As you saw in the last post, I had gone to the Philip­pines on assign­ment to cap­ture the won­der­ful reunion of cousins from my grandmother’s side from my father’s side. Hav­ing gone that far across the globe to only spend seven days and fly back is almost unheard of. Usu­ally, a three week stay is touch­ing the ice­berg immers­ing your­self in the new envi­ron­ment. But soon you will also know why my trip had to be cut short.

Despite the brief stay, each day was cer­tainly event­ful. I was in the Philip­pines 15 years ago. That time, I had trav­elled with my par­ents and brother, so there was always some­one to chat with. This time around was inter­est­ing, as I expe­ri­enced being more of an observer, while my father (aka Trans­la­tor) enjoyed him­self con­vers­ing with his fam­ily. The lack of know­ing Taga­log (or my par­ents’ dialect - Kapam­pan­gan) left me to cap­ture more with my cam­era and remem­ber more about this trip, which I thor­oughly enjoyed.

Click the images below to jump to each of the days I had pho­togged. I hope you enjoy this jour­ney with me!

DAY 1

DAY 2

DAY 3

DAY 4

DAY 5

DAY 6

I’m going to take you through my jour­ney start­ing right from the air­port. What’s a trip with­out cap­tur­ing what you did dur­ing your stop-overs antic­i­pat­ing a 12.5hr ride to your next con­nect­ing flight?! And at least steal­ing a few snap­pies at the gate passed the time quickly. Toronto Pear­son Air­port: Ter­mi­nal 1 is one of the most beau­ti­ful air­ports that has intrigu­ing sculp­tures that one can appre­ci­ate, let alone inter­act with! But could they please just hook us all up with some FREE Wi-Fi like in Incheon Air­port (Seoul, South Korea)?!

Enjoy! This is my trip until I’ve reached the Motherland!

PS. My Dad was my wing­man on this trip…oh yeah, the two Dizons con­quer­ing the wor-… …Dad, wake up!!

    



Narita Air­port (Tokyo, Japan)

Arrived, safe and sound! Famil­iar land­scapes,… famil­iar smells,… famil­iar food!!! Yum! It’s always cus­tom­ary for the trav­ellers to be greeted with a nice home cooked meal and surely that’s what my Dad and I came to when we arrived at my aunt’s house after a two-hour com­mute from the air­port. The meal was so good because it con­sisted of fresh ingre­di­ents such as: the meat, the veg­gies and the rice! My grandfather’s rice mill is still run­ning, along­side the pro­duc­tion of water-feed for local fish farms. It was great that my uncle took the time to show us around the mill and he gave us infor­ma­tion about the pro­duc­tion. As well, my father pointed out areas where he used to play when he was younger. Sorry, did I men­tion that the house and rice mill are about 70 years old?! Way to keep it running!

For lunch we gath­ered for the pre­lim­i­nary reunion to meet my father’s cousins (on my grandmother’s side) at a fam­ily fish farm. And yes, the fish were del­ish!! One of the attrac­tions was a youth march­ing band con­sist­ing of at least 50 kids, all play­ing either xylo­phones or drums or being part of the dance team. Quite entertaining!

It was a beau­ti­ful day but my mind was think­ing about the fol­low­ing day’s main event. Please enjoy these pics of Day 2.

My aunt’s dog “Bing Bing“

…before the rice grains run through the machine…

…after the rice gets stripped from its nat­ural skin…






    

…beau­ti­ful Mount Arayat…

…in North Amer­ica, this is con­sid­ered dan­ger­ous…

    




    

…this is called a “bahay kubo”…

    

…noth­ing like fresh food on the side road. This is called “tupig”…