matt10gonzalez's VirtualTourist Home Page

TOP LEFT PORTION- ONE OF MY HOBBIES: Searching for bathrooms! (See Bathrooms Around the World page at the bottom of this page)

TOP RIGHT PORTION- MY BIZZARE HONEYMOON (See my Bizzarre Wedding and Honeymoon Page at the bottom of this page.)

AND FINALLY, AT THE BOTTOM, MY FAMILY,
MY ECCENTRIC FAMILY....

So, what do you think of them? Normal? Good looking? Smiling faces?
WRONG!

Of course they’ll look good! You’re just looking at one of those fake say-cheese and pose pictures! You only know them 0.01%!

My family is a bit different: It’s a family complete with screamers, cranky faces, over religious pastors, Down syndrome, stage 1 dementia (All literally) who are all trapped in a compound and amazingly, still manage to endure each other’s guts out and ARE still willing to travel together as a family to all the bizarre, exotic places around the world.

You’ll see what I mean as you continue reading on.

Most of my classmates find her like a sweet, gentle, beautiful maiden. Ha! They don’t know!

Mom is a witchy wife- a screaming wife like any typical mother of 7+ kids. (Well, she does take care of everyone including dad, her adult brothers and her mother.)

Being a witchy wife means she’s a bit of a war freak: For some strange reason, she doesn’t only kill us kids (and her husband) for urinating all over her beloved bathroom; No! She happens to also enjoy screaming and bossing everyone in the subdivision, quarreling with all the foreigners and locals who never stop complaining about her management. (Well, who wouldn’t just keep quiet?) And finally: Believe it or not, mom is a hyper-religious girl who has an exotic habit of mumbling prayers to herself while walking and frowns on all acts of sin.

It‘s the mom that not even my father has seen when he was still dating her.

BUT, BELIEVE IT OR NOT!

Even if mom's a bit of a witch, even if she screams a lot, mom still makes an excellent WIFE who's great in dealing with in-laws, budgeting expenses, cooking, fixing trips, dealing with bureacracy, motivation, management and most of all:
SHE LOVES US ALL!

NOTE: It's also worth noting that mom used to work as a street vendor that sells custom jewelries in America when she was young. It was a stressful job, (that didn't pay much!) but that's how she learned to be bossy and that's how she met dad!

Dad is very natural: What you see, is what you get. When he frowns, it’s really a frown, when he nags, it’s really a nag, when’s he cranky, he’s really cranky and sigh…he hates parties and socializing with people.
Okay, so dad is synonymous with an old fart, a side that not even my mother saw nor even prophesized when she was still dating him.

BUT HEY!
At least dad makes an excellent HUSBAND: He doesn't beat up mom, he's faithful and loyal (mom lets him talk to other girls aside from her), he doesn't go out much and he unconditionally loves us! (Explains how their marriage lasted for 21 yrs.)

NOTE: It's also worth noting that dad used to clean offices and abandoned houses in America. It was a dirty job (and pays pretty good!), but that's how he learned to frown and how he met mom!

My brother is literally like a pig: First of all, he looks like a pig (He knows that), then he weighs 220 pounds, (He knows that and is aware he can die of a heart attack and he doesn’t care.)
And when he doesn’t get what he wants, he acts like a spoiled noisy pig being cooked alive.

NOTE:

Believe it or not, my brother apparently likes writing too! I don't know where he got it but visit his homepage here in VT, it has a lot of cute stuff that can't be found elsewhere in this site! Like the food for example, he loves to talk about FOOD. This is how he writes:

-His Egypt page is "Egypt, Land of the Shawarmas!"
-In his India front page, he raves about Indian food:
“Indian food killed us except my dad!!!”

And he also talks about other 'cute' experiences as well!
-In his India front page, he's shocked about Varanasi:

"Poop that literally fell from the heavens!"

This event happened when we were walking around Varanasi, India, on our way out of the alleys. Among my family members, it happened to ME!

MICHAEL! WATCH OUT!!!!” I suddenly froze! And that’s when I notice, “DIARRHEA!”

And he writes more stuff!
Since he's so good with tasting, he covers the food sections around the world while I cover all the boring stuff that makes kids puke! (Like scenery, where to go and so on.)

GO VISIT HIM and... enjoy his page! Michaelxxx is his member name.

NOTE: I don't know what xxx means by the way! Ask him that!

From left to right:

This is my 16 yrs. old teenage cousin.

She’s a split personality: She only smiles 90% with her friends and frowns 90% with us. Oh well, that’s your usual teenager for you.

In the middle-
This is fun-loving cousin.

She laughs really loud and she loves nasty humour.

In the right-
This is serious-gifted cousin.

She's gifted because she's very matured- she loves photography, talking about future education and she loves analyzing about the culture.

FOR PROOF OF THIS:
She's also preparing her 4th year college thesis (She's only in high school, by the way!) by making her own travel logs in this site!

She writes a whole lot more serious than me or my brother. She LOVES SCENERY. This is how she sounds:

-Bacolod is a beautiful place with a tropical climate. From where I'm typing I look to the right and see mountains and mountains. To the left, is an endless stretch of beach (and a spa nearby!).

But she can also be interesting too! Take a look at this:

-In Bacolod, the subdivisions in the North are very private, have their own clubhouses, and the people who live there have very comfortable lives. The lifestyles of the people in the North are so different compared to the people in the South. The Northerners eat with utensils, while the Southerners eat with their hands. Those in the North would munch on Cheetos and Ruffles, while those in the South would eat cassava chips.

Yes, even in a third world country like the Philippines, the division between the rich and poor is so distinct.

-Do you get her humour? It's humour that has to be read between the lines!

-See? Like what I told you, serious gifted cousin is 'Serious!' Only thing is, I was amazed that she was more 'serious gifted' than I thought! I think the serious crowd will adore her. (She loves to entertain people too!)

SO GO VISIT HER! And enjoy her site too!
Her member's name is annabanana16. (She loves hearing comments by the way!)

My 47 yrs. Old uncle is the king, the father of all the craziness in the house and is my personal favorite: You see, Uncle Gerry fears the ‘Aswang’ (or in English, the devil) and fortunately for my video camera, he may really see the ‘Aswang’ in our garden. So every morning, Uncle Gerry goes out there armed with a blessed bottle of the Virgin Mary (From Lourdes) and a rosary and SCREAMS much louder than a rooster out there calling for the ‘Aswang’ to die! No lie. All our neighbors think our house is crazy.
It’s also worth noting that Uncle Gerry appears to have ‘nine lives’ because despite him being a hard core alcoholic (He can resist a hundred dosage of pills that calm him down and still drink a dozen more of beer), and despite him getting numerous seizures and accidents, (The hospital knows him very well) he never dies!
And you know what even makes things more beautiful?
Though mom, grandma and he constantly fight like screaming cats and dogs, attack each other with chairs (Usually because Uncle Gerry harasses them for money for his drinks), they never hold grudges (Unlike a lot of families) and still manage to love each other. Wonderful…

If Uncle Gerry is the king of the all craziness, grandma is the queen and the mother of all the craziness in the house and is also my favorite. (By the way, she likes that when you call her that.) Grandma is really crazy: First, (especially if you’re a foreigner) if she sees you, she’ll hail you like a VIP! She’ll make it come out like you were really a lot of fun and she’ll drive you nuts by repeating and repeating the same question all over again. (Which she did to our British neighbors) And you know what? The moment you meet her again, she might just look at you like you’re a killer and tell you straight. “Who are you?”
Grandma is very much like a naïve child—when she doesn’t get what she wants, she’ll make a loud tantrum like a spoiled brat like in Malaysia for example; just because a banana vendor wasn’t paying attention to her (he was paying attention to the other customers) , she just GRABBED the banana from him without asking and called him “stupid”. She’s also trapped in her magical world, which is her past, which is really quite magical: It’s all about her younger years when she was still quite hot and when she met a lot of VIP’s.
In short, grandma is like mom except twice more a war freak.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I can talk like this about my family because that's how much I LOVE THEM! If I didn't love them, I wouldn't even have something to say about them!
(Plus they read this and they like it!)

Hi! I am Matthew. I am 100% pure Filipino. I am Roman Catholic, I also have a Philippine passport and I was born 5 minutes after the taxi dropped me in a Philippine hospital! (Riverside hospital, Bacolod city to be specific.)

Although I’ve come from the jungles (The Philippines), my passion is truly traveling: If I have the money, I rather ride an airplane and have a 10 yr. old car that’s about to fall apart. I rather ride a train and have a decapitating house. But of course! I don’t want to die in a foreign country either.
I plan to make journals about my travels, though it’ll probably be suited more for families but that’s okay! I’ll try to add some research and facts in it too! And of course, I also hope it’ll be helpful and accurate to you guys.

And the following stuff here are my hobbies:

BUDGET TRAVEL- Of course! If we just stayed in Intercontinental, Marriot, Marriot, Marriot, I’ll probably never see the world! With the help of my mom we can do this just right.

FAMILY TRAVEL- Well, if you can survive my family (Which complains a lot), you can probably adapt to any family! Remember: I’m still a kid! So I still know what’s boring and what’s fun, cool and so on.

SENIOR TRAVEL- I enjoy senior people! Ever since I was small, I always loved playing with them and with grandma already? Wow! That’s a lot of work already!

BACKPACKING- The hardest part of backpacking is carrying the backpack itself. So, what do we do? We make it easier! We travel with style—roller bags, like the ones the stewardess carries along. But we still stay in hostels, guesthouses! (And sometimes, we splurge too!)

OTHER HOBBIES: What do I do when I'm not traveling?

1.) I write my travel logs in VT! Believe me, it's a LONG process!
That's all so far.

MY DEAD SITES: (Sites that I dedicated my time and allowance and were killed (Hacked))

MY DEAD FRIENDSTER: WACKY MATT (KILLED)

My Friendster Wacky Matt was one of my sites in Asian Friendster that had lots of eccentric stories, colorful journal pages about frogs being osterized, dead rabbits with intestines showing, strange dream weddings, diarrhea and so on! Yet, it was also a successful and dynamic city (Site) that was one day stabbed and killed. (Hacked)
Here's its epitaph:

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _+_ _ _ _ _ _
|WACKY MATT
|Aug. 3 2007- Feb. 2 2008
|.............. L.O.L..................

-Curious how I sound and talk? Watch my Introduction Video! (For Friendster, take note. I should make a different one catering to VT too!) And it's not even all about me! You can see a glimpse of my uncle blessing the trees and how we scream!

-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm-sykQKOj4

And that’s my family. I told you we’re a bit different. So unlike most of you solo travelers (Who for some, probably rotted to death maybe), I have to endure crucifying months of traveling with them! (Though it’s fun.)
You’ll see, it’s just a matter of reading the travelogues!

ALSO NOTE:

Who doesn't love food? Who just loves to savor each taste of each specific ingredient of the word 'FOOD' in all the exotic locales in the world? And who prefers doing this instead of visiting museums, museums and museums? Visit my brother's homepage: Michaelxxx. It's mostly about 'FOOD'. and 'REAL EVENTS'(with useful tips) that happened on our trip, this time on his point of view.

AND FINAL NOTE!

Tired of hearing our fun stories? Want something serious & interesting? Then visit my 'Serious Gifted' cousin's page! She'll surely entertain you on her point of view!
Annabanana16.