Pinoys...

There were a lot of reasons why I fell in love with the Pinoys and Pinays. A smile certainly is infectious, when someone smiles at you, you can't help but smile yourself. And because everyone in the Philippines smiles at you, you end up walking around with a big grin on your face all day long.

One of my favourite things about the Pinoys is that they sing and dance to themselves. We had a manicure one day and whilst they were painting our toenails, they were singing to themselves. The security guards will randomly burst out into song at any given moment. People walking down the street are just bopping along and singing to themselves. I think we all know, I have a tendency to randomly sing to myself...so it was great to be surrounded by that kind of attitude and not have anyone stare at you and think you crazy for it! 

One thing to be aware of in the Philippines, when asking for directions...don't expect a clear set of instructions. You will generally get a nod or experience the Pinoy pointing with the lips. Often someone would gesture in one direction, then someone else gesture in another direction. But eventually you get where your planning to go. The pointing with the lips is a funny thing to witness. They'll nod their head in the general direction and then do a little pout in attempts of pointing in the direction to go. So due to vague directions your often late to places. But that's ok because Pinoys aren't exactly known for their time keeping. 

One of the very cute quirks I enjoyed from the Pinoys is the eyebrow raise. Often people would raise their eyebrows at you to say Hello. Or they would use the eyebrow raise to if they hadn't heard what you had said or didn't understand. A kinda of way of asking What?! Pardon?! I find myself raising my eyebrows myself now! 

A lot of Filipino food mainly consists of meat, fish or seafood and rice and often egg too. Not an awful lot of vegetables. After a couple days of being extremely carnivorous fruit and veg is craved, which is easy enough to come by at the markets. Oh the fresh, local fruit is wonderful. It's quite fun when you go to a fruit stall and see new fruits you've never seen before! So we took the opportunity to try these new wonderful fruits. Rambutan, which I can only describe as fuzzy lychee, are wonderfully refreshing. Kinda like skinless grapes. And my new favourite fruit the mangosteen! Ah it's sooooooooooo yummy! A purple outer skin you rip open to get to the sweet, white flesh inside! Mmmmmmm! Soooo gooood!

The kids of the Philippines are the cutest ever. They will come and play with you at any given opportunity. At the beach these three little boys came over and played with us, sand fights were had. They took great delight in finding shells and telling us what they were and teaching us little bits of Tagalog. One of them rapped to us a Tagalog song...so cute! The Philippines is a great place to go for a little ego boost, when you get a few high fives from the cutest kids and people smile at you and raise their eyebrows at you all day long, you know you're having a good day. And with the sun shining radiantly, I find impossible to be in a bad mood in the Philippines. And if you are you just sing and dance your cares away...anywhere you like! 

One of the tunes of the vacation was The Black Eyed Peas - Bebot. Apl De Ap from BEP is a proud Pinoy, and the Pinoys seem to be super proud of him in return. 

bustling streets of Puerto Princesa

the little makeshift stores along the streets

our new little friends

as the sun sets...