What's a dollar worth?

Lets start with the police: As you know, we had our 9 meter kite stolen. Well the insurance will cover the loss, but we need a police report and a receipt (very simple). The kite school produced the receipt in less then 5 minutes (nice). We then walked to the police station and made our report.
We explained the incident to a very nice but quiet police officer. He made little outward sign that he understood our story very well so we kept simplifying our English and slow down our speech to help him write the report. Once he was done writing we read what he wrote and it was a beautiful concise statement, much better than the broken English we were using to explain the situation. Another good reality check. He said we could come back to pick up the report in a few hours.
So, 3 hours later we walk back to the station. The officer is holding the report BUT!!! We have to first pay 1 US dollar to get it. Unfortunately the dollar can only be paid on the other side of town, in an office with no sign, and oh yeah it is closed till tomorrow. No problem, tomorrow comes and we pay 1 US dollar to take a trike (taxi) to the office to pay the 1 US dollar (a bit confusing isn't it). The office is on lunch break BUT will open in 10 minutes. 10 minutes pass, BUT only an official representative of the mayor can take our 1 US dollar and give the receipt to get the form for the insurance, the official rep. is not to be found. So we take a seat to wait. During this time the four employees take turns talking, texting, smashing pistachio nuts, putting on make up, brushing hair, smoking, and walking in and out of the mayor office (were the official rep. is most likely sleeping under the desk and not to be disturbed for 1 US dollar). So we wait and wait, then the girl who has been brushing her hair for 40 minutes walks into the mayors office, takes our money, and gives us the receipt. We run from the office before the red tape should lengthen. We pay one more dollar to get back to the police station. The end!

Now to the beach!!! Our hard work is finally starting to pay off! If a picture is worth 1000 words, watch these videos of Leah. You may wonder why there are no videos of Rob... Well he is filming Leah for one thing, and for another, most of his time is spent underwater, not on top.

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Have you seen my Kite?

It all started with 35 knot winds, the sand was leaving the safety of the beach and blowing inland to our eyes. Our instructor (bless him) said , "you guys aren't allowed out." We agreed that we would have no control of our kite in such strong wind. So, we decided to leave paradise and go over to the next island to explore on mopeds (think tiny, light, baby motorcycles ). First, we rented the mopeds on our island and then they had to be transported to the other island. Most cargo gets transported on little canoe like boats with outrigging to keep it stable but the waves from the wind tried its best to blow our little boat over. When we arrived on the big island 4 men picked the bike up so no salt water would get on the bike. Once we started on our exporeation we found out that the moped had no rear brakes (but more on that latter). Now there is a major festival happening only once a year on this island and we head toward it, but first we decided to head to a local waterfall. After 3-4 hours of riding and a few questions on directions we find the dirt road. Now on a dirt road, with a moped, in the hills, you might need rear brakes to slow down. So we almost lost it several times. Rob was wearing only flip flops poor choice driving. Another guy acutally did fall and scrape up his bike. It hadn't rained in sometime so the waterfalls were a little smaller than we had expectd (more like water drips). But we enjoyed swimming in fresh water for the first time in months, so fresh and clean! Back on the bike, for a few more hours with the wind straight at us at 35 mph, we are driving at 40-60 mph. Leah's arms getting tighter and tighter as the pathetic craft was buffeted by the storm winds all around us. No bathroom breaks, no lunch, four hours following the guide to someplace we hope has food. We arrive 3 hours late for lunch, but it tastes good. We are way late and have to skip the party since we thought the last ferry was at 6. The next day we found out that our guide went back over to go the the festival! Strange. We have found that communication can be a little tough sometimes.

We have decide that mopeds are not the best mode of transport. We did however discover how gas is sold in the small towns. They reuse old litter glass coke bottles and fill them will gas, then they put them out in front of their home/tiny shop. It looks like a funny colored coke and it took us a while before we were willing to put it down our gas tanks. It is a very handy thing as long as you only want one or two liters of gas!

Made it home alive and slept. A new day dawns, the wind is down, we go to set up our kite. IT IS GONE!!!! In 8 years of operation, no one, had ever lost a kite. We had only owned this kite through one session which for us was an hour of use. It was gone. They checked all the other kite stores, the entire beach, and made phone calls. To top it off, Leah stepped in dog poop without shoes on.

Our luck had changed. Cursing fate, and licking several days of wounds we actually considered ditching the other kite and heading to Thailand. Dinner, a hour running, and 30 minute swim later we buy another kite. Get back on the "horse" and today had the best day yet for both of us! Still swallowing way more than our alloted amount of salt water but we are getting it.

We are currently extending our visas for another 38 days in paradise. We are also keeping up with our meditation every morning and evening for an hour. We are also very excited about our new purchase of a water boiler. We can have tea and oatmeal whenever we want. Oh the small pleasures of life!

A sample of our moped touring

Boracay!

Leah upside down (as always) watching the sun set

Rob and a dead kite, but with a bit of hot air (I got lots), this kite will fly

Riding the streets of old town Manila, on a horse and cart

The amazing city of Manila at our backs, now onto the beach

Our life has now become centered around the wind! There can be no kite boarding without the wind. We have been on the small island of Boracay for a week now and are loving every minute of it. We have paid a month in advance for our lovely hotel room so we have the luxury of staying in one spot and forgetting about our packs for a while. We invested in some knifes and cutting boards to cut up all the fresh fruit we can handle and there is plenty around. Mangoes are amazing here and we are trying not to overload on this delicious fruit. We can buy 4 mangoes for a dollar here and little baby bananas they call senoritas for 60 cents a kilo. Yummy!! In our first week we have completed our beginner kite boarding class. Which means we are safe to practice by ourselves now. But I am not so sure we are all that safe. Yesterday was our first day out on our own and we managed to not tangle our kite with anyone yeah!! But we are doing very little in the way of actually riding our board. We spend most of our time just trying to keep the kite under control. The kite boarding community is really fun here. Everyone is very understanding and positive. They say in 2 weeks we will be able to board the whole bay! Not sure if we believe that yet. We will keep working and maybe someday soon we will have a video

to show you.

Pictures you might have missed

It is now time for pictures. The joys of having a lap top!


French kissing the guard dog out side a Hindu temple.

On our way back down from the top of the world

Scoundrel's viewpoint outside of Gokyo, Everest is the mountain with the cloud cover.

Rhino hunting in the trees. (Leah is getting bitten by lots of ants at this very moment and doesn't realise till she gets down) Harka our guide is above me.

Must be very patient and quiet when looking for Rhinos.

Elephants attach the city of Chitwan! Elephants are everywhere and we loved watching them bath.

The lovely bell that ruled our life for our 10 day meditation class.

After 2 days of hiking in the jungle, we get our rhino sighting! We had to climb several trees, follow foot prints, and rhino dung to get to this point. Very exciting.

I got to get my hands dirty! Potters square in Bakdipure, Nepal. It is a whole community that produces pottery. It is very rudimentary but the clay is actually very nice and compact. I was surprised that the clay felt so well wedged. To fire the pottery they just stack it up layers of pots then layers of hay.... then it is all covered with ash. Then they burn the hay for 3 days. No glazes just natural looking pots. It was a very fun atmosphere.

Hong Kong to the Philippines

We spent our New Years recovering on the lovely island of Lamma (Hong Kong). Kim and Tom took great care of us while we were getting over our last small illnesses from Nepal ( Took us to check luggage, took us to our hotel, translate and bargained for us, took us to a 6 course meal, then dropped us fat and happy in our new neighborhood for the night). We were also able to meet up with Paula (our San Fransisco saviour). She was in Hong Kong for a week, so it worked out wonderfully (Her boyfriend, Jack, is from Hong Kong so we could follow him on tour). We had a big splurge in Hong Kong and purchased a small lap top computer. So this is our first blog written on our new notebook. We should be able to now to put lots of pictures up.

Lucky for us that we were able to recover our tummies because the Philippines is full of great FOOD!!! We were very fortunate to have a friend, Christian, pick us up from the airport (we were over an hour late )! Rob worked with Christian when we lived in Yakima, WA (whenever Leah left me that summer Chris and I would head out on adventures to Seattle, and wine tastings ). Christian took us to a wonderful restaurant where you first go to the market and pick out what seafood you would like to eat . ( So FRESH, it makes you think of the Little Mermaid when you order crab. This time he didn't escape the chef) We had crab, tuna, prawns, some other fish, and seaweed (tasting like little pallups of freshness not fishy) then watermelon and mango for dessert ( you tell them how to cook it, they cook, and they clean ). So wonderful. After our large lunch we piled into the car and drove to a volcanic creator. It was in the middle of this large lake. Very cool looking and very majestic since it was a bit cloudy. On our way back to Manila from the creator we were in a big traffic jam. The cause we found out was just drivers not following rules (not as bad as Nepal, but here there were cops doing the same thing). The road had 2 lanes going each way. Well, some drivers decided to use a third lane, the oncoming traffics passing lane (hey they weren't using it). So we had 3 lanes and they had 1 lane. Later, as we inched along the oncoming traffic had 3 lanes and we had to scrunch into one lane (this is total Karma). The big yellow line means nothing. And yes there were police but they were just as bad and used whatever lane they pleased. So a few hours of stop go was created just by a crazy bottleneck, that the people created themselves (like shooting yourself in the foot and blaming the guy walking by). But we were able to use to the time to catch up with Christian (Poor guy has to go back to work in 2-3 days ). So all was good.

Our next plan is to get down to a small island south of here and start learning to kite board!! (Rob needs to work on his tan lest his beauty diminish)

The wreckage after our first Philippeno meal. Thanks Christian!
Meeting up with Paula and Jack in Hong Kong

Our wonderful going away lunch with Kim and Tom, Thank you! (we had Peking Duck!)