Sandy feet, the sound of waves, jump in the water when it’s hot, then dry off in the sun.

Don’t need much to have fun. With only a trike and their companionship, Keisha and Jaer played outside my apartment in the Philippines with the exuberance and imagination that little kids innately possess, and only few adults hold onto.

Song is “We’re Going to be Friends” by Jack Johnson

Who needs an iphone and fancy shoes?

More Photos.

Beaches, booze, ooze, girls and ghouls.

The paradise island Boracay is being invaded by waves of foreign monsters, eroding the natural beauty until nothing is left but the facade of human spectacle. Boracay is where tourists show up for the week expecting to relax, get sucked into the night life, stay up all night, and end up leaving the island more exhausted than when they came. It’s where death goes to have fun, and people turn him down.

The extremes come out into the open, like day to night. It is a resort where people save up money to spend their vacation, it is also an island where some of the locals don’t have enough money to get off the island. There are only more tourists to come.

Here’s a New York Times article that goes into Boracay a little more in depth: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/travel/11Next.html

Music is “Traffickers” by The Reflecting Skin.

I found a giant in the Philippines, and her name is Tren.

The local grandmother invited us to sit down in their front yard and offered us some beverages and had a guitar to play too.

My friends and I needed a respite from the sun. When we sat down there was a quick gathering of these curious but shy kids. Only a foot away, had the fence not been there I don’t know if they would have gotten so close.

There were racks and racks and hanging platforms filled with these little dried up fish on the small island of Malapascua.

Photos kindly nabbed from Michelle Müller.

In the stairways and offices (certainly not the editing suites), I’m greeted with a view that stays the same. The only movement is the shifting tide, wind in the fronds, people collecting salty-watered prizes in the sea and a tanker that only seems to drift from one side to the other.

This tanker is always there, and actually makes a good placeholder on the normal flatline horizon. Although I’ve heard rumors it has been leaking oil and has slowly destroyed the coral.

Sometimes there are even two tankers.

The lighthouse flashes in the distance.

Yet the view stays the same.

This man is my primary source for bananas. 1.5 pesos each. Better than the 9 pesos in the canteen where I work.

They’re green but they’re ripe when they’re green, which took some getting used to.

He always says hello and sometimes when he’s had a drink or two he throws in a banana for free.

Rarely do I see him sitting outside of a 20 foot radius from his stand, even at night when the stand is closed and he sits on the front without a shirt.

Once when he ran out of plastic bags (because even if you bought one banana, he would still put it in a small plastic bag) he ran around the corner to get one which turned out to be one from the local grocery store. I try to stay away from all these plastic bags as best I can.

And don’t worry — he already has a copy of a photo I took with him.

I pass two schools on my way to work. Just beyond the schools sits this bench between two trees. After wondering how a tree could grow like that, I admired its simplicity and how naturally it fit.

When I was in India, especially when purchasing something, I could never tell if I was getting a “yes” or “no” response, because of the way they tilted their head for “yes” instead of nodding. Seconds would go by where I would repeat, yes? And they would respond in the same fashion, and I would repeat…yes?

I noticed similar differences in the Philippines, so I put them all together in this schnazzy little video!

Thanks to Kumar, Krishna, Brinda, Maz, Janis and some randoms on the street for sharing.