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Colourful jeepney
On the way to Maya.. Date visited: 9th May - 24th
The initial journey:
After a brief 24 hours for the last time in Kota Kinabalu, Borneo, and one last night at the amusing hostel of Vincent's we once again got checked in on a flight this time to Cebu. Cebu is one of the larger islands of the Versayas - a collection of lots of islands in the central Philippines and is a common visiting haunt for divers and intrepid travellers!
Malaysian Airlines were 'ok'. 1 hour late and okish - food nothing special for 140 quid! but hopefully we would be rewarded for the effort.
We landed at hectic Cebu airport with our first challenge - to find a working ATM that would accept Cirrus. At last we found one then got the taxi to our ex-Pat guest house - or rather, where a western style bar was rammed with the DOM (Dirty.Old.Men) variety on the hunt for some cheap action. It was painful to watch!! - the Philppinos barely past the age of adolescence! We saw about 4 couples in the bar alone - and although it was adjoined to our reputable English-owned guest house, it felt more
like a knocking shop.
Early next morning we got the cab to the bus station which was organised chaos - random touts, no ticket offices, rickety buses - just random mayhem! After being told the one we had to get was a windowless yellow thing from the 1960's taking 4 hours (to get to the port, North of Cebu island) we were not too enamoured. More so, B also had an ongoing stomach bug which in a bus isn't ideal - especially with no toilets onboard! So we opted for the taxi - a quicker alternative but more pricey (the bus being 80p and the taxi being about 17 quid).
En route to the coast we passed all sorts of village and farming life, varied open countryside and sugarcane plantations, hilly vistas and rural scenes from something in the middle ages (an Ox with a fisherman, ancient farming methods, water wells from the middle ages, huts that looked like something from the caveman days and so on!) - little did I realise at the time this would just be the tip of the iceberg.
I actually preferred the countryside to other areas of South East Asia - which is often so densely covered in Jungle you don't get to see the details in-between. The tiny 12 seater colourful 'Jeepnies' amused me... packed to the brim with people either hanging off the windows, sitting on the roof or sitting very calmly inside! They littered the roads especially in Cebu city itself, but as we got out to the countryside they were replaced by the more Indian style 3 wheeler rikshaws (motorised or manual!).
After 3.5 hours we eventually arrived at Maya, a very low key 'port' where the outrigger boats would anchor up and take people (including us) to the island of Malapascua just 30 minutes away. Luckily when we got there we only had to wait about an hour (which is amazing for 'Filipino time' - as the boats only actually go when they fill up (and when I say fill up I mean exceeding all safety weight limits, cramming these little narrow boats with 30+ people, and their luggage, stock for the island - everything including the kitchen sink infact.)
The boat ride was slow - it had to be, as in the more exposed sea, the waves got a little too choppy for my liking (at least when we're essentially sitting on an elaborated raft!) It was nice to leave the mainland and look forward to what was ahead. We saw several islands scattered around - some just hazy outlines in the distance, others just appearing as rocky uninhabited mounds jutting out from the sea. Luckily my camera avoided being soaked when a warm wave unexpectedly splashed right up my back - but at 28oC its hardly a problem!
We arrived at Malapascua carefully getting off the boat which meant balancing a 30k backpack and 2 more pieces of hand luggage whilst carefully stepping down a 4 inch wide plank into the shallow warm beach edge.
We hunted for a bed and bargained a little. We opted for Blue Coral Beach resort as it was right on the sea front with stupendous views over the sea and lovely bay which was the main beach of the island. The rooms were clean and our own balcony overlooking the bay sold it to us. The other resorts were nice enough but inland they were too close to the hundreds of Cockrels (a very Philippino thing!) - we didn't fancy a natural alarm clock of 3 am each day!
So at last we were in the Philippines for the last 2 weeks of the trip, hot, tropical, barely any tourists and a whole island to explore.
😊
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