Kyoto, June 26 We chose Kyoto as our home base for the week because of its central location and its rich culture and ancient temples. Upon arrival at Kyoto Station we popped into the Welcome Inn Reservtion Centre to see if we could find some cheap accomodations for the week. Accomodations in Japan have been very expensive and we were unsuccessful finding an inexpensive place using our standard online methods. Our friend Keith that we met in Boracay informed us ...

Tokyo Japan, June 24 Although we really enjoyed our time in the Philippines it was time to push on to the land of contrasts and contraditions - Japan! I think everyone has at least some understanding of the Japanese culture, and I would guess that many would have a similar perception of what Japan is like; densely populated with big, bright lights, tiny box shaped cars, video games, futuristic cell phones, portable handheld televsions, super fast trains, sushi e...

continued from Banaue blog... We decided to skip sleep even though we were still very tired from the long bus ride. We had a sunny day and knew that during this time of year that was something to be taken advantage of before the heavy rains came. We wanted to hire a driver to take us to the Batad terraces, said to be the biggest and most spectacular in the region. Little did we know that the trip was to be another hour and a half long drive into the jungle along...

Banaue, June 21 We left Boracay fully rested and ready to experience another side of the Philippines, the mountainous jungles of the north. We had heard about the ancient rice terraces of Banaue and were eager to witness these architectural marvels. The Banaue rice terraces are often referred to as "the 8th Wonder of the World" and are a UNESCO World Heritage site. Quick fact - the rice terraces are the only ancient megastructures in the world that wer...

Okay, so the previous blog was getting far too long so I've chopped it into two manageable entries so I don't scare you with a mini-novel. Our 11 days in Boracay have been the longest we've stayed anywhere in the past 5 months, so we've got a lot to say! (And the free wireless is an added incentive) One evening, about a week into our stay, we met up with an American named Keith who is teaching in South Korea. The following day we teamed up with Keith to hire ano...