I guess it’s been a while. I’ll start by giving some wave tops of the last few months.
Jered, the kids, and I packed up in Chiang Mai, Thailand and headed to the Philippines in early November. The trip was pretty easy. A late night flight and an early arrival in Manila. It was all pretty smooth. Once we got settled into our hotel, we all fell into our routine of homework. Jered was talking to a friend back home and went to share my website when he realized there was nothing there. Nothing. “Page under construction.”
All of our photos and blog posts were gone. All GoDaddy could tell me was that it was as if the site was never there. There were no updates at all. Someone had gone in and deleted the entire site manually. We still are not sure how it happened, but everything was gone. It was pretty disheartening. I spent a lot of time over the next few days trying to figure out how to get it back or how to rebuild, and again, it was pretty discouraging. So I kind of let it go.
I realized recently that we only have five months left of this adventure. That means it’s time to get back into the swing of things and start recording our memories for our friends, family, and followers. But most of all, for future us.
When we arrived in Manila in November, we realized very quickly that we were going to need a dedicated car to get around and see the Philippines the way we wanted to. Grab was not nearly as reliable as it was in Bangkok or Hua Hin. We had already experienced unreliable Grab in Chiang Mai and were nearly stranded in town a few times. I hated the feeling of not being able to get home. It made me feel way too out of control, being at the mercy of drivers who would accept a ride and then cancel at the last minute.
So when we arrived in Manila, we looked at several different options. Rental cars were expensive and scarce, so we decided to look into buying a car and selling it when we left the Philippines. Jered dove into Facebook Marketplace and found some good options. After a lot of unanswered messages and some catfish trucks, we found it. A 1997 Toyota Hilux Surf in really good condition. A dream truck we never knew was a dream.
The fact that it was twenty seven years old meant we could even import it back to the US when our time in the Philippines was over. The most difficult part of buying the truck was getting the amount of cash we needed. We had to Western Union cash to ourselves from the US. Because of the amount, it had to be done in two transactions that took a few days to approve.
Then picking up the cash was its own nightmare. Jered and I left the kids at the hotel and spent the better part of six hours in Metro Manila trying to find a Western Union with enough cash to fulfill the order. After walking to three locations in Pasay near our hotel with no success, we moved on to Makati. It took two stops before we found a location that could fill one of our transactions. That did not seem so bad. We felt like we had it figured out.
We were wrong. So very wrong.
We went to another location. Not enough cash. Another at a bank, but we had to be members to use their services. Found another that no longer existed. We went to about five more locations with similar stories until we finally found a bank with a Western Union counter that could help us. We were able to get the rest of the cash we needed and arranged for the seller, Terrance, to meet us at our hotel and drop off the truck.
From there, things were pretty smooth. Jered and Terrance went for a drive and Jered was sold. It was a great truck and honestly much easier than renting a car for the next three months. We did a bit of paperwork and Terrance was on his way. The next morning, we loaded our bags into the back of the Surf and headed out on our first adventure.
We never expected that the Surf would end up breaking our hearts.
We spent the next two weeks in Mabini, Batangas on the coast south of Manila. Then another three plus weeks in Real, Quezon on the east coast of Luzon Island, and then back to Manila. There were a few small issues we had to chase down, but for the most part it was a reliable source of transportation for our family.
We made our way back to Manila and parked at the airport so we could take a Christmas adventure to Coron and Palawan. When we returned, we had eight more people with us. Our friends joined us in El Nido to celebrate New Year’s, and we were back on Luzon to head west of Manila to Morong, Bataan for a few more days of quality time.
Jered and James loaded ten people’s worth of luggage into the back of the Surf. The rest of us piled into our hired van with our driver, and new friend, Will, along with his girlfriend Anne. We adventured around the entire province of Bataan and then returned to Manila to send our friends back to the US.
We spent a couple of days in Manila sorting out the paperwork to transfer the Surf into Jered’s name and start the process of getting it on a ferry to Cebu, with plans to eventually import it to the US as Jered’s new baby truck. Once the process was started, we headed north to a small barangay outside of Angeles City in Pampanga.
While we were there, we all fell victim to a plague of coughs, sore throats, and general lethargy that eventually turned into strep throat for all of us. Once we were mostly better, we headed back to Manila to finish the transfer so we, and the Surf, could head to Cebu on a ferry and finish out the next month.
That is where things went south.
Somewhere in the process, the model year of the Surf was changed from 1997 to 2001. This complicated things on several levels. It closed the gap on importing a vehicle older than twenty five years, which eliminates the need to upgrade safety standards. Bigger than that, the model year would never match the registration from the Philippines, and that posed major issues when importing it to the US.
We had no choice but to say goodbye to the Surf and list her for sale.
Without the option to ship her to Cebu, we had to cancel our reservation and come up with a new plan for the next few weeks. We decided on Operation Right Turn. We stuck to Luzon and headed north to San Juan Beach in La Union. I wish we had planned more time here. This place is just right for us. It is slow and out of Manila, but still big enough that we are not driving four hours to get to a proper grocery store.
We spent a week in San Juan, and next week we are heading to Buscalan to see Apo Whang Od, the oldest tattoo artist in the world. After that, we will sell the Surf in Manila. We have flights booked to Cambodia on January 31.
I cannot see what life has in store for us in the next steps of our adventure around the world.
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