Blogs from Sta Fe, Bantayan, Cebu, Philippines, Asia

« Le dernier luxe de notre temps réside dans l'art de ne rien faire, mais de le faire bien » Voilà une jolie phrase pour résumer ma dernière semaine. Concrètement il ne se sera pas passé grand chose les premiers jours que composent ce post. Avec Simon on aura mollusqué pendant toute la semaine sur deux îles différentes ou la moultitude d'activités ne faisaient pas rage. Notre première île fût Bantayan, une sorte de petit Boracay pas encore trop colonisé par les touristes (ou je n'aurais malheureusement pas l'occasion d'aller pendant ce voyage). J'ai même presque envie de dire que c'est un euphémisme. En 4 jours sur place, on aura croisé aucun jeunes de notre âge. Étant donné les infrastructures sur l'île (le nombre d'hôtel), je pense qu'on était clairement ici en basse saison et même ... read more

All went well with my 1 hour flight from Palawan to Cebu 11 days ago, and no problems getting a metered taxi from the airport to my hotel in the city centre. I must say that Cebu City is not the prettiest city I have ever seen. There seems to be a fair bit of poverty around and quite a few shady characters. For the first time in the 10 months of my latest trip I had a couple of guys on 2 seperate occasions within 30 minutes trying to get close enough to me waiting for a chance to pickpocket me. On my second day in the city I decided to go to the Ayala Shopping Center with Phil, a guy staying at my hotel. I spent the afternoon having a look around the impressive ... read more

As hoped in our last blog we've just arrived at the internet cafe directly from the beach. Unfortunately Hannes experienced some problems with his snorkelling mask but we both felt better after a few shakes (coconut, banana/rhum and mango). Not a bad day on the whole. The ferry trip from Manila to Cebu was comfortable but not that exciting. We did, however, finally hear some of the infamous karaoke. The Filipinos were actually quite good at it which in Sweden wouldn't be fair to the audience since they wouldn't have anything to laugh at. In the Philippines the karaoke singer is deeply respected and we've even heard of a german tourist being threatened with a beating for laughing at the performer... When we after 22 hours on the ferry finally arrived in Cebu we quickly found ... read more

Two Weeks in the Philippines: Part III: Bantayan and Cebu City We arrived in Cebu City around 5 p.m., much later that planned, and had to decide whether to stay in the city for the night or try and take a private car up to Bantayan. I knew we wouldn't make it for the last ferry, so either way we would be spending the night someplace other than where we planned. Charito called up one of her friends who lives in Cebu and she said she has a friend who drives to Bantayan all the time, so we called him up and he was at the airport in 10 minutes. It was a larger passenger van, and it had AC so I was happy with it; we had it all to ourselves. Being in the PI ... read more