Steve Murphy Photography

Nasugbu - Natipuan Cove                         Our next journey took us to the west to Nasugbu, which is also a part of Batangas province. I had already droned over the Baywalk in Balayan, which is on the southern coast. When we arrived in town, power was out everywhere. Power outages are a fact of life here in the P.I. - you just live with them. Other than buy a generator, there is nothing to do about it. The infrastructure is not keeping up with the population. We stopped at an eatery - Kainan sa  Dalampasigan. All stills taken with my Nikon 1 J5. The rough translation is: Beach dining room. One of the many things I have learned since being here is that there are many words in the Tagalog (Filipino) language that have no direct English counterparts. And vice versa, many times as well. Sit in on an extended conversation among the people and listen carefully, you will hear English words sprinkled in. ...

Tagaytay/Lake Taal Flyover Click above for the drone video. Click here for the image gallery. Our first drone trip last January was cut short due to the Phantom 4 drone malfunctioning in Coron, Palawan. Words cannot express my disappointment but the silver lining is that we now have a reason to return! For this trip, we traveled north to Tagaytay to the first restaurant we dined at in February of 2016, the Taalena : Good food, ambiance, open air. We like to sit at the outside tables. This is one of the few places in the Philippines where you can get really cool breezes. That dish above is called  Sinigang_na_hipon . A soup made with hipon (shrimp), tamarind, tomato, okra, string bean, kangkong (swamp cabbage). I passed this time but will try it next time, in the spirit of Anthony Bourdain and learning new culture. For now, I had the pork & chicken adobo with garlic rice. Joelet got permission from the management to fly the drone out back, in the are...