7000 Islands Nation

After saying goodbye to James, Deborah and the kids for the second time (actually, to James it was the third) having spent another very pleasant couple of nights with them in Cyberjaya, another known face from Qatar was waiting for us in Cebu City airport. Bill, our quiz master and organizer/compere of the music nights for the last five years, was kind enough to accommodate us in his house for the first three nights in the Philippines, but despise his best efforts, the three days spent in Cebu City were way too much. We really enjoyed catching up with Bill and learning about his new life post AKIS, and Flora also enjoyed the visit to Ocean Park (an aquarium that is pretty underwhelming given it was open this year), but Cebu City is a shit hole! There is no other way to put it. The traffic is beyond absurd, it’s dirty, ugly, incredibly poor and it has an obvious problem with safety, as there are heavily armed security at the door of each shopping mall, pharmacy or shop.
Since our expectations about the Philippines were considerably high due to reports from

friends that had visited the country and pictures on the internet, it was with great satisfaction that we took a bus to the north of Cebu so then we could take a huge vehicle ferry to Bantayan island, which Flora had the opportunity to pilot for about 10 minutes, under the close supervision of the captain!
Once we arrived at the port in Bantayan, after getting rid of the tricycle drivers’ hassle, we walked to Santa Fe where Cat and Flora caught up

with learning while Pedro and Bill went to look for accommodation. We ended up staying in a simple but very nice home stay right on the best beach in town, where the family running it were lovely too. The beach was beautiful with perfect sand for Pedro and Floras’ sand castles and had absolutely crystal clear sea water only matched during this trip by Koh Lipe’s standards. There were a couple of nice bars in town where we enjoyed a few beers and watched Liverpool convincingly beating Man City. We had an amazing sea food dinner where we ate the best crab we have had in years, we explored the island by motorbike, taking the chance to visit a beautifully made eco-mangrove walk, and we even had drama when at night, Bill fell into a massive hole that was stupidly left open by the construction workers that had been rebuilding Santa Fe’s drainage system. From the size and depth of the hole and the way he fell into it, it was unbelievable that the fall only resulted in rib bruises and leg scratches instead of broken limbs or even worse. Bantayan island was a definite upgrade when compared to Cebu City where locals enjoy the beach and town alongside tourists. However, a massive and disgusting stain tainted our experience here; almost all western tourists in town were sleazy white old men dragging around their 30 to 40 years younger Filipino “girlfriends” in a fashion that could only be described as exploitative.
After 4 nights in Bantayan we moved to Malapascua, a much smaller island also north of Cebu. The

journey started early and was supposed to be a three-hour boat adventure. However after only one hour, as the wind caught up and the sea started to shake the tiny boat’s wooden skeleton, the two guys driving it informed us that they would take us to Cebu island instead so then we could take a tricycle to another port and a bigger boat to Malapascua. This ended up resulting in a much better, safer and more diverse experience. As we arrived and dropped off our stuff in a nice big bungalow and an equally big porch with sea view, it didn’t take long to realise that Malapascua was a very different type of island, thankfully also with a different type of clientele. Yes, there was the occasional exploitative type of man prevalent in Bantayan, but most tourists around were divers, as according to all the diving joints, Malapascua is the best place in the world to swim with thresher sharks. Obviously, Cat didn’t miss the chance to meet these incredible creatures and woke up one day at 4am in order to do so. The island had absolutely no cars or even roads, only narrow dirty alleyways that connected the beach, where everything touristic was (restaurants, bars, diving shops, homestays, resorts or massage parlors), to the tiny, poor but cute village inland. Despite the same crystal-clear water, the beach was less interesting as it had too many traditional Filipino boats (pretty as they are) that served the multiple diving companies. Fortunately, especially for Flora, the place we stayed had a very good swimming pool. On our last day, we went on a day trip to a

paradise like islet called Kalanggaman. A true picture-perfect little island surrounded by water so incredibly transparent that gives the illusion you could see underwater as well as above it. In our experience, it was only matched by Spanish Wells in the Bahamas. During our stay, we had a couple of fun late nights, in which we met Brent and Sam, a sweet and fun Canadian-Kiwi couple that shared their basketball passion with Pedro and reminded us that in the Philippines, we could meet nice people. Having Palawan as our next destination, we felt that our Philippines experience was clearly on the rise.