(Since living in the UAE, Paul and I have been learning some Tagalog from our coworkers… the title of our post means “Good morning, fellow countryman”)
Last week finally arrived after many months of anticipation and planning—we were off to the Philippines! Not only were we excited to see the Philippines and a beach rated #1 in the world but we also met up with Paul’s sister A and her husband (coincidentally Paul’s best friend) B. They arranged to have grandparents stay with Baby R so that they could come meet up with us half-way around the world.
DAY 1
Our flight left at 2:00am UAE time on Friday but nothing eventful. When we got to Manila, we had to spend the night there because the last flight for Caticlan (the island next to Boracay) left before we arrived. I had booked a hotel (Guijo Suites) based on Trip Advisor recommendations. It was fairly new and worked out really well for our needs. But it was the getting there that we were nervous about. Originally, I don’t think we had any issues with spending some time in Manila, but all of our Filipino friends here in the UAE made us paranoid. They did not like the idea that we would be taking a taxi from the airport as apparently they can be really sketchy and even told us of an Australian couple that went missing just a few weeks before our trip. So, being the already mildly paranoid person that I am when I travel (you can thank my dad for that) I printed off a map of our how to get to our hotel and followed it to make sure our driver was taking us in the right direction. We ended up not having any problems :)
Once we got to the hotel, we checked in. The first thing that I noticed was how genuinely friendly everyone was. I had almost forgotten what customer service is supposed to be like after having been in the Middle East and travelling around there so much lately. It was very refreshing. We had planned to meet up with one of my previous coworkers who recently moved back to Manila, but since it was Good Friday, all of the malls, restaurants, and public transportation were shut down. It ended up being ok though, because we both sat down on the bed to relax a bit before trying to find something to do and we napped for about 2 hours.
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| Relaxing in our hotel room |
The hotel confirmed that no restaurants would be open, so we grabbed dinner downstairs in their lobby restaurant. Mmmmm pork adobo! And of course, we got in a few games of cards :)
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| Pork Adobo and rice flooded in soy sauce |
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| Need I say more? |
DAY 2
The next day we headed to the domestic airport for our flight to Caticlan. Paul was impressed with the airport terminal as there was a basketball game being shown on a big screen… and he wasn’t the only one loving the game. I would never have guessed before living in the UAE that Filipinos would be so in love with NBA, but they love basketball.
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| Captivated |
After bragging about my “math skills” to Paul when he was trying to figure out how much time we had until we needed to board… I actually forgot to account for the 45minutes after the hour and we almost missed our flight! Oops! Luckily they called us over the intercom and we boarded the late bus with a few other passengers.
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| Happy we didn't get left behind |
Once we arrived at the airport in Caticlan, we knew we needed to get to the Jetty Port and that we could take a trike (like the Thai tuk-tuks) or walk. We opted for 7 minute walk. It really was pretty nice minus the slightly warm temperatures which made Paul a little grumpy. But we did get to see a little bit more of the scenery that way.
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| Part of our "scenic" walk |
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| yep, we're in for a good week |
Once we arrived at the Jetty Port, it was time to buy our tickets. And when I say tickets, let me emphasize the “s.” I knew there were multiple fees etc, but I had no idea that you would have to wait in “lines” at a new window for each one! Paul saw the mess and offered to stay with the bags while I went to buy the tickets. 3 lines, less than $10, and over 20 minutes later, I rendezvoused with Paul with all 6 tickets in my hand. We walked through a metal detector that clearly wasn’t on and Paul got sniffed by a cop dog and asked once again to remove his sunglasses (they did that at all security checkpoints throughout our stay). Next up, we hopped on our “ferry boat.” But hopped isn’t really the right word. More like carefully did a balancing act over a wobbly ramp of three 2x4s trying to keep both ourselves and our luggage from tumbling into the water. I couldn’t keep from laughing and enjoying the experience to which Paul could only shake his head at me ;)
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| That's the line/mass to get in once you buy your tickets... we mistakenly got in this line first |
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| 2 of the 3 ticket booths |
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| Balancing act |
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| "Ferry Boat" |
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| Happy to be moving with the wind in our faces |
After about a 20 minute ride, we made it to Boracay where we nimbly got off and hopped onto a trike for a 30 minute ride to the other side of the island where out hotel was situated.
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| Trike ride to Alta Vista |
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2 comments:
What interesting types of transportation!
You guys are quire the experienced world travellers now. When we were recently in Fiji and Australia and not in business attire, I was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses, and, like P, was being asked to remove my cap and shades at every check point, at every travel node. Glad it went so well.
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