Behold Bohol

Bohol is  located in the Central Visayas region, consisting of the island itself and 75 minor surrounding islands. Its capital is the City of Tagbilaran and is the tenth largest island of the Philippines. The island is a popular tourist destination as it has many beaches and resorts. The Chocolate Hills are among one of the top attractions. Panglao Island, located southwest of Tagbilaran, is famous for its diving locations and is routinely listed as one of the top ten diving locations in the world. The Philippine tarsier, amongst the world's smallest primates, is indigenous to the island. 

After leaving Cebu I headed to Bohol and the City of Tagbilaran. It's difficult to know where to start when I think about Bohol. The hashtag that comes to mind is #itsmorefuninthephilippines, although the locals like to joke that #itsmorefunanddangerousinthephilippines. Driving of course was of course mad and appeared to have no rules but there was a touch of beauty about how it just worked for the most part. Being driven in a modified side car of a motor bike around the City of Tagbilaran was an entirely new experience. 

 

I found Tagbilaran easier going than Cebu, the people and the city felt calmer and although the weather was very warm a small breeze from the ocean took the edge off the heat. I enjoyed meeting people such as @gallardonoygonz and @nessagwapa and getting to chat after Yoga on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Driving down to Panglao at night and sitting outside with a cold drink watching the sunset was sublime and made me question why I would want to be anywhere else. I suspect the company I was keeping had a part to play in this too.

I will talk about more locations and attractions of Bohol in upcoming posts, but for now I wanted to share the first night I spent in Tagbilaran. All four photographs were taken at Kasagpan Resort on the western side of Tagbilaran City.

 

Cebu

Finally starting to write some posts from the notes that I took while visiting the Philippines. I'll start where I arrived, Cebu.

Cebu is a province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region and consists of a main island and 167 surrounding islands, its capital is Cebu City the oldest and first capital of the Philippines.

After a 24 hour journey a lot went through my mind on a delirious journey from Macyan-Cebu Airport to the hotel that I was staying. Mostly about NASCAR which seemed to be how the drivers got anywhere, mercy was not given or asked for on these roads. I figured that if I survived the journey to the hotel then I could walk everywhere else that I wanted to go. My travelling campanion informed me that if I was to do this I would likely meet an untimely death either from heat exhaustion or from being mugged. 

In all seriousness though, Cebu is a city of immense contrasts. The shopping malls are fillled with lots of big brand western stores where the rich shop but less than block from there is the poorest of people that wouldn’t be allowed in the mall. Much to my shock, to get into the malls you had to be screened by armed security. The signs outside the shopping malls politely reminded you that guns are not allowed inside. The temperature in the city reaches 30 degrees by 10:30am and when you walk outside the air conditioned hotel it literally feels like walking into an oven. This, I think is the hottest country that I have ever visited, although Australia might be hotter, I had the sense to go there when it was winter.

I experienced many tourist sites that I have photographs of (below) but also saw many places where there was abject poverty, it was hard not to be moved by some of the things I saw. I can't imagine how people get by on a daily basis and if there is any chance of escape from it. I am immensely grateful that I am not in that situation. 

Below are some photographs of the Cebu Taoist Temple. Built in 1972 by the prominent Cebuano Chinese community. The Cebu Taoist Temple stands 980 feet tall (above sea level) and is renowned for its elaborate multi-layered architecture. The colourful temple overlooks a portion of Cebu.

The Heritage of Cebu Monument is a tableau of sculptures made of concrete, bronze, brass and steel showing scenes about events and structures related to the history of Cebu. The construction of the monument began in July 1997 and it was finished in December 2000.

The Yap-Sandiego Ancestral House is located in the Parian District in Cebu, Philippines. It is just a few steps away from the Heritage of Cebu Monument and meters away from Colon Street, the oldest street in the Philippines. Considered to be one of the oldest residential houses in the Philippines, the house was built sometime between 1675 and 1700. It was originally owned by a Chinese merchant named Don Juan Yap and his wife, Doña Maria Florido.

The next few images are taken in and around Colon Street, mostly street shots of things I found interesting. The smell of the dried fish in the first photograph has yet to leave my clothes...after several washes ;-)

Travellin' on

Edinburgh sunset

I am going to be spending the next couple of weeks travelling so my updates might be a little non-existent, depending on internet access and whether I can cope with thirty degrees heat everyday. Minus ten I can deal with, and at times enjoy, but after about fifteen above zero I start melting. Thirty above? Sounds like fun...

Anyway, I have loaded up the iPad with enough TV (Halt and Catch Fire) to get me through a thoroughly boring flight to the other side of the world.

Am thoroughly looking forward to taking lots of photographs and will hopefully be able to post some on Instagram while travelling, maybe even some Instagram stories :-)

 

Leith, Edinburgh

I was fortunate enough to visit Leith on a very calm and crisp evening which made for some fantastic Amsterdam-esque reflections on the Water of Leith. This was my first visit back to Leith since February of last year. I was accompanied with @alycoste who regaled me with coffee and hilarious stories that kept us both laughing. Check out her instagram profile I am sure she will have some excellent photographs of this trip posted. 

Leith is an area to the North of Edinburgh where the Water of Leith drains into the Forth River. It is a well known area, perhaps most commonly known through The Proclaimers 1988 album - Sunshine on Leith. If you haven't listened to any of their work I highly recommend it.

Leith itself is a buzzing port district now home to hipsters, part of the Scottish government and some light industry. It is also adorned with a lot of restaurants, bars, cafés and thrift shops. It is a nice area of Edinburgh to wander around should you ever visit.

Often these small trips are unplanned and a little spontaneous and I have found that the less planning I do for photography the happier I am with the results. Of course it could just be that I was lucky :-)

If you are on a desktop or large tablet the thumbnails can be expanded by clicking on them, thanks for reading!

Tidying up and Fireworks

Having found myself with a little free time I decided to do a little tidying up of this site. I am amazed at how much time I can actually spend trying things out and thinking about how to put things together to then find, at the end of the day, that I have changed very little but know at least ten new ways that the design won't work.

Having said this, I have managed to go even more minimalist. The sidebar has been reduced to search, latest posts and social icons. I was going to chop the latest posts but there is point where minimalism goes to far. A design is finished when no more can be taken out, and although they could be taken out I like having them. So they stay, for now... The social icons are in (shock horror) colour. That may also change, but having them in their native colours make them easily identifiable, however, whoever chose red for instagram needs their head examined. I also changed the WA logo from square to round, as I think it fits the aesthetic of the site better. 

I am also going to start using two columns for the writing of blog posts, I have seen this in a few sites and I quite like the look of it.

You can see that I have changed the March madness post into this structure.

For those reading this on a mobile device the only thing you'll really notice is the logo...so that's about 80% of you :-)

I have brought back some of my older galleries into the main menu under 'Archives' and have also added a new gallery of Fireworks from Edinburgh. I vaguely remember saying that I would post the shots from the iPhone X that I took at New Year and never got round to doing that. After finding the photographs today I was really surprised and happy with how well the vast majority were captured. Take a look at the gallery. These are all straight out of the iPhone X without any re-touching or post processing. The photographs that were in the sidebar that I occasionally updated can also be found in a new gallery in the 'Archives' menu.

I updated the 'About' page a little as well with some archive information of previous blog posts from 2014 till now and added a new about image of myself, which was taken by @alycoste, my official photographer ;-)

I'll finish this post with a couple of the fireworks images from New Year to try and entice you to the gallery of all the Fireworks images :-) Thanks for reading!