Lian, Batangas

January 26, 2010Noelle De Guzman

Since May 2009, my friend Migs has been asking our barkada to set aside a date to come over to his aunt’s beach house in Lian, Batangas. Finally, to shut him up (hehe), five of us blocked off an overnight stay and took him up on the offer.

Lalah, Noelle, Michael, Marielle (not in photos: Judith)

I took driving duty because the car was an automatic and a breeze to drive. Also, Michael was sick as a dog. It was pretty much an uneventful long drive to Lian — except for the parts where I was trying to overtake slow vehicles on a narrow road and turned some of my passengers’ hair white because of oncoming vehicles. 😀 Sorry guys.

I know there are some pretty popular beaches in Lian, like Matabungkay, a yellow sand beach. In comparison, the beach house is very isolated, very private, accessible by a dirt road. In fact, according to Migs it was the first time he’d taken guests there. Usually, the beach house is populated by his cousins and their friends on weekends.

We’d left Manila shortly after 12 noon and got to the beach house by 4 pm. After a quick pick-me-up snack prepared by Judith, it was just about time to catch the sunset.

It was very quiet and we were able to relax away from big city horns and road noise. The fresh air was a respite from smog, and Michael and Lalah (who was also sick) claimed to feel better the next day.

Hopefully next time we can bring more friends along and really make it one big party, with a barbecue and a bonfire by the beach.

To Go: My Travel Make-up Kit

January 8, 2010Noelle De Guzman

I only started wearing make-up regularly last year. While I’ve now built up a good collection of make-up essentials, only a few things wind up traveling with me. The rest stay at home on top of my dresser.

my make-up kit, with a ballpen for size comparison

This kit is small and light enough for me to pack into my gym bag, but contains enough make-up options if I want to change my look.

foundation, concealer, mascara, lip, eyeshadow, blush

The only reason there are so many eyeshadows in there is I can’t bring myself to edit and only bring the ones I use for my everyday look. What if I need a smoky eye? What if I need to contour my nose and cheeks? In fact, the only reason this kit is this small is I hate carrying heavy bags. Otherwise, my packrat instincts come alive.

my brushes

I only have one set of brushes (made of the brushes from two smaller sets), so these slide into a separate compartment in my kit. I bought the majority of them from Landmark Department Store Trinoma (near the generic false eyelashes) and got them for less than P500 pesos. The brushes are soft but pick up product well — I really love them!

So if you see me walking down the street with a made-up face, this kit is the source of it all. What’s in your travel make-up kit?

Tags: Make-up Kit, Kikay

Pico de Loro

January 3, 2010Noelle De Guzman

Just before 2009 ended, I took my last beach trip. Ths time, it wasn’t to Boracay. Instead, my family and I headed to Nasugbu, Batangas. My aunt had acquired a condo unit at Hamilo Coast, a leisure estate being developed by SM Land.

By this summer a ferry will take passengers from the Mall of Asia complex to Hamilo Coast in 45 minutes. For this trip, we had to pack ourselves into our cars and drive four long hours on the SLEX, through the traffic caused by market day in Tagaytay, and over long winding stretches of single-lane road before we finally arrived.

Pico de Loro Beach Club

Since my aunt’s condo isn’t completed yet, she took us to the Pico de Loro Beach Club instead for a buffet lunch and some activities in the water. The beach was developed by layering lighter brown sand over the natural dark brown sand on that coastline, and any rough rock had either been carted out or smoothed away. There was also a shallow pool and kiddie pool at the beach club, which was our refuge from the many small fish at the beach. For some reason, those fish were overly curious about swimmers, and either nibbled at our skin or swam up our mens’ board shorts. (Gay fish?)

My only scheduled activity when we got there was to soak up the rays, and hopefully get rid of my pallor from being indoors all day. And so that’s what I did right after lunch.

sunbathing near the roofdeck bar

When I got crispy enough, I amused myself by taking photos of the facilities. There’s even a lifeguard station!

Baywatch?

When the ferry service becomes fully operational, I think I’ll be there more often to get my beach fix. 🙂

Keso de Gallo in Pampanga

December 25, 2009Noelle De Guzman

Yesterday (Christmas Eve), I had an opportunity to travel to Pampanga, the province of my birth. Kraft (through the GeiserMaclang PR agency) had invited a group of bloggers to witness the last leg of their project called “Keso de Gallo“. So I, along with Juned, Hannah, Vince, Coy, Fritz and other blogger friends left Manila at the insanely early hour of 2am so we could be in Pampanga by 4am.

Catholic Filipinos typically attend mass (misa de gallo) in the wee hours of the morning during the nine days before Christmas. Kraft provided hot chocolate and cheesy squash puto to the parishioners of San Guillermo Church in Bacolor as a way to promote creating dishes using affordable local ingredients (in this case, squash) and Eden Cheese.

San Guillermo Church at 4am

I was asleep in the van and hadn’t been briefed on exactly which church we were heading to in Pampanga, so when I opened my eyes I was pleasantly surprised that I was revisiting a church I’d been to during a Living Asia trip in 2007. Since that trip, the church has become the filming site for ABS-CBN soap “May Bukas Pa”.

The church looked respendent, decked out in Christmas lights in the pre-dawn darkness. As I listened to the priest intone a homily in both Kapampangan and Filipino, TV crews from ABS-CBN’s Umagang Kay Ganda set up their lights and cameras. Winnie Cordero was even on site to cover the event for UKG.

a different kind of Green Lantern’s light

As the sun rose, we were packed back into our van for the short trip to Angeles City. We were about to breakfast at Chef Claude Tayag’s house, Bale Datung. Meals at the gracious chef’s place are only available through registration, so it was a real treat to sample some traditional Kapampangan dishes. Each bite was a flavor explosion in my mouth, while Bale Datung itself was a feast for the eyes because Chef Claude is also an artist who creates sculpture and paintings by commission. (Check out the Multiply album about my Christmas Eve trip to Pampanga.)

Chef Claude Tayag

Before we left Bale Datung, the team from Kraft and GeiserMaclang gave out awards for the best photos taken at Keso de Gallo. For third place, Juned won with a lovingly photographed multiple-exposure of San Guillermo Church’s steeple. Hannah ran away with the contest though, taking both second and first place with an angled shot of the steeple, and a close-up of a Christmas lantern.

The rest of us walked away with heavy, heavy gift packs of Kraft Eden cheese. (I ended up handing them out to my friends later that night at the Christmas Eve service I attended in Victory Ortigas.)

Even though I was half-dead from lack of sleep by the time we got back to Manila at noontime, the Keso de Gallo and our festive breakfast afterward had me in a wonderful mood to celebrate Christmas Eve with my family. ?

(Thanks to Ms. Amor of GeiserMaclang and Sir Alex from Kraft who made our trip possible. Merry Christmas!)

Habagat in Boracay

November 5, 2009Noelle De Guzman

The past weekend was a stormy one for Manila, but I wasn’t around to witness yet another typhoon tear up Luzon. Instead, I was away on a holiday that had been booked since February of this year. (Talk about God’s perfect planning and timing.) Just like last year’s All Saints’ Weekend, we had planned our trip to fall sometime around the 31st of October so we could run around the island dressed as people other than ourselves.

No, this was not my costume.

Due to the rehabilitation of Caticlan airport, our original fights were rerouted to and from Kalibo. That meant tacking on an additional two hours’ travel time each way. Since we’d booked for October 30 to November 1, it meant we had considerably less time to spend on the island. What followed from the time we landed at Boracay’s jetty port until we left can only be described as cramming. If we weren’t sunning ourselves on the beach, we were stuffing our faces with food from our favorite places, or dancing it up wherever the music and drinks were good.

We pretty much had Boracay to ourselves on Friday — because tourists were still at work — up until Saturday afternoon. The habagat (southwest monsoon wind) had blown in a strong rain shower and chopped up the waters on Saturday morning, prompting the coast guard to suspend all incoming and outgoing boat trips. Come Saturday evening, however, parties on the island were in full swing, and we were able to feast our eyes on some pretty lavish costumes.

Ah, Lara Croft. A costume so simple, yet so recognizable.

The best part about dancing all night in Boracay is you can sleep out on the beach the next day. I didn’t have all day, but I did get some color on my skin. The habagat had also died out overnight, so I was also able to swim in beautiful, crystal-clear, warm water before I left.

stolen shot

We will definitely be back next year. We’ll probably book our flights on Seair, which is the only commercial airline to be allowed to fly into Caticlan airport. It might cost a bit more, but it just means we’ll have to plan and save up for our trips to the island better.

Happy Trails

November 4, 2009Noelle De Guzman

Over the past year I’ve had the opportunity to talk with people who are uber-enthusiastic about mountain biking. Their passion for it made me want to try for myself, so one sunny day after a very rainy week I headed out to La Mesa Dam to ride with the boys from Dan’s Bike Shop. They lent me a bike, helmet, and gloves, and after a preliminary spin in the parking lot, we were good to go for my first ever trail ride.

my bike and gear

It was amazing. Propelled by the power of my own legs magnified by the gears and wheels, we barreled through the first few kilometers. The adrenaline rush left me giddy and flushed. To be traveling at that kind of speed going downhill and uphill without a windshield or a car chassis to protect me was as hard-rock as I was going to get. (This is possibly the only extreme sport I would want to do over and over again.)

zoom!

Our trail wound through the forest, past a brook, and over gravel and mud before finally leading to our ultimate destination: the waters of La Mesa Dam. This was pre-Ondoy but it had been raining that week, so the lake above the dam was pretty high.

We chilled out for a while at a view deck, and I savored the silence around us. All we could hear aside from our voices was the rustle of leaves in the wind and the occasional plop! of fish in the water breaking through the surface.

It was then I was able to take stock of my appearance. I was bedraggled with sweat and spattered with mud. It was a good thing I was dressed in dark colors and was too hyped to care how I looked. But I took a photo for posterity anyway.

my pants were muddier.

I wrote about my bike ride in detail for the December issue of Action&Fitness Magazine, so watch out for that.:) Mmm I can’t wait to ride again…

Guesting on “Weekend Warriors: Splash Island”

September 8, 2009Noelle De Guzman

Hey everyone, my second guesting on “Weekend Warriors” is now up on Flippish.com. We went to Splash Island, yo! Go watch Weekend Warriors: Splash Island and check out my pink bikini LOL.

As a little bonus treat, I have some exclusive footage of our slide down the Rio Montañosa.

The Flippish.com launch party was also featured in the September 2009 issue of FHM. This is the only time I’ll ever appear in that magazine. Ü

At least my name appears in the caption.

Tags: Flippish, Weekend Warriors, Splash Island, Water Park

Splashing with the Weekend Warriors

August 18, 2009Noelle De Guzman

So what do you get when you toss three guys and a girl into a car, make them drive all the way to Laguna, and then present them with a water park to cool off in?

Well, aside from the part where hilarity ensues, you get another episode of Weekend Warriors coming soon on Flippish.com. This time, Chris was away (preparing for the Asian Poker Tournament in Macau) and Jinno was available to shoot (with provisional script, to boot). Once again, I was the only girl they could get on short notice to be the Girlfriend of the Week. Thanks to Ton for inviting me during Amina’s party, I got to revisit a childhood wonderland, one I was last at when I was 13 years old.

Jinno, Al, and Ton didn’t offer to take my photo. Boo.

After banging on Al’s door to wake him up (dude needs an alarm clock, seriously), dropping Jinno’s car off to get his bumper re-attached, and sating five hungry bellies including our cameraman’s, we finally arrived at Splash Island around 12pm in our Ford Everest, on loan from the car company.

The park hasn’t changed from my childhood memories of it, except: the grass is longer, there are more dead leaves in the water, and there’s less water flowing at all since some of the slides were closed. It’s only open Saturdays and Sundays in the off-season, but open all days of the week during the summer.

What’s great about visiting parks with these guys is we get to ask for rides to open just for us so we can shoot on them.

“Get into the hot tub with me,” says spider Al.

One thing I forgot about Splash Island is you always have to climb several storeys up a tower to get onto a slide. But once I slid down our first ride, Magellan’s Drop, everything came rushing back at me: the long lines starting at the base of the tower, the anticipation building as you got nearer to the slide itself, and then finally those short ten to 15 seconds you slip and slide down to the water below.

Jinno took ass shots. Grrr.

I took my waterproof camera with me on the slides, so I took video which they might use for the episode. Aside from the video-taking distracting me from my acrophobia, my advancement in age took away the terror I used to feel getting into the King Pilipit body slide. When I was younger, that ride made me pray aloud.

I got to play while these guys worked.

There was one ride I sat out while the boys tried it out: the giant plastic balls in the wave pool. Aside from having only a limited supply of oxygen inside, I just didn’t want to be seen falling all over myself. Besides, I was afraid of any wardrobe malfunctions that might happen (or that they were counting on to happen, hahaha).

So I let them do their thing while I took photos! Wasn’t my job to sit still and look pretty anyway? Hahaha. And I was conserving my energy for the Kenny’s Open Urbanite Run I was participating in later that night.

Bubble Boys

Thanks again to the Weekend Warriors for taking me on the road trip to Splash Island. It was more fun than a barrelful of monkeys! Oh wait–

Update: The episode is out! Watch Weekend Warriors: Splash Island on Flippish.

Guesting on “Weekend Warriors: Surfing”

July 13, 2009Noelle De Guzman

Last month, I went with a friend for surfing lessons at Club Manila East. It turned out to be a shoot for “Weekend Warriors”, an online-only show on Flippish.com. It was the second episode on their line-up, and today it got uploaded onto the website! Head over to Weekend Warriors: Surfing on Flippish.com.

Surf’s up!

Tags: Flippish, Weekend Warriors, Surfing

“Weekend Warriors: Surfing” on Flippish.com!

July 12, 2009Noelle De Guzman

Remember that surf trip to Club Manila East I went on last month? It was a shoot for “Weekend Warriors”, one of the many web-only shows featured on Flippish.com, the first online Pinoy video channel. My surfing episode is the second one, and now it’s up online! Check it out below, or head on over to Weekend Warriors: Surfing on Flippish.com.

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Funny, I could swear I had better footage than that. LOL! 😀