I wish I had a picture for this one. It's an interesting story, the kind that would probably turn many people off coming to this place. I was coming back from from a short afternoon outing last week and as the taxi turned onto the street of my hotel, I heard a commotion. People were yelling and screaming. Next thing I noticed was people pointing. Running towards the car I was in was a guy, maybe late thirties or early forties. He was running hard and clearly out of breath. He passed the cab as people kept pointing. Following behind him was a motorbike with two people, wearing dark glasses and generally dressed like bad guys, in my opinion. What was most surprising, was the guy on the front pulled out a handgun and began aiming at the running man while yelling something in the local language. I'm not entirely certain if he ever fired. Everything sounded muffled inside the cab. I heard what I thought was shots, but I also thought it should be louder.

What surprised me the most was how distant it all seemed to me. Even though this passed right by my car, I wasn't shocked. The driver wasn't phased either. I think back and wonder why I wasn't scared or didn't duck down at the site of the weapon, but instead kept watching. Naturally I had to know what happened.



I got out of the cab and went into the hotel while people were still crowding around watching. I asked the lady at the front desk and she explained based on what she knew. The guy I saw running, according to her, was a "snatcher". Snatching and running is somewhat common in the city, though not so much in the area where I am staying. What I found more interesting was that she explained that the guys on the motorbike with the gun were cops! I was told it's fairly common for motorcycle cops to ride around in plain clothes. Makes sense, because I almost never see a uniformed cop around here.

The first thing people need to know is that this does not mean this is a dangerous city. Yes, there is poverty which leads to a bit of petty crime, usually pickpockets and snatchers, but Cebu City hardly gains notice when it comes to any real or violent crime. In the list of the top 50 cities for violent crime, New York, L.A., Moscow, Johannesburg, Detroit and like cities are in the top 10. Cebu City isn't on the list at all. So fear not. There is not trouble in paradise. The only thing you need to fear is all the single women who may be after you or, if you're female, after your man.

I met Grace at a mega popular disco called Juliana last Friday night. This disco seems like the place to be Friday and Saturday nights in Cebu CIty. It seems like everyone goes there. I even ran into some of Marifel's friends there that night. There was blasting loud music and much dancing and quite a bit of drinking. The next day, I told Grace what had happened to me the day before.

The day before that, meaning Thursday, I met this Japanese guy named Chiba in my hotel. He's an interior designer brought from Japan to do up some new club in the town center. Apparently he had a friend who went back to Japan the day before, leaving him no one to really talk to since he spoke no English. He told me about what it was like working in an environment where he needs a translator to explain everything to the staff doing the actual work on the club. He also told me that the team was planning a Saturday trip up to a place called Mountain View, which houses some very famous dining spots about an hour out of town. He invited me to join them, which I thought would be very fun.

On Saturday, me and Grace went to Ayala Mall to see The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which was a lot of fun. When we left the mall, we realized it had rained. That's fairly common in Cebu so I thought nothing of it. Grace wanted to stop off at her place before our plan to meet up with Chiba and go into the mountains. She lived very near the mall and so we decided to walk. Before this, I had always stepped out of the front door of the hotel and into a taxi. This was my first time to really see the place. Just minutes walking from the mall, we entered into the area where Grace lived, and it was something of a shock. I don't have pictures. I wouldn't pull out a cel phone or camera there even if I had one with me.



I had heard many times before about rich and poor living side by side in the Philippines, but now I actually saw it. Run down shacks surrounded by run down vehicles, rust and garbage. The buildings often had no running water, no aircon and no CR. People were just hanging around, playing cards, drinking $1 rum and generally milling about. Now everyone in the area was extremely nice. They were interested in who I was and wanted to talk to me. I met a lot of cool people I would otherwise have never seen, had a couple of shots of dollar rum, and generally had fun. After Grace changed clothes, we went to meet Chiba.

I knocked on Chiba's door and asked him about the trip to the mountains. He said because it had rained, they cancelled the trip deciding to do it another day. I was somewhat disappointed, but Grace asked, "Why not just go anyway?" So we did. We got in a taxi and he agreed to take us up there and even wait for us, for a fee of 700 peso of course. So off we went into the mountain paradise. It was an adventurous winding trip up. EVen saw a motorbike accident. We stopped at a bourgeois restaurant/hotel called Chateau de Busay and there we ate. It was pretty amazing. It was night now and from there you could see the whole city in all its lighted glory. Only a big expensive camera could come close to capturing the beauty of what we saw up there. The place we were in felt like a palace and the view was astonishing.

Going from Ayala to such a poor area and then to this mountain palace type environment made me realize just how different a world I am in. Still, I love it and can't wait to see more. Now, though, after too much sightseeing and partying, I really have to get down to some business. I will be busy writing paid articles and doing freelance graphic gigs this week. Still, I am certain more adventures lie ahead. There's always something new to see!

Today I went to Ayala Mall, which seems to be a regular occurrence now, to extend my visa. If you arrive in the RP with no papers of any kind, you are stamped at customs with a 21 day tourist visa, which you can extend for short periods for up to one year before you have to leave. This can be done in person at the Bureau of Immigration, which most say is a simple process, or you can have a travel agency handle it all for you. Since I wanted to go to Ayala anyway, I decided to go the travel agency route. Just outside the mall entrance is an AMEX Travel agency and they were able to take care of everything.

After leaving the agency, the next item on the list was some shopping. There is a huge grocery store in Ayala which I had never visited before. All the standard items you would expect of grocery store were there and many were much cheaper than they are in the U.S. They also had many Asian products you couldn't get in a standard grocery store in the U.S., except at some of the Asian grocery stores in California. Now being in a mall, this stuff is cheap to me, but still quite expensive for the average local. My friend Michelle was surprised at what I was willing to pay for something like a can of Planters Peanuts, even though is was less than half what it might cost at a grocery store in L.A.



After that, the next item on the list was food. Michelle took me to a place called Max's, which has the slogan, "The House That Fried Chicken Built". Fried chicken is quite popular in the Philippines and there's plenty of it, cheap. Although we had a bit of fried chicken, the main thing Michelle ordered was this soup that had whole shrimp in it, heads and all. I tried the soup, and it wasn't that great to me, but she seemed to love it. Even if the soup stock tasted great, though, I don't know that I could have gotten past the shrimp with heads and little legs.

Luckily for me, they also had some batter dipped and deep fried shrimp as I would naturally expect. It came with a cup of some kind of sweet sauce to dip in and it was great. I also had some Shanghai style fried rice which was pretty good. The fried chicken itself, though, was nothing special in my view. I think the fried chicken at my hotel is better. It's amazing that it's so cheap. Not at this place, mind you, as mall dining can approach U.S. prices if you're not careful, but at most places you can get half a fried chicken for about $2 or $3. I can't imagine how cheap it would be at a place that didn't cater to foreigners.

In all, I realize I am probably spending more than I should on this first leg of my adventure, and I am not writing enough, as far a paying gigs are concerned. Of course, this is expected to some degree as I had no misconceptions that I would walk into a new place and environment and sit down and work 24/7. That is kind of what I am trying to escape also. Still, it is time to settle in and starting focusing on why I am here. I wrote, "I chose to take my chances, hop on a plane and head to South East Asia. With few exceptions, many places in Asia have a cost of living as low as 20% of what it might cost to live in Southern California. There I could conceivably sustain myself on my internet endeavors and have some real adventure to boot. Since I am doing my work in the wired, it shouldn't matter where in the world I am at any given time, as long as there's access. It would appear as though I can't lose." That is still the plan. Not to say I haven't been working at all or bringing in any money, but I am really starting to see the potential for what devoting just a few hours per day to internet business can do for creating an incredible lifestyle here.

I was at Ayala mall again today, this time primarily to get a load card on my phone and to just generally people watch. It's pretty amazing to be the stranger in a strange land and see how people look at and treat you. Of course, they say there are far more women here than men, some say 9 to 1, or something like that, and while I don't know if this is true, it is easy to believe considering the reaction I get from women when I walk around the mall. Yes, there is a lot of interest.

Koreans are everywhere. I remember the first night I went to a disco, it seemed to be half Koreans there. I later found out that the particular disco I went to was Korean owned, but still they are just about everywhere else I go too. They are usually very young, mostly students who go to the Philippines to study English, because of the low cost and it is widely spoken here. The thing I notice about the Koreans is that they are BIG. Most Asians are rather small compared to westerners, but all these Koreans, even the girls are taller than me! They are not exactly thin either. They all have some meat on 'em! I think the home diet must have changed much in the last twenty years. I used to hang with a lot of Koreans in college and they were small and thin like most other Asians back then.



Outside the mall, I met two African guys, one from Sudan and the other from Somalia. Apparently they work part of the year in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the middle east, and then spend the rest of their time living it up in the Philippines. I have heard of this strategy before, from a guy from the Ukraine. He worked for 6 months, or so, in Saudi Arabia and made a truck load of money and then enjoyed the other half of the year traveling.

These Sudanese guy told me that you work when you do this strategy though, so it is not for the lazy. He said you may work almost 24/7 but they are short contracts, in the middle east, and the pay is astronomical. I mean you can make more than most hope to make in a year. The Sudanese guy had been doing this for six years now. The Somalian guy said that when you get a work permit in The United Arab Emirates, it is just like being in the EU. You can travel and work freely anywhere in the UAE and many other parts of the middle east, and they all pay well. The Sudanese guy said, though, don't go to Saudi Arabia. It is very strict and no night life to speak of. The Somalian said if you are muslim you can do well in Saudi, but otherwise he agreed.

When I asked them if it was hot there, they winced. They said in the summer it can get up to 53゜C there. That's 127.4゜F for those in the U.S.. The typical 90゜days here must be nothing to them. They seemed to know a lot about the clubs and the local music scene, and also about Manilla, and the scene there. They said that Manilla really isn't much more expensive than here and that it is worth checking out. Each day I realize that I have barely even begun to scratch the surface here.

Well, if you read of my internet ordeals yesterday, you may know that they are all over! Having finally figured out how things work with this SMART BRO wireless modem, since they weren't exactly explained in the documentation, I was able to get everything worked out and I am finally online. The solution, as I mentioned yesterday, had me returning to Ayala Mall, which I confirmed is, in fact, five levels of shopping goodness. I learned yesterday that a company called Junrex was an authorized reseller of SMART products and that they would be able to put the load on my SIM card. Turns out it was an amazingly easy process. Almost a shame that I let something so simple and so small stand in the way of my being online earlier.

I walked into Junrex and, at first, decided to be amazed for a while by the many different cell phones available. I will talk about that at length in a moment. After browsing the phones for a while, I finally went up to the front desk to ask about loading my SIM. She simply asked for my number which, even though I had it memorized, I had on the card that came with the SIM. She took my card and punched a few numbers on her phone and then turned the phone to me to show me the confirmation of my 1500 minute load. I paid my P500 and it was done. It was that easy, and will be for all future loads.



At that point I could have come home, but I remembered that there was this place I wanted to eat at. The night before, I saw a commercial on TV in the downstairs restaurant, during some type of karaoke game show, for a Chinese food joint called Chow King. The commercial was really cool showing a super skilled chef throwing rice around with lots of fire everywhere. So, in Ayala Mall, I walked past the huge dine-in KFC and the nearby Pizza Hut to enter Chow King. On the wall was a large poster for Chow Fan (fried rice) including spicy chicken and beef and, my favorite, Yang Chow. I ate Yang Chow fried rice the other night so I walked up to the counter, like in a fast food joint, and ordered the spicy chicken and beef. They said it wasn't available. I went with regular beef fried rice. For a mere 20 pesos you can add what they call a topping. I chose something called Lumpiang Shanghai, which looks like egg rolls, but are filled with pork like a pot sticker. Altogether the meal as about $2.00 with a bottled water, and it wasn't bad. It wasn't China by any means, but still pretty good.

Satisfied with my meal, it was now time to find my way out of this maze. As I searched for an end to the bright and busy corridors, I ran across something I had completely forgotten about. It was the Ayala Mall Mac Store. I remembered finding their webpage just a couple of days before going to the Philippines. I went in and was surprised to see it was no different than the many Apple stores in Los Angeles. They had everything I might want should I need to expand my Mac gear. I got a price sheet from them just to see how things compared. Now, while most things are incredibly cheap in the Philippines, imported, western technology, especially from America, seems to be very expensive, more so than buying it at home. Now I knew about this from the forums I have read about the Philippines, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't nearly as bad as some made it out to be. Even though I have read claims of things being as much as double the price of their American counterparts, most items were only $200 - $500 more than the Apple store list price. When you're talking about a $2000 or $3000 item, thats not an outrageous price increase. It does, however, bring to mind a serious question.

What will become of the iPhone in the Philippines, or Asia in general? I can now totally understand why Apple lowered the price of the new 3G iPhone, but because of the import taxes that appear when these items go to Asia, it will go up in price on this end. The problem is, when I looked at phones in the many mobile stores, I was surprised to find that, while the iPhone may be a top contender in the U.S., in Asia, it's just another phone. Sadly, there are phones that cost less than half that price that have the same features, not counting the innovative touch screen. What may spell trouble for the iPhone, though, are what the higher caliber phones can do. Phones in the iPhone price range come with, not a mere 2 megapixel camera like Apple's flagship mobile product, but a 5 megapixel camera, and many can shoot full video. They have the same internet and web features with the advantage that 3G networks are actually available all over Asia. Many phones are clearly made to watch TV and pick up radio, aside from having storage enough for music and video on board. They have real GPS in their map systems and many boast some pretty big and high resolution screens. I think Apple will be given a run for their money by companies like Nokia, Samsung and Sony in the far east.

Anyway, now that I am back online, it is time to get down to some serious writing. I got a few freelance writing gigs while offline during my trip, and so there's work to do. It's time to make some money to keep the adventure going!


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Ayala Mall is huge! I don't remember if it was four or five stories. I got lost in it on numerous occasions. But why was I there? I remember hearing rumors that there existed wireless 3G modems, not much larger than a credit card, that you can plug into a USB port, giving you cellular internet access anywhere you can find a signal. The 3G standard is alleged to reach speeds of up to 2 Mbps, which would explain why people in Japan and Korea are already watching live video broadcasts and doing video chat on their cellphones. So I woke up today with a mission to prove the existence of these modems, and if it were true, and in a reasonable price range like most things here, I would get one, forever solving my internet woes.

I hopped into a taxi and took the trip down to Ayala Mall, for a price just over a $1.00. I walked into this mega structure and immediately thought to myself, even if these things do exist, how will ever find them in here? This place was beyond belief. Multiple levels, Bright Lights, a huge food court, KFC, Pizza Hut, Shakey's Pizza, McDonalds, they were all there. Now there are probably places just as big or bigger in L.A., I just didn't make it out to see them. I remember The Galleria was pretty amazing. The mall fresh in my memory, though, is the Fashion Show mall in Sherman Oaks, which is where I bought my iPhone. That mall is a corner plaza compared to Ayala Mall.



So I searched around this place looking at all manner of amazing sites. The mall seemed mainly fashion oriented, but there were some technology stores. Plasma screens, video games, cellphones, computers, there was a lot to look at and sift through. Finally I decided to ask someone, and he explained that they don't have that type of thing, meaning the 3G modem, in this place and that I would have to go to this other even bigger mall. (He was wrong, though, but that's another story.)

So off to the, even bigger, SM Mall I went. I passed by this one on the drive in from the airport so I knew of its scope and scale. Seeing a huge building from the outside, though, is no comparison to getting lost multiple times on the inside. Eventually I found a huge area called The Cyberzone. This was where all the geeky stuff was to be found, even though this mall, on the whole was much more technology oriented than Ayala Mall. In here I found the SMART store I was looking for, SMART being the company that I eventually discovered to be the maker this rumored modem. It was real. It cost about $89 and so, after much hassle, I bought it and took it home.

By the time I arrived at home I was starving. I had to eat something. I went to the downstairs restaurant and they were taking a "time out". One thing to note about the Philippines is that it is very laid back. I guess if the cook has something better to do, there's no cooking going on. The lady at the front desk directed me to the restaurant next door. So I walked outside and around the corner to this little cafe next door. Inside, I see numerous people on laptops and hand held devices. Some are even doing Skype and streaming video. Sure enough, this place has WIFI and apparently very fast WIFI too. They're also open pretty much all day. If I had known this, I could have simply taken the couple of steps next door and had high speed internet yesterday. If it wasn't raining, I'd go there right now and upload these two posts. But wait a minute! What about the modem I just bought?

Well, I plugged the modem in and it worked! I didn't find a 3G signal to connect, but I did find a signal and I was on the internet! I went to speedtest.net to see just how fast it was and I got the results you see on the left. The 384 Kbps range ain't bad for cellular that will work anywhere and anytime. But the story doesn't stop there with a happy ending. You see, like many such services here, this was a prepay cellular service. You basically buy "loads" to put on your SIM card and then talk or surf until you use it up. I bought a 900 Minute load card to go with my modem, which came with 30 free minutes, probably to give you ample time to set it up. Sadly, I neglected to ask how you activate this load card. Reading the instructions on the back of the card, it is assumed that you have a cellphone. My iPhone, being locked to AT&T, doesn't work here except as a WIFI device. To activate the card, I needed to send an SMS message to their activation service.

I experienced it. I got to play with it! I got to feel it! All for about thirty minutes. Then my time was up. Tomorrow I must return to Ayala Mall because, while there is no SMART store in there, I, at least, learned there is an authorized reseller called Junrex. There I will get my load card properly activated, and this story will, hopefully, be at an end, a happy end.


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Yesterday, I finally arrived in Cebu Philippines and got settled in my quaint little room, but that's not the beginning of this story. After landing, I took a nice, big, black SUV from the Mactan Island airport to the joint I was originally planning to stay at. This fairly long SUV ride cost me about 475 pesos, which equates to about $10.00 USD. For comparison, I also took a nice, big, black SUV from my apartment in Los Angeles to the airport there. That cost about $80.00 USD. As to why I am not at that first stopping point, it all boils down, once again, to internet. The internet speed there was excruciatingly slow. Luckily for me, I didn't prepay my reservation, so I decided to move on.

I researched quite a few locations to stay at before leaving L.A., and even though I didn't have access to my list, one of them stuck in my memory. Something about their website caught me and said, "This is the one," yet for some reason I chose to ignore that still small voice and go somewhere else. Well, now was my chance to correct that mistake. I went to the place still tugging at my memory and checked into the room pictured above. They had internet! They even had high speed internet. Unfortunately, thanks to the recent storm, it was down at the moment. I thought about leaving to continue my search, but something still said that this was the place. I chose to stay.



When I got settled into the room and ate at the downstairs restaurant, I knew I had made the right choice. Of course, eating a great meal for just over $1.00 will do that. Still I knew I like the place. That just left the solving of my internet issues as the final hurdle to totally settling in. I already had a few ideas on just how to do that, but as usual, in this place, there's a solution around every corner.


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The airport in Hong Kong was amazing. It was like an environment teeming with information. Unfortunately for me, I encountered on my trip so many WIFI services that wanted me to pay to use them, I pretty much just assumed it to be the norm and stopped checking. At the last moment, before leaving Hong Kong, though, I decided to check, and sure enough, free WIFI was available. It was fast too. I could have put up this and the last post then if I had checked earlier.

Anyway, arriving in Hong Kong was interesting. It was cool to descend over the water with so many boats coming in approaching the island. I would have gotten pictures of that, but that was at the point when all electronics had to be shut off. Of course, some guy behind me was taking pictures anyway, but I chose to follow the rules. Still, it was something to see.



On a very interesting note, I walked into a rest lounge in the Hong Kong airport and there was a TV with CNN playing. The top story? Believe it or not, they were talking about SAG and how production was expected to shut down today. SAG and AFTRA, the other union who already signed a deal with the producers, have been negotiating together for ages. This time AFTRA went on their own and inked a deal, one that SAG is apparently not happy with. I could go into greater detail, but the point is I'm out of all that! I'm here now! It's not for me to concern myself with anymore.

What I do have to concern myself with though, is good internet speed. More on that later.


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So I'm on the plane as I write this. I got a window seat right by the wing. Thus, if that monster William Shatner saw were to land on it, I'd be the first to know. I have been flying almost ten hours. Luckily for me I slept through most of it. Now being awake I decided to really take a look at this plane. There are some very big differences between this tube and the flights I took in times past, especially concerning on-board entertainment. For example, I am listening to a J-pop station at this very moment through the in-flight entertainment system, which I will discuss at length in a moment.

I don't know much about plane models and numbers. I think everyone knows the Boeing 747 and some may know that there's a 777, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. I do believe, though, that this plane is smaller than the one I took to China in 2002, which was operated by China Eastern Airlines. The seats in this plane seem smaller too, then again, I was probably a bit thinner back then.



This plane is operated by Cathay Pacific, who I must admit I never heard of before buying my ticket. While spaces on board may be a bit tighter than flights I took in the past, the plane is considerably more advanced in other ways. For example, when I flew to China in 2002, a story I will relate in detail on this blog one day, the in-flight movie was on a large screen centered in our area of the plane just like it was a movie theatre. Basically everyone watched the same thing, and they watched it when the airline decided to play it. Things have changed quite a bit since then.

On this modern airline, in-flight entertainment and information rises to an entirely new level with the impressive system they have installed, including screens on the back of every seat. Upon activation, the user is given a great information screen which displays the time remaining to the destination, a simple map of the route, and a way to access the entertainment section of the system. Notice how it currently shows 4 hours and 46 minutes remaining. That's after 9 hours of flying already!

The entertainment section is even more impressive. Gone are the days of everyone watching the same movie when they say you watch it. This system gives each passenger an iTunes type of entertainment system where they can choose what they want to watch, and it's all on-demand. Even fairly recent movies are included. The lady next to me is watching Bucket List right now. It doesn't just stop with movies however, included are dozens of TV shows from America, China, Japan and other Asian locales. There is also an extensive music selection. There are individual CD music style choices across multiple genres and countries, and there are also radio station type selections. As mentioned earlier, I am listening to the J-Pop station right now. Makes me wonder who the target audience is, though, as a large number of the musical selections are from anime. Still, I brought my laptop, my iPhone, and even my Sony PSP to entertain myself on the long flight, and it turns out, they had plenty of entertainment prepared. Although I haven't tried them yet, they even have games on this system.

While they seem to be up on the latest movies and TV shows on this in-flight system, sometimes I think it would be nice if some slightly older movies were available. Now would be an ideal time to watch Snakes on a Plane!


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Life is too short to leave things undone. In this day and age, I can't even begin to imagine being that guy who grows up, works himself to old age and dies without ever leaving his home town. I've already done some traveling in the past, but I have always dreamed of bigger. That's why, when things started going bad in my town, I decided to become The Adventurer. So what exactly does an adventurer do? Well, an adventurer must travel, and I mean travel far and wide around this amazing planet. That's what I intend to do from now on, and that is what this site will chronicle.

So back to "things going bad in my town" as I mentioned earlier. For nearly fifteen years I have worked in some facet of the entertainment industry. I worked on video games in Phoenix, Arizona and Las Vegas before ending up in sunny, Southern California to work in the TV and film industry. Earlier this year, the industry was hit hard by the Writer's Guild of America going on strike. A lot of people lost their jobs and some even packed their bags and headed for the hills. Now, the Screen Actors Guild has a contract coming to an end. There is talk of another strike or, at least, intentionally extended negotiations. All this has made it very difficult to get work. I saw the inevitable, and decided it was time to make a move.



Now I've been working online for some months, but with the high rent and outrageous cost of living in La La Land, there's no way I could sustain myself. It seemed I had two choices. I could go down in flames, or take my chances out there in the wide, wide world. I chose to take my chances, hop on a plane and head to South East Asia. With few exceptions, many places in Asia have a cost of living as low as 20% of what it might cost to live in Southern California. There I could conceivably sustain myself on my internet endeavors and have some real adventure to boot. Since I am doing my work in the wired, it shouldn't matter where in the world I am at any given time, as long as there's access. It would appear as though I can't lose.

The reality is that I don't know what's going to happen. This may all work out or I may end up becoming a rice farmer in some unknown village. Whatever happens, you'll read about it here. One thing that really did it for me was looking into the future. I realized that if I stay here, I know exactly what is going to happen... nothing. Nothing will change. That's not how I want to live my life. That's really not living at all. Pass or fail, good or bad, I'd rather go out there and give dreams a try. I say let their be surprises. I mean, if I knew everything that was going to happen, life wouldn't be an adventure!


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