Manila to Bicol and back in 72 hours

Jun V Lao, Ride Philippines, Moto Photo Ph, Motorbike Photography Philippines, Travel By Motorbike Philippines
Leaving 10pm traversing wet roads en route to Bicol...It was this time at around 330am I was asking myself, why the fark did I join this f*ck*ng trip

Jun V Lao, Ride Philippines, Moto Photo Ph, Motorbike Photography Philippines, Travel By Motorbike Philippines
Weather Report Pre Ride...wtf, lets still do this

Mid June, I just came from a wedding, but had a scheduled night ride to Bicol with the crazy rider bunch of Josh, Jeffrey and Ferry who even had a backrider Sunder at the time where the plan was to make a Friday night ride to Bicol and be back by Sunday evening. 


As you can see in this post, I hardly have photos of the trip but attached a quickly edited video which covers our sunny trip back, exploring Cagsawa ruins briefly then heading out to Mayon's highest point plus a quick lunch at CamSur.

Jun V Lao, Ride Philippines, Moto Photo Ph, Motorbike Photography Philippines, Travel By Motorbike Philippines
Arrived Cagsawa ruins exactly 1000am Saturday... cold, wet, sleepy tired, Oh how I hated Bicol around this time

Josh, Jeffrey and Ferry are very seasoned riders. What took me 12 hours to get to Bicol on wet pavement took them only seven... I asked to be left behind at Atimonan at around 1am after having a major headache and neck spasms but en route to Legaspi, rains persisted all the way and instead of my planned stop over, I just soldiered on solo travelling a measly 50 kph, was too tired to be scared of anything and all I wanted was to get to Legaspi. 

I had new tires and my bike was what two weeks with me (getting to know period), plus my helmet visor had annoying scratches and my newly installed sena bulged, giving me that monstrous pain in the head, ears painfully squished for hours...but no excuses, I was definitely a pussy rider this trip. (I dumped the Bullit helmet, everything cafe racer thingy I owned, gloves and all I threw away after this trip). Tama na Tiis ganda pa cool effect.

Jun V Lao, Ride Philippines, Moto Photo Ph, Motorbike Photography Philippines, Travel By Motorbike Philippines
A nice refuge after a gruelling run...pero, eto nanaman kami, larga nanaman sa umaga

The road back to Manila was more forgiving, the sun decided to show and it was a warm day for everyone. As shared, this group never wants to stop, lagi nagmamadali, so eto, video na lang tayo anak ng tokwa...


On the way back, I asked the guys to leave me behind from Gumaka, I wanted a gingerly solo ride to take some personal trip photos but there was nothing much interesting photographically speaking after Atimonan so I decided to take a quick nap at a motel in Lucena and ride back to Manila early Monday next morning which was actually a very bad idea..I got home after noon since traffic was shit as usual from Lucena all the way to SLEX (six hours of morning Monday jams). makes me wonder why we are paying toll fees since we are stuck in traffic while in there anyways...

Personally, I found this trip quite wasteful from a photo trip perspective since there were just too many scenic stop overs missed (was going sayang sayang..), but weather and company had other ideas. Plus the fact it was the rainy season Mayon didn't even decide to take a peek from the clouds despite having the sun up on our way back. 

The Long Way Down Bicol..in f*ckin rain..hard trip this one

Regardless if everything was always rush rush rush, the Josh, Jeffrey, Ferry and Sunder crew were a happy bunch come nightfall. What happened again that night...I fail to remember...basta masaya :)