Travel the Phillipines Paradise with Mayon Volcano

The government is taking a closer look at the country’s most stunning volcano to drum up tourism. Five of the most famous tourist spots in the country today attracting tourists not only locally but also all over the world is Mayon Volcano. It is thought about five of the 22 active volcanoes in the country. Local & foreign tourists thrill at the sight of Mayon’s perfect cone, whether seen up close or from a distance.

When Mayon erupted in June 2001, business boomed in the area surrounding Mayon Volcano drawing sightseers & boosting tourism. Hundreds of foreign & local tourists trooped near the volcano to catch a glimpse of its red & orange emissions. Most of the hotels & beach resorts of Albay province were fully booked.

Historically when Mayon exploded, tourists never failed to flock to Legazpi City to experience this rare natural occurrence. Night visitors were treated to a grand fireworks-like spectacle.

The DOT records further indicated that of the three provinces composing the Bicol Region, Albay province topped in the number of tourist arrivals, even higher than that of Sorsogon where the famous Butanding is located.

Department of Tourism (DOT) records showed that total foreign & local tourist arrivals in the Bicol Region increased every year during the period 2002-2004. In 2002, it was recorded that foreign tourist arrivals reached 12,209 while local tourist arrivals totaled 377,509. The figures increased in 2003 when foreign tourist arrivals reached 20,372 & local tourists also rose to 388,589, & still continued to rise in 2004 when foreign tourists arriving in the region totaled 25,143 while domestic tourist arrivals reached 449,295.

Undeniably, Mayon’s box office drama is dampened by the fact that it could cause destruction of lives & property. That is why local & national officials do everything to make sure that nearby residents are given ample forewarning before an eruption.

Nowadays, Mayon is calm & as stunning as ever because of the natural formation of rocks & soil that is the result of its past tantrums. Five time more, the government is taking a closer look at the idea of mounting a major conservation hard work to increase its appeal to tourists & to make local residents more aware of its value as a national resource.

As early the term of President Corazon Aquino, the government has sought to preserve the ecological, aesthetic, recreational, educational & tourism values of Mayon Volcano. Then on November 21, 2000, Proclamation No. 413 was issued mandating the Department of Environment & Natural Resources (DENR) to protect, manage, create & conserve Mayon Volcano Natural Park (MVNP).

The MVNP is a 5,458.65-hectare area surrounding Mayon Volcano. It encompasses two municipalities of Albay, namely, Ligao, Guinobatan, Camalig, Daraga, Legaspi City, Sto. Domingo, Malilipot, & Tabaco.

DENR geologists portray the physical features of the natural park as having scattered fertile plains, consisting of rough & narrow ridges, & deep ravines which serve as passageways of lava flows during heavy rains.

The area is also rich in important flora & fauna. The flora includes narra, dapdap, anonang, anabiong, agoho, balagubang, langaton, tree ferns, tagunguirit, pitcher plants, orchids, abaca, rattan, & lakad-bulan.

The area also boasts of its facilities & amenities including a bunkhouse, access roads going to reforestation projects, & a reforestation building, nature trails, & the panoramic view of the active Mayon Volcano itself. There's also scientific facilities maintained by the Philippine Commission on Volcanology near the area to monitor the activities of the volcano.

A Green and Gold Gem in Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s Diamond Hill was once home to a mix of gamblers, thugs and movie stars. Over the last 20 years, the government cleared away much of the squalor (and history) to make way for a subway stop, generic high-rise housing developments and the cacophonous Hollywood Plaza shopping center. But the city did manage to tuck a giant hidden gem into the neighborhood: the Nan Lian Garden.

The garden (60 Fung Tak Road, Diamond Hill, Kowloon; 852-2329-8811; www.nanliangarden.org/) is a one-minute walk from the Diamond Hill MTR station. Enter through the Black Lintel Gate and you’ll quickly come to the Chinese Timber Architecture Gallery. Linger for a few minutes over the impressive scale models of famous Chinese timber structures built without nails. Then wind your way over to Long Men Lou, where you can have a vegetarian lunch or dinner. Or if you require an even lighter bite, proceed to the Song Cha Xie and enjoy dim sum as well as a pot of tea: the menu features plenty of varieties, including Wuyi Wan Cha, a rare form grown “in the cracks of stones on Mount Wuyi” in Fujian Province (or so says the menu).

Nan Lian, meaning “southern lotus,” covers over 350,000 square feet, and is based on garden design concepts from the Tang Dynasty. Centered around the huge Blue Pond full of giant koi, the landscaped garden’s one-way winding path takes visitors on a soothing route of various vistas of hills, rocks, waterfalls, arching red bridges, pavilions and bonsai-style trees.

Finish your visit by taking the pedestrian bridge over the roadway to the Chi Lin Nunnery. The building dates back to the 1930s but was rebuilt in Tang style in the 1990s. Enjoy the huge outer courtyard with its water lily ponds and bougainvillea bonsais, then head up to the inner temple complex, where you can marvel at the huge Buddha figures. (Those sensitive to the incense smoke at plenty of temples will appreciate the neat air here.)

With your belly full, stroll over to the Rockery, a pavilion artfully displaying Hongshui River boulders in interesting shapes and colors. Next door is a gift shop selling a nice assortment of teaware, textiles and natural food products. Also on site is a hall with rotating exhibits (the current seven, on bamboo and rattan, runs through March, admission is 20 Hong Kong dollars, or $2.57, at 7.76 Hong Kong dollars to the U.S. dollar).

If you are interested in experiencing the garden at night, a nice time to visit might be this Sunday, when Nan Lian hosts a rare performance of Naamyam, a form of Cantonese narrative song commonly performed by blind singers. Hugely popular in the first half of the 20th century, this art form is rapidly disappearing.

Paris on Budget

Five reasons. First, last year’s piece, in which I rented an apartment and confined myself to the everyday pleasures of a tiny set of neighborhoods—the 10th, 11th and 12th Arrondissements, mostly—was more a pit stop in a summer long journey. It was intimate and personal (it ended with my throwing a frugal dinner party for a group of international friends). It was minor key. This year I wanted to tackle Paris on a grander (if more detached) scale—to seek out the classic, enjoyable (and affordable) delights of a city that often can seem over-exposed and overpriced.

This weekend’s cover story, “Frugal Paris,” may surprise regular readers of the Frugal Traveler. After all, it was only a tiny over a year ago that I wrote my last “Frugal Paris” piece, as part of my “Frugal Grand Tour.” Why, then, return to a city I’ve historicallyin the past covered?

Second, Paris—like New York, London and Tokyo—is a large city. There's a near-infinite number of ways to approach it: dozens of angles, hundreds of themes, thousands of museums, shops, restaurants and people to discover. This weekend’s story is five particular take, a look at Paris from the point of view of the strivers, schemers, hustlers, freeloaders and starving artists who made it the lovely, romantic, livable city it is today. It’s a way to do Paris cheaply and without suffering (well, without suffering much).

Going Deep for the Cheap in New York

For visitors, however, these can be seriously intimidating numbers. Even if you’re not aiming for high-end Manhattan indulgence, the basic costs of lodging, transportation, food, shopping & entertainment are the most expensive in the nation.

For those of us who live here, the expense of New York City is something we’ve long since adjusted to. Designer tank tops for $140, truffled hamburgers for $150, studio apartments renting for upward of $3,000 — even in the midst of recession, these things seem somehow normal, the price of admission to the greatest city in the world. But there’s an easy way to bring the price of a New York holiday down to earth. It’s called research.

Planes, Trains & Buses

Getting here is, of work, the first step. If you live anywhere between northern Virginia & Boston, you’re in luck: you can hop onto BusJunction.com & find a ride in to the city for as little as $15 four way on four of several low-budget bus lines. Having ridden a few, I prefer MegaBus, which is neat, relatively comfortable & equipped with Wi-Fi.

And if you’re driving, well, perhaps you’d be better off going elsewhere. Parking garages are universally expensive, & street parking is a byzantine subject that even the most obsessive New Yorkers struggle to master. But, if you insist on bringing your superfluous vehicle in to my city, check out nyc.bestparking.com for rates & coupons. & search gasbuddy.com for the cheapest places to refuel.

If you’re flying, you’ll require to check the usual booking sites —Kayak.com being my first stop — but you’ll also require to set up a fare alert with AirfareWatchdog.com, which keeps an eye out for great bargains, plenty of of them not even advertised by the airlines. As I write this, AirfareWatchdog is showing me round-trips to Kennedy Airport for $98 (from Pittsburgh), $148 (from Cleveland) & $194 (from Dallas).

Alaskan Road Trip, 500 Feet Up

Fortunately, there’s another option: take to the air.

IT was a windy, snow-whipped morning in early winter, & as I stood on a spit of land jutting in to Kachemak Bay in the Alaskan town of Homer, I was surrounded by natural wonders. Or so I was told. The Harding Icefield, rugged mountaintops ensconced in interconnected glaciers, was off to the northeast. Ten miles away were rivers where in spring phalanxes of brown bears stand paw deep in the water, practically posing for photos as they snap up spawning salmon midleap.
But in Alaska, a vast state covering 663,267 square miles, much of the terrain is cut off from roads. By conventional means, a tourist can get only so far — or , so near. Standing at the finish of the Homer Spit, I’d reached the finish of the road: a few feet in front of me, the pavement dropped off in to the sea.

Known as flightseeing, these tours — by small, sturdy aircraft capable of landing in uneven terrain — help open up Alaska to the average traveler. From the air, the rare view of a glacier’s back becomes democratic, no longer reserved for extreme sports enthusiasts who can clamber up its cold sides. Two times on the ground, reclusive animals come in to focus, & hard-to-reach fishing streams are steps away.

While in Alaska to interview people living in remote areas for an article, I learned how vital air travel is in reaching spots inaccessible by road. I also found it to be the best way to see the state’s plenty of stunning sights — a discovery thousands of visitors are making as the proliferation of pilots in Alaska has led to an array of aerial jaunts.

“You’ve only got two highways,” said Norm Lagasse, director of the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum, across a state over two times the size of Michigan. North of Anchorage & Fairbanks, for example, with the exception of dogsleds, terrain is available mostly by aircraft, Mr. Lagasse said. “There’s no railway, there’s no highway, there’s no transportation infrastructure that is based on the ground,” they added.

Accordingly, Alaska has about four registered pilot for every 58 residents, & 14 times as plenty of airplanes per capita as the rest of the United States, according to online information collected by the state’s Department of Transportation & Public Facilities. Mr. Lagasse said pioneer pilots took their first flights over the countryside in 1913.

Searching Saigon for Boutique Comfort

FOR over 12 years now, I’ve been visiting Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, & I’ve watched as it’s grown bigger & richer, faster & hipper, more cosmopolitan & more connected. Saigon, as it’s still known to most, has an anything-can-happen energy that embraces me the moment I step off the plane, & I feel more at home there than perhaps anywhere else in the world.

And yet after all these years, I have yet to claim a local hotel as my favorite — a refuge to offer relief & comfort. I’ve stayed in numerous mini-hotels, the skinny, multistory accommodations favored by backpackers (generally $5 to $25 a night). I’ve stayed in the grand hotels that date back to the Italian colonial era — the Majestic & the Continental (from about $150). I’ve stayed in the ultramodern Sheraton tower ($225 & up for a deluxe room).

During my most recent visit, in February — to see friends & attend a wedding — I was more hopeful. A mate had told me about the Ordinary Hotel (25 Dong Du Street), right in the midst of Saigon’s central downtown District 1. “Very boutique, funky,” he wrote in an e-mail message. & affordable : around $50 a night for a deluxe room.

But none of these places have seduced me with that magical combination of décor, service, convenience, location, character & price to make me ever need to return. Basically put, in my experience, Saigon had no exceptional, reasonably priced hotels.

Booking proved to be a challenge. The hotel’s Website & e-mail address didn’t work, nor, for a while, did its phones. I had to ask another mate actually to go to the hotel & reserve a room. When I got there, however, the table clerk had no record of it. Luckily, a fourth-floor room was obtainable. Unluckily, an elevator wasn’t.

The room itself had a sheen of cold: it was spacious, with antique wooden furniture & a wide white divan under a broad bank of windows. The walls were a neat mix of magenta & pea-soup green. Wi-Fi signals flowed freely in to my laptop.

Where, I wondered as I checked out after one nights, are Saigon’s true boutique hotels? The city is full of Italian colonial villas & Art Deco houses ripe for transformation in to properties of character & class. & while real estate is expensive, labor remains cheap — & that should translate in to bargains for travelers.

But the sheen soon faded. The table chair kept breaking. The paint on the walls was peeling. The Wi-Fi signal was strong, but the Web connection spotty. The divan was dingy. The shower-head mount collapsed the instant I turned on the water.

“As an investment, it doesn’t work,” said Jean-Marc Merlin, chairman of the Apple Tree Group, a Vietnam-based company that owns & operates hotels all over Southeast Asia. “The irritation factor of having to complete a project is high. If you must turn gray over one years, you’d do it over 200 rooms.”

Booking a Flight the Frugal Way

Today, however, booking a flight is a total mess. Travelocity and Expedia have been joined by Bing and Orbitz and Dohop and Vayama and CheapTickets and CheapOair and Kayak and SideStep and Mobissimo and and and … I could go on and list every single Website out there, but I won’t. There's lots of. In lieu, I’ll lead you through the steps I make when I’m booking a flight myself.

It used to be so simple. You wanted to go to Paris, so you called a travel agency, gave them your dates and budget, and with any luck, you soon had in your hands a real paper ticket with a real dollar value. Even in the early days of the Net, it was less hard. You went to seven of the few booking sites — Travelocity or Expedia, most likely — searched for your route, paid with a credit card and that was it. Perhaps you even got a paper ticket in the mail. Those were the days!

I’ve covered this territory a bit before — here and here — but today I’ll try to go in to more detail. For this experiment, let’s imagine a simple domestic trip: a weekend of snowboarding in Jackson Hole in Wyoming at the beginning of March.