Philippines!

Thursday night was the night that I was leaving for the Philippines! At 9 pm our group left campus to head to the airport for our 1:30 am flight. We stopped for dinner and then headed to the Airport, where we waited in the longest check-in line ever, that we happened to be at the end of, with no more people behind us. If we had just waited 30 minutes we would have had no line , oh well. Security and immigration was simple as usual and after some snacks we headed to our gate, where we discovered the greatest airport addition ever, reclining chairs that overlooked the runway. I took advantage of the chairs and the free wifi, and chilled before the flight.

The flight to the Philippines was pretty turbulent, so I wasn’t able to sleep much but at 4:30 we arrived in Cebu. Customs in Cebu is a joke. You have to fill out a customs form which stressed me slightly, but it turns out that when you actually pass through customs they don’t even look at it. I could have checked that I had guns, drugs, and some illegal plants and know one would know until after I left. We exchanged money at a booth that was pretty much just a wooden box with someone sitting in it with a calculator.

We got a private bus to take all 11 of us to the resort which cost 100 Pesos each. Since 1 USD equals 42 Pesos, that meant that the ride was very cheap.

We arrived at the resort at 5 am, and not surprisingly our rooms weren’t ready. Regular check-in was at 2 pm, but they agreed to try and have the rooms ready by 9 am. We spent the next 4 hours just sitting in the resort restaurant waiting for either our rooms to be ready so we could sleep or breakfast to start so we could eat.

Resort as the sun was rising.

Some of us were tired

At 6 am breakfast started and we paid the 500 pesos for an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. And we spent the next 3 hours eating and walking around to explore the resort. The weather was really weird, one second it would be raining the next second it was sunny.  And at 9 am we finally got into our room and slept until 1 pm.

After waking up I walked out and explored the resort, then sat on the beach for awhile. I was still pretty tired.  Vincent and I went swimming in the ocean a little bit later. The temperature was very nice, and the resort had a cool diving platform floating a little bit away from the shore.  This platform seemed cool until we got out to it and ended up finding a dead baby goat floating nearby, so then we swam back and chilled on the  beach. Something a little odd about the beach is that there were constantly people just on the other side of the barrier that separated our resorts beach from others, that were trying to sell us island hopping tours, snorkeling, and jetskiing. It turned out that they resort doesn’t allow them on the property because they are competition and they even have a sign warning against being ripped off, but I am pretty sure that that was just to keep people from going to the competition.

Later in the day we went out to explore the area just outside the resort. This area was unlike any where I have really been before. The first unusual sight we saw was a group of children playing soccer in the same field as some cows, which is just one example for  how less developed countries have more disease. Walking along the street we had to navigate around goats, dogs, and children saying “Give me peso.”  It was an interesting experience.

We went back to the resort and then took a taxi downtown. Taking a taxi in the Philippines is interesting because they don’t usually follow the meter. When you get into the taxi you have to negotiate a price or check to make sure the driver will use the meter, or you will get ripped off.  In the end we got 4 taxi’s to take our group of 16 to Cebu City, for a total of 1600 Peso, or ~US$40, this is really cheap considering it is about a 45 minute drive. This ride and the other taxi rides throughout the weekend were some of the scariest drives I have been on. We were going along at around 80 km/h down narrow roads with buildings close on either side, and we would pass vehicles while other vehicles were coming at us in the opposite lane. And not only that we would sometimes pass vehicles while vehicles in the opposite lane were getting passed, essentially turning a 2 lane road into a 4 lane one.

We eventually safely made it to the area we wanted, and found a place to eat.  Everything was ridiculously cheap on the menu. I ended up getting some shrimp full pasta, an appetizer, and a beer for around US$6.  Afterward we tried to get into to a nearby club, but since we were wearing shorts they didn’t let us, which was odd because of how warm it is, and that we are tourists, oh well they lost out on our money. We went to a bar afterward, and  it was Marc’s birthday, so the band sang to him. Shortly after, Vincent, Adam, and I took a cab back to the hostel because we were tired, but the others stayed out much later and had the interesting experience of going to this weird place where they were betting on rc car races. Odd.

Menu (sorry its rotated) 

Our group minus a couple behind me.

Total Cost of Dinner for me

On Saturday we woke up earlyish because we had a prearranged snorkeling trip to go on. I had wanted to go SCUBA diving while in the Philippines, but no one else did and the price for going by yourself was substantially higher than the price for going with a partner, so sadly I was not able to. We had arranged a deal with one of the people outside the resort for this snorkeling trip for around 700 pesos a person for a day of snorkeling, with lunch included, and they picked ups up in the morning at the end of the resorts beach area.

Contrary to what the resort warned us the day was not bad. The snorkeling was better than my only other experience in Florida, and I got to use my underwater camera for some cool photos. Our guides caught blowfish and starfish for us to hold, which although environmentally unfriendly was still kind of cool. We also had a very good lunch on an island. They cooked us the food on skewers over a fire. We also had fresh mangoswhich were delicious. After lunch we went back to another snorkeling area, but only a few of us actually went back into the water and instead we chilled on the boat. Something that I didn’t like is the first time after snorkeling I got on the boat and was offered a cocunut in the same fashion the starfish had been offered in the water, and I naively assumed it the guide had found the coconut in the water and was being generous,  it turned out however that it cost 350 peso which is a lot (we later saw them for 50). Oh well.

On a boat and its going fast (not) and ...

Not very tasty for 350.

Excellent Lunch

The boat took us back to the resort and then a little later we had another taxi ride to Cebu City for dinner. The restaurant we went to was very good, and cheap. I ended up getting some squid, but if I had wanted to I could have had 2 crabs for around US$5, crazy. All of our portions  were very large and the quality was good as well. We got dessert afterward, and some of us got a regional dessert called Halo Halo which I think is just candy soup. They combine what looked like ice cream, coconut milk, and an assortment of candy into a bowl. The people that tried it said it was disgusting.

After dinner we went to Mango Avenue ,which is where all of the clubs are at. The cover for the clubs we checked were all 100 peso (~US$2.5) and included one or two drinks. We danced at the club for awhile, and then some of us went back to the resort. When I got back, I thought it would be cool to walk in the water at night and look at the stars that are nonexistent in Hong Kong. I was walking in the water, which was about 6 inches deep due to the low tide, and suddenly I felt a sharp stinging feeling on my foot. It turned out I had been stung by a jellyfish and quickly left the water and treated it how you should, which warm water and vinegar. I was a little worried about dying for awhile since I didn’t know what got me or if lethal jellyfish were in the area, but after 30 minutes when I wasn’t in excruciating pain I figured I was fine.

Jellyfish sting a few days after

On our last day, we woke up and took the taxi back to Cebu City and eventually back to our island (Mactan Island) to go shopping at too malls.  I stocked up on souvenirs and some dried and fresh mangos, which are my new favorite fruit.  I also could have got a hair cut, manicure and pedicure for a total of 150 peso if I wanted to (50 each). The haircut was actually more expensive than other places I had seen (30 pesos=US$0.75), if I had had more time I would have done it but I didn’t want to keep others waiting. We went to the very cultural Pizza Hut for lunch, where I found Sausage Stuff Crust pizza on the menu. A new experience at this mall was the bathrooms did not provide toilet paper. You could buy it for 20 pesos a pack though, which was a little annoying.  It was odd that inside the mall it felt very much like a first world country, but as soon as you stepped outside it went back to a third world feeling.

After shopping we went searching for a massage.  We took a tricycle, which is pretty mucha motor bike with a passenger cab. Thankfully we didn’t ride in it long because I didn’t really trust the safety at all, and somehow we fit around 8 people in the same little cab. We ended up finding a place where we could get an hour massage for 150 pesos. The massage was very good, and the establishment was not sleezy at all. I would say that my massage there was just as good as the ones I have had in the US, but for much much cheaper.

After the massage we had to go get our bags from the resort and go to the airport. Something nice about the resort was that they had a shitty exchange rate. Normally this would be a problem, except that to figure out what we owed for the rooms they took the price in USD exchanged it to pesos using their exchange rate (40 instead of the 43 it actually is) and then charged it to our credit cards. The credit card companies do the right exchange rate though, so we ended up getting a nice savings.

We took a van to the Airport, and then waited for our flight. Something different that the Philippine government does is charge a tax when you leave fly out of the airport. You have to pay 550 peso to leave, which thankfully we had been warned about by another exchange student.  Security here was also pretty lax, with the exception that I had to remove my shoes, something you don’t have to do in Hong Kong. One of my friends here had gone through security in Cebu earlier this year, and he said he had a water bottle with him that he had forgotten to finish. He asked them where he could dump it out and they said he could keep it just as long he finished it before he got on the plane. This is probably why the FAA doesn’t think the Philippines airline industry is up to standard.

The flight back to Hong Kong was uneventful, and after we landed we took a taxi back to UST and I went to bed.