Travel blog by Päivi & Santeri Kannisto

We are currently in China and no longer able to access our blogs, Facebook, photo albums and many other Internet services. The censorship is now more advanced and strict than it used to be. We will continue blogging and reply to comments after we leave the country. Meanwhile, please send us e-mail. See you!

Visiting Ajay and Maria, Russian travelivers, draw us to the Philippines. We arrived in Clark, a former US military base, which we found nice and green but as expensive as Botswana. From there we headed to Manila where we enjoyed a typhoon for a few days before continuing to Dumaguete on the island of Negros where our friends currently live. Päivi had visited the Philippines twelve years ago and many things had changed: the country was now more American, English was widely spoken, and the cities looked less undeveloped. We didn’t have to travel muddy roads cars getting stuck and people having to push nor did we experience excessive power outages (which locals call brown-outs) daily as Päivi had feared.