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Published: October 2nd 2007
Dumaguete Bell Tower
built by the Spanish in 1811Seeings though our last but one blog captured your imaginations...well the title did anyway based on it zooming to the top of our blog hits, we thought we would continue the sex theme in the title, not that this blog has anything to do with sex!
We'd also like to say that this blog is a bit of a rant of a blog about a place which really disappointed us!
Our flight from Palawan to Cebu went without incident, that is except for a large group of Filipinos (the front half of the plane) who had possibly never flown before and who did not observe any of the safety rules. At the exact time the plane was about to hit the tarmac on landing, 2 of them decided to get up and remove their bags from the overhead compartment and stretch their legs by walking up and down the aisle. A further 5 of them began calling their friends in the airport which prompted the cabin crew to shout at them through the microphone. We giggled even more in the airport when 2 Filipinos (not being used to moving stairs) failed to disembark from the escalator, resulting in a
Bakery
The Filipinos love all things sweet...even their bread is sweet, urgghhh! passenger pile-up at the bottom. Moving on to picking up our rucksacks from the conveyor belt, Donna noticed a particular fishy smell where ever she went. It turns out that her bag had been stored next to the Filipino group's baggage which consisted of cardboard boxes packed with fish and melting ice. She discovered this only after swinging her bag right into Neil's face, smearing him with fishiness, whilst asking him 'can you smell something fishy?'
Okay so observations about Filipino's...they obviously dont apply to all Filipinos and this is generalising but during our visits here is what we experienced. Some Filipinos cannot cope without their cellphones. We are looked at very strangely because we don't have one. Neil swears he saw a 90 year old granny write a huge 20 word text message in under 1 minute..Very impressive! As commented in other blogs, this cellphone obsession cannot just be applied to Filipinos, however the cheapness of both cellphones and calling/texting no doubt contributes to their popularity. We dont have a cellphone and felt very left out and ashamed for not having one! On our flights in PI some Filipinos have treat airplanes like buses - at least the
ones on our planes did this - causing the cabin crew much anxiety. We saw a fair few Filipino's ing'issues' with escalators, actually South East Asians in general do, but only in the Philippines did we witness a pedestrian pile-up due to the difficulty to get on or off an escalator. Fish is an important staple food in PI..many filipino travellers we saw carried fresh fish/crabs/anything seafoody the said fish/crabs/anything seafoody is packaged in a cardboard box with lots of ice. Finally, the Spanish heritage in the Filipinos appearance can sometimes be very clearly seen with people having strong Central/South American characteristics. Their love for romance may partly stem from this heritage and is fascinating to see this Hispanic/Asian mix and also very cute!
Okay...so we ambitiously caught a taxi to the Southern bus terminal in Cebu to immediately whisk us away on a 4 hour air con bus journey to the port of Bato at the south of Cebu (190 pesos - £1.90). To complete our travelling for the day we were ferried across to Tampi on Negros for a further 1 hour to arrive into the university city, Dumaguete which we were told was vibrant, energetic and
People in Philippines stare a lot...
...we tried to get some pics with people staring! friendly.
Now, after this MAMMOTH trike - plane - taxi - bus - ferry - bus combo (starting at 9am and finishing at 9pm) the last thing you want are a group of moronic trike drivers greeting you at the bus terminal with the aim of ripping off the Western tourists. An expert swing of Donna's fishy rucksack into the drivers face and Neil acting like a crazy gimp because he was so hungry soon got rid of the pests. We then realised that our guesthouse was a 2km walk away. Damn, we should never have deployed the fishy rucksack swing tactic! We were abandoned in a Dumaguete ghetto (not easy to say out loud when you're pissed on Filipino Tanduay rum whilst we are typing this!). A 1 hour walk later (it's great exercise you know we kept telling ourselves along the walk!) we arrived at Harold's Mansion which had been recommended to us as it promised free wi-fi, free tea and coffee all day and free continental breakfast for a reasonable price. However, Harold's was not to be the bargain we hoped for! The wi-fi was hit and miss because the router was so old, the 'breakfast'
People mesmerised by the TV in Dumaguete bus station
...put a TV in front of people and that's it youve lost them! was a couple of measly pieces of toast (which we had to toast ourselves) and the free tea and coffee was a struggle to get. The woman that ran the coffee shop was so rude and every time we asked for something she rolled her eyes and huffed as if we were inconveniencing her! The other problem was that the coffee shop always closed early, around 9pm and it was meant to be open until 11pm.
Harold's wasn't the only disappointment. Although Dumaguete is a nice, green, seaside university city with splashes of Spanish colonialism, it had an occasionally friendly, occasionally hostile feel to it and we had never seen so many foreigners as we had seen here. The foreigners that were here were not too friendly too...the whole of Dumaguete had a grumpy feel to it, probably we just met the wrong people at the wrong time? City of gentle people is the name for Dumaguete...from our visit....we didn't think so!
We stayed long enough in Dumaguete to extend our visas for a second time at the Provincial Immigration Office. This second visa extension to take us over 59 days was a whopping 3,800 pesos (£38) each
but we had planned to stay in the Philippines for a third month because we don't want to enter China until after it's week long National Day holiday at the beginning of October.
We also got out of Dumaguete for the 'day' to visit Wednesday's Malatapay market. For a whole 18 pesos (18p) each we rode a jeepney for nearly an hour crammed in with locals who did their best to avoid sitting next to us and old ladies dressed in their finest. We were told this market was great, really big with lots to see. Weell...it wasn't big, it wasn't great and there was not a lot to see apart from the locals staring at the 2 stupid tourists walking around their market (see the pics and video). The most interesting thing we saw was the hugest pig in the world, it's size was unbelievable and must have been one of those pigs that can eat humans! After maybe 30 minutes of looking around we decided to go back to Dumaguete and again squeezed on a jeepney with locals, chickens and baby pigs they had bought at livestock auction (there was also a guy with a fab mullet
Ye Old Mc Donalds
...not so old it had free wi-fi, we were trying to be clever with our camera settings (the first time we've tried this sepia lark!) which we didn't manage to get a pic of). We got more than we bargained for then one quarter of the way back we stopped and the driver announced we had a flat tyre. At this point all the women couldn't be bothered waiting and transferred to a jeepney which was following and all the men stood around watching the driver change the tyre, all offering advice amid much head scratching and chin rubbing! Meanwhile we just waited in the back for the men to do their work (it must have been hrad work as some used the stop as an opportunity to get a beer while some wee'd against anything available!). Apart from a 10 minute delay, we reached Dumaguete in one piece, the men a little bit drunker.
After 4 days in Dumaguete we headed to Siquijor (sicky-whore) using Montenegro Lines ferry (8am and 2pm departures, 2 hour journey, 119 pesos - £1.19). There was a faster Delta Lines ferry which only took 40 minutes but it left at silly times and cost a whole 40p more!
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