Where's Scott?

With Mabel and Seb sleeping in late, I wander about and check out Paco Park. It’s a fascinating circular cemetery with some very elegant trees, apparently one of the more interesting sights in Manila. It appears to be a popular student hang out, and there are several groups of what appear to be Japanese youths […]

We return to the warm, humid comfort of Manila, and Mabel arrives from Cebu to meet us. Poor Mabel’s been quite sick over the last week, and has lost quite a bit of weight, now weighing in at a little over 35 kilos (not a typo, that’s 78 lbs!). Is there a flea-weight category? We […]

We have a plan to have lunch at the sushi house that Gaku recommended (but was closed on our last trip). We arrive and stare at the small house wondering if we really have the right place – it’s down a small, quiet street in a quiet business district. We step in and find a […]

Seb’s brother Jascha has suggested we check out Yayogi park, so we jump the train for the far side of the city. We arrive to a packed station and shuffle out with a morass of people to the bridge leading to the Meiji shrine. Grouped on the bridge are dozens of young girls dressed up […]

Yes, the sake is phenomenal, as is the bill! We’re closing The Bar at 4:30am and my credit card’s been declined! They run it several times, but it’s clear something’s very wrong. A quick call to the intl customer care, and we discover someone has tried to use the wrong PIN on the credit card; […]

We wake with a plan to not leave the lodging to the last minute. We motor down to the 5-star hotel’s meager i-cafe (2 English computers) and at extortionate rates find a couple of real i-cafe locations. That sorted, we wander the town a bit and I listen to Seb lament that we missed the […]

Ok, so the capsule has a few flaws, one being that if you roll over and hit the wall, you might wake yourself up; and I’m a roller. Clearly I wasn’t drunk enough! Sleep aside, it was cool… Seb and I decide to check out Electric City and see if it lives up to its […]

We spend a day sorting hotels and flights (never ending when your traveling!), and eventually bid Mabel goodbye at Manila airport (where’s she’s also flying out to Cebu), and step out of the 32C sun of the Philippines and into the 7C wind of downtown Tokyo. Neither Seb nor I have cold weather gear (Seb’s […]

A Japanese visa for Mabel is going to take over a week, if she can get one at all. Seb needs to be back in the UK in two weeks, and so he suggests putting Mabel up in a great hotel in Cebu (near her friends) and going to Tokyo anyway. Mabel isn’t having any […]

We’ve made a few good plans on the internet, and we pack up early to head to Cebu. The whole family’s bailing out of the house, so we’re blessed with the “bigger boat” that promises to make the journey somewhat drier than we’ve been used to! The boat drops us at Maya, and we bid […]