in search of a pearl

Woke up one day and found myself in Makati where I started working 8 years ago. The next morning, I found myself waking up with the sound of the lapping waves, birds and an eerie silence - marooned in a series of islands called the Pearl Farm Beach Resort...


I'm here on the island's rustic arms - beaches fringed by coconut trees, impossibly emerald green waters and quaint traces of its Maranao roots. When I got a call from my former employer weeks ago to help him redo the brochures, photography and corporate identity of Fuego Hotels, it took me only a second to think and say yes.


So now, I'm on the lap of pure luxury, shooting the resort's many facets and charms. Its beaches and natural beauty are nothing short of captivationg, but sadly, the resort in itself needs an enormous facelift...

It's rooms and structures were breathtaking a couple of years ago, when I first came here, but of course, time and age takes its toll among everything created by man. At least, this room at the villa of former Miss Universe winner Margie moran is definitely not bad...

Pearl Farm's resident parrots were definitely a riot to tourists and were absolute charmers. They should be on the payroll too and should receive hefty tips.

And the Ylang Ylang Spa was still gorgeous, but like the resort, it needs touch ups in a whole lot of ways. Took me time to make it look like this on the camera.

But no matter what state the resort falls into, the most precious pearls you can find there are its amazing, warm people. They were there always to lend a helping hand, make you feel welcome, feed you a huge buffet of tuna sashimi, deliver a tuna melt sandwich on another island in 10 minutes, open the blutique at midnight so you can buy a pair of Havaianas, extend bar hours from 11 pm to 2 am so you can enjoy drinking more San Mig Lights, bring you to the airport on a speedboat at 4 in the morning in the middle of a storm so you can catch your flight (I can't believe I made it alive and I'm writing this), and among others, still smile wholeheartedly after all this.

I am definitely coming back. And hopefully next time, not for work, but with my wife and son... and yes, with flights in the afternoon so I don't have to have raging seawater get in my Louis Vuitton luggage again.

if life is a car transmission...

On our last trip to Phnom Penh, we took our 1992 Toyota Camry for a supposedly 6-hour spin from Siem Reap to Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh on an almost 400 kilometer stretch of good road. We've done the road trip countless times already so we know that before each trip, a complete car check-up is necessary. So we did, and off we went! With me were the Spoolworks Team (my design studio) - Brewster, our graphic designer who was on the wheel and KC, our creative sales director who was our beat boxing specialist at the backseat.

But an hour to the trip, we keep on losing our speed until the clutch couldn't hold it anymore...


Turns out our transmission finally broke after all those years of hard work. So what do you do when you have more than 300 kilometers to go?

Well, you start pushing of course!



Or better yet, sit back and inhale the best of the Cambodian countryside...


Or savor those seemingly dilapidated towns which seem to be trapped in the 60's...


Make friends with the brown-eyed locals...


or perhaps ride the moto with some monk brothers....


maybe settle down the pavement and enjoy a bite of green mangoes...


or stop by some houses for a drink or two...


Maybe enjoy a smoke or a puff by the roadside...


or do a full-scale fun streetfighter-inspired photo shoot...


or finally concede that we needed a new transmission afterall!


So for 35 bucks, we were pulled by a rickety Khmer Rouge - era truck to the nearest town which was another 30 kms away. We managed to find a decent hotel, had some dinner and woke up early the next day to find a car shop. A day and 400 dollars later (roughly 20,000 pesos), we got back our car and raced to Phnom Penh with a "brand new" second hand transmission tipping the 130 km/hour scale...

Then the radiator leaked and overheated. But that my friends, is another story of course...