pesos, at about 10:30 PM. I rode in to the airport with the hotel service vehicle, at about 3:00 in the AM. (Exact times slip my mind, as some 10 days have passed already!) Met them there, and rode back to Swagman where sleep came easy. We decided to postpone our trip to La Union for a day to catch up on sleep.

Next day we met a friend: taxi driver Lemuel of the Swagman Taxi cadre. He helped us find an adaptor for William's GameBoy, toured us around old Manila---drove us through Intramuros, the "walled city" and showed us statues of Jose Rizal and other political heros. (This morning, 19 June, he woke me up with a cell phone message from Manila that today is Jose Rizal's birthday!). He dropped us off at the bus terminal, and we were off for a promised 7 hour bus trip to San Fernando, La Union, and a visit to Jeff and Cherry, in San Juan, the "Surfing Capitol of the North".

We spent two nights there, and bopped down to Angeles City to visit the "Angeles City Flying Club." To make a long story short, until I can get back to it later, Fe flew on an Ultralight plane with Jeff, but I am too heavy, so William and I spent about 30-40 minutes on the ground. I took pictures, but managed to delete the whole SD card, with a careless button push on our less than well designed Minolta refurb.