Philippines: what an experience!

Last weekend I went to the Philippines with my two Belgium roommates and another friend of us from Canada. We left friday early in the morning and after a 4 hour flight we arrived in Cebu-city, this is the fourth city of the Philippines, but also the oldest city. We stayed at an island close to the city, in a village called Lapu-Lapu city. When we arrived in this village, we immediately noticed the poverty of this country. Little houses, people everywhere on the street wearing old clothes and only flip-flops.. The streets were filled with crazy vehicles, motorbikes with sidecars, trucks and little open vans. And there the first Philippine wish came up, I definitely wanted to go with both the motorbike and the van. After a nice seafood lunch we walked around in the little city. There we were like attractions, everybody was looking at us, staring at my friends Tyler and Sebastiaan because they are so tall. 


We told the local people that I was married to Quinten, because otherwise they wouldn't stop staring (or try to sell a girl to Quinten). Next to this we used the whole weekend fake names, which lead to some hilarious situation. My nick name was Angelica. On the streets we already made a lot of new friends, all these friends tried to sell things to us. They also offered us an island-hopping trip for saturday and they broughtus to their boss Peter. If we would have arranged this via the hotel it would have costed us 3000 Peso per person and Peter offered it to us for 1500. But we had to pay 2000 peso in total in advance, so he could buy our lunch for the next day. After some discussion we decided to take the risk and just keep our fingers crossed and hope that he would show up saturday morning.

Friday evening we went to a nice grill place for dinner (with the little van!!!! ) and found out that alcohol is very very cheap at the Philippines, so we had to make an advantage of this. Unfortunately the place closed at 10 PM, so we had to leave.... but it was raining like hell! It was crazy! And all of a sudden all the lights went off in the whole city. Bad luck, because we wanted to go to a karaoke place. Instead, we met 3 new friends and they took us with them in their motorbike with sidecar to the only place where they had light. Well, imagine 3 tall guys and me in, up, behind the motorbike, it was an experience!!! We spent the rest of the evening with these 3 guys, doing some bar-hopping (;)) with the motorbike and it was the best!

Next morning the wake-up wasn't the best and we were still in doubt if Peter would come. Luckily, he was there!! We went to his boat and found out that there were 10 more Philippine people joining us, some women who told us on beforehand that they were going to sell us things. First we went close to an island where we could snorkel, then to a deserted island where the women prepared us one of the best bbq lunches I've ever had, meat, seafood, rice, fresh fruit, everything! We ended the day with some fishing (I catched 2 with a little hand of my Philippine friend!!). Back at the hotel we took a nice massage and a little nap, then a nice dinner at the same place and it started raining again. It was even worse than the evening before, the streets were filled with water. So we decided to just go home and take an early bed.

Sunday we went to Cebu-city, which wasn't that nice. You get really confronted with the poverty, children begging for money, even trying to steal from you. We saw only some nice churches and furthermore, none of us really liked the city. Still I can conclude that this trip was amazing!!! It really was an experience and all four of us felt the same about this.

Now back in Singapore, only 8 days left till my birthday... and then 2 days before we leave to Yogyakarta and Bali! I can't wait!!!!