Places - Philippines

27 – 31 March 2010 N13 44.441 E120 53.580 Anilao Batangas was where I learned diving in 1997. I had been coming here camping on the rocks when I was still in college in the 80’s! Anilao was where Manila divers went for diving because it was closest to Manila and we all thought it […]

15 – 22 March 2010 N12 39.856 E120 53.266 – Apo Reef Club Guenter Taus was my dive instructor for my PADI advance course many years ago. He also is part owner of Occidental Mindoro’s newest dive resort called Apo Reef Club. Michi Roos is the founder and operations manager of this resort in the […]

15 – 22 March 2010 N12 39.856 E120 53.266 – Apo Reef Club N12 39.463 E120 25.137 – Apo Reef With the expedition team complete with our writer Alya Honasan, our first Philippine journey for this leg was to Apo Reef.  We spent a few days and nights on a quaint Philippine style liveaboard named […]

18 March 2010 N12 50.447 E120 46.465 We spent a whirlwind day traveling Mindoro on rocky roads from Concepcion to Mamburao to Sablayan back to Concepcion. It was from an early tuna festival activity at 7 in the morning to visiting Sablayan villages affected by climate change. Mindoro is the seventh-largest island in the Philippines. It […]

26 March 2010 Today, I received a birthday greeting from our dear Paul Sunters, the Managing Photo Editor of the WWF Global Photo Network! It is my one year blog anniversary since writing my first entry! Imagine that! I went back to that first entry and thought, “where has the time gone?” And yet we’ve done […]

19 – 20 January 2010 Sometime early November last year, we got an email from Dr. Lida Pet-Soede, WWF Coral Triangle Programme Leader to discuss an idea of having a photo exhibition of our expedition in Manila during the first WWF Coral Triangle Business Summit in January 2010. We knew this was going to be […]

If you happen to be in Singapore on October 27 with nothing to do at 7 pm, join us at the Botanical Gardens, as we shall be presenting our expedition so far through a 40-minute slideshow. Here’s WWF Singapore’s leaflet-invitation to announce the event!

30 May – 2 June 2009 N12 54.310 E123 33.956 We have not been back to Donsol in six years, and the many tight, long hugs we received were enough proof that we had left good friends there. It was truly a heart-warming “Welcome Back Home.” But Donsol has changed. It has bloomed. We were […]

29 May 2009 From summers 2000 to 2003, we prided ourselves in being the first to organize tours for European tourists to see whale sharks in Donsol. We stopped when we immigrated to Australia. We have not been back since, and tonight, we will make our long bus pilgrimage to the land of whale sharks […]

11 – 15 May 2009 N11 08.170 E119 39.287 Our pilot was none other than Jewelmer’s boss JB, as Jacques Branellec is fondly called. Upon hearing of approaching bad weather in the coming days, he immediately offered to fly us around the pearl farm and neighboring islands. He had the two back doors of the […]