Goodbye to the Philippines

We spent our last few days in Manila supposedly "resting" before our final departure. You already know I didn't want to leave and it wasn't just because I had to fly.... Fortunately for our lazy butts we had more people to visit and things to do. We spent one whole day with Nikki (the sister of a CS guy we met in Iloilo) and she showed us more of the city that we hadn't seen before, including a view from her 40th floor office! There is a lot to see in Manila but it seems like the city is just one giant shopping mall a lot of the time.
The following day we went out again for dinner together and also met up with Larz whom we had met in Iloilo as well. We had a great evening of chatting but somehow got onto the topic of "balut". Balut is the infamous Philippine snack that is a boiled duck egg but with the duck partially formed inside. They are about 2 weeks old and you can see the feathers and beak and other random grossness inside. It sounds disgusting and a lot of locals also agree that it is, but it's still popular somehow. Anyway, one thing led to another and Nikki ended up buying one and eating it for us right there on the street. Sick! Dad was totally disgusted but I did taste the "broth" inside the egg. That was enough and yes, I fail the balut test. It was all pretty funny though because Larz and Nikki got a kick out of our faces with the whole thing. I'd be tempted to eat it just to disgust you guys but at the end of the day I am afraid of the after effects. Eggs are one of the easiest foods to get sick over and if I didn't like it and could never eat eggs again I'd be pretty pissed off. Didn't seem to be worth the risk, especially since boiled eggs are such an important part of our diet in many countries.
We didn't fly out from Manila airport but went two hours north to Clark airport to leave on the budget airline Air Asia. Clark airport is interesting in that it was/is the US air base and still had a military feel to it. The whole airport and base were buried in the 1991 eruption of the nearby Mt. Pinatubo volcano which was a major factor in the US ending their heavy military presence in the area.
Our flight was good and we are now in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the state of Sabah, Malaysia in the northeast of the island of Borneo. We will be on Borneo for the next 3 weeks and will soon be meeting up with Jake again which is going to be awesome.
Ammon