Crazy Jeepney in Manila
Had a look around Intermuros and Ermita park, then explored the bars and nightclubs (?not sure what to call them, maybe “live music venues”?) near the hostel in Malate. 
Night club/bar/music venue...
Good fun, though very strange to see so many young Flippino girls with old Western men…
Monday we journey down to Lake Taal to visited the volcano. We stayed in a tiny village, Talisay, right on the lake’s shore. Had to do the old 'point and hope' for dinner, but ended up with fairly nice noodles and meat. It was nice to see the Flippino way of life in the village and it reminded me a bit of Indonesia.
"It's a long way back!"
We took a boat trip across to the volcano on Tuesday and spent an hour or so walking up to the top in the sweltering heat! Was a good view from the top though- you could look down into a lake of boiling, bubbling water in the crater! 
View of the volcano crater
We left Talisay and headed to Sabang, Porto Galera on Mindoro, via our very first Jeepney ride and a boat across the sea. Sabang was unfortunately another place full of old men and young girls, also lots of divers, but no beach to speak so we had a brief stopover and moved quickly on. One great thing about Sabang though was the room we stayed in had a kitchen, so I got to cook for the first time in 5 months! From Sabang we got Jeepney and the most cramped minibus I’ve ever even seen let alone been on to Roxas for the ferry over to Caticlan and Boracay.
We ended up spending the rest of the holiday in Boracay. It was an awesome island. We stayed on White beach –a 4km long stretch of beautiful soft white sand and clear blue sea! We spent a great deal of time lounging on the beach and in the sea, and possibly even more time sitting on the beach drinking 2-for-1 cocktails and watching the sunset.
Something usually done at our “local” bar – Armina where they had beer for 25Pesos and cocktails for 69Pesos (around 35p and £1) – can’t beat that!! 
Boracay’s a very touristy place which meant we had any type of food we could want for dinner! So plenty of mexican’s for me, and a great Indian – I’d missed proper Western food!
One highlight of the island for me was the Bamboo bar at night… mainly because they had fire dancers and me and Mike were invited to join in! :o) Spent many nights spinning away with my fire poi, and several days practicing to try not to be quite so bad compared to the professionals! 
On Sunday night we headed over to the Jungle Bar for a Full Moon Celebration! Was a tiny random bar on the other beach, with ridiculously strong drinks and at around 2am a performance of tribal drumming!
We also managed to do a few activities on the island; Mike did his Open Water Diving course and I went along with him on a couple of the dives. 
We did a Windsurfing lesson over on Bulabog beach. The beach itself was nasty – covered with seaweed and drift wood etc. as was the sea – knee deep a long way out and so murky you couldn’t see the bottom, but it was covered in weeds anyway. However, there was a constant wind that meant the place is a haven for Kite surfers and a few less daring windsurfers! It was really good to be back on a windsurf-it’s been about 7 years since the last time! I remembered bits of it though and enjoyed sailing up and down the beach, need more practice really! We also went on a horse ride up to a viewpoint where you could see all of Boracay. Our ponies were tiny for us and mine had the largest mane I’ve seen! Very good fun though.
Shame we didn’t make it anywhere else on the Philippines, though Boracay was great fun, I’ll have to head back at some point and travel around it properly.
