So comment back if you are in the area and feel like meeting up, I’m around People’s Square…

After a few eventful days and nights in the Philippines I am on the plane heading back to Singapore for my last couple days there. The Philippines was great and it was made even better by an incredible bunch of people.

My first evening in town Mr. SEO of the Philippines took me out with his group of buddies, which included Abe who is one of the top bloggers in the Philippines and the rest of his close blogging pals, who by the way are the organizers of Philippine Blog Awards. Also out for the evening was Google Philippines new county manager and a couple of her stylish friends. So all in all it was a restaurant full of SEOs, Bloggers and general Internet geeks.

It sure was nice to see that the Internet community in the Philippines is very close both in business and in friendships. If they keep it up, I can see the Philippines being the leader in SEO/Internet market for the Asian region. The Philippines already well known for Internet content developers and outsourced customer server centers.

After the night on the town I did what comes naturally, I left my hotel at like 6am to get on another plane. See there was some management of a very large (but unnameable) Internet company out from the United States and Marc scheduled at the last minute a weekend away from Manila for all of us. So my buddy and I with these two managers headed off to Boracay an amazing Island way the heck in the middle of nowhere.

It was funny as one of the American managers noted that he had to take a taxicab, bus, plane, van, boat, and finally a motorbike all within 2 hours just to get to our resort. My trip had one addition to that adventure, as my route to the airport included a visit with the local police as it turns out a one way street in Manila really means a one way street.

But it was all worth it as we all had a great time, racing around in dune buggies, parasailing and generally enjoying sitting on a beach doing nothing. My personal favorite was the racing around with the dune buggies, as they let us loose on this small town/village and I more then enjoyed myself while I helped out the civil engineers by clearing some tree’s and other debris from the sides of the roads (you can sure get a dune buggy sideways at 40km/h).

Sadly it all had to come to an end, but a couple of us including myself will be feeling the effects of a little too much sun for the next several days. Its strange to think that this time next week I will be walking into the office of my new job, probably wearing 4 layers of clothes and having no idea when the next time I will be laying on a beach just watching the world go by.

Well to the Philippines and the all the great people supporting the Internet industry there I hope we all meet up again but till then keep up the good work. Ok inside joke time, to our wonderful tour guide, I hope that with our next trip we can complete the James Bond tour, minus the fitness section.

Well I just finishing up a 2 day stay in Seoul, South Korea. Seoul is interesting, very costly, along the lines of Japan costs (I have later found out that South Korea and Japan are very similar in culture and style), but minus the Japanese system and cleanness.

I for the most part enjoyed the city/county. I managed to get a tour of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), which was interesting. I’ve seen the boarder between Mexico and the US and while not exactly the same the DMZ shares many characteristics, like long fences, barb wire and a general sense of displaced people.

The most notable thing from this trip was in my hotel room (ok maybe not the most as I still really loved the DMZ and cherish my barbwire souvenir). Now we have all seen mini bars and I had though the most advanced mini bar system was those that as soon as you take the bottle out of the fridge a computer send notice to charge you for the item. Well here in Seoul they’ve gone further, as in Seoul they have installed actual vending machines within the rooms (see the photo). These 4 and half feet by 2 and a half feet machines sit in the rooms just waiting for you to get hungry or need a bottle of wine and the get this when you turn off all the lights the machine wishes you a goodnight sleep. While not something I expect in a 5 star hotel these hotel room vending machines are effective. My only problem was I didn’t have any money small enough to buy a drink and it doesn’t give back change.

If anyone is coming to Seoul and going on the tour of the DMZ, bring along a large marble. You’ll understand when you are walking back out of the tunnel and if possible record the event and let me know how far it goes down (nobody took this suggestion so far, but the slope is just crying out for someone to roll something down it).

Got to go, as I am just at the airport waiting to get on the plane and head to Vancouver and within 48 it is the 48th country that I have traveled to. I am hoping that #49 is Cuba as really interested to see that country and understand better about its culture and government. Will keep you posted as to which country becomes #49.