White Sand Christmas: Patar Beach Bolinao, Pangasinan

Patar Beach Bolinao, Pangasinan
December 24, 2012


I was really excited of this trip. Yeep! White Sand Christmas indeed! Perks of having friends in the different parts of the country! LOL! You get to have uber cheap vacation trips with guaranteed money back! wahahah :D

At the Patar Light House

Some say that Patar Beach is better than Boracay... Well, I'd give it a plus for still being less commercialized, but next to Bohol's Panglao Beach, for me, Boracay still is the best beach in the Philippines.

Go Kart

Kart-Track Boomland
October 18, 2012


Still a part of Randolf Salamat's birthday celebration, I collected all my guts and tried to do Go Kart racing with him. Some 2 years back, we went to Subic to visit Le Man's but it was moved to some unknown far away land when we got there. So I thought it would be a perfect gift for him, feeding his hunger for speed.

The rate was 495 pesos for 15 minutes, and additional charges for accessories like ballaclava and racing suit.

F na F lang

Needless to say, Pinaka pogi ka na sa kin! :p

Go Kart racing is perfect for those who really love speed, but not for me. I was not able to sit properly, and since I am small, I can't reach the clutch. They had poor service. I know we were supposed to know everything the moment you stepped in the kart, but still, someone should have oriented us, even for safety's sake. Pfft! Also, their place was so in an isolated lot. It took us 30 minutes to figure out that there's some race track at the back of Wensha. The place, especially the front lot looked like some kidnapper's hideout.

Anyhow, it was still a happy evening. Especially that I got to see my baby really be happy on his birthday. Iloveyou Choy! :D

Manila Ocean Park

Manila Ocean Park
October 18, 2012

Since we met, Randolf Salamat and I have used to celebrating his birthdays out of town. It was one of our ways to bond and create special memories together.But since my schedule has not permitted me to leave Manila, we decided to just look for something crazy to do inside the Metro. Then we heard of Manila Ocean Park's helmet diving.So we thought of giving it a try.

I have tried to do helmet diving in Boracay before. But since it was Randolf Salamat's birthday, I wanted to do helmet diving again- indoor helmet diving! I wanted to make his birthday really special.

We were to choose whether to dive in the shark tank or in the main tank. We were really excited of the thought of diving with sharks. Cool, right? But then we learned that in diving in the shark tank, we would be diving inside a cage, we decided to just  dive inside the main oceanarium tank.

He was playing cool at first. It was as if he was not excited and interested. Not until the couple ahead of us were guided and disappeared under 25 feet! Hahahaha...

Randol Salamat

Randolf Salamat and Wendy Balacano

"US"

Me :D

My The TWO

See my ipod? I had the guts of bringing it down the tank with me. It was dry and safe inside the water resistant pouch but I was not able to use it and kept on hanging until after 2 days.

A huge manta ray swam past us.

 We were instructed not to touch any animal inside the tank but I really wanted to at least poke that "iguana-like" creature staring at us. Hahahaha... luckily, I was not able to touch that thing as we we were instructed to move away from that spot.

My favorite picture :)

The attraction was for 995 pesos. But since we got vouchers from a discount website, we got our tickets half the price, plus the extra P350 for the photo coverage under water. But if you have your own under water camera, you can also bring it with you in the tank.


It was really awesome! Choy thought that the wet suit fits him well. Some reminders? Uhm, oh yes, please don't forget to bring extra undies. As you will be wet even on a wet suit.

So what's the difference of helmet diving in the real ocean vs on a tank? Well, pretty much the same, except that I felt more safer diving indoors.

Here are some more pictures inside Manila Ocean Park

The top of the tank where guests are made to wait. :)