the visayas

after seeing the gorgeous northern part of the philippines, we decided to go south...we took a ferry from manila to cebu, a measly 25.5 hours spent on board...we slept in a giant dorm room...i think i counted about 144 beds in there? there was supposed to be air conditioning, but it wasn't working hard enough, and everyone was hot...even i was hot, and i'm usually comfortable long after everyone else is warm...our tickets included breakfast, lunch and dinner in the cafeteria, so for each meal we got in line and waited...it took about 2.5 hours for them to serve everyone for each meal...breakfast was scrambled egss, tuna, and rice...lunch = chicken and rice...dinner = squid, and, you guessed it, rice...i didn't like the squid at all...oh well...
we arrived in cebu after midnight...neither one of us likes arriving anywhere that late, but we didn't have a choice...we found a taxi who would use a meter, then went to a hotel...
the guidebook describes cebu as being divided into two sections...uptown and downtown...uptown is more monied, cleaner, has more of the REALLY BIG MALLS, etc...downtown is poorer, dirtier, and seedier...BUT we both liked downtown better...there were many more people on the streets, lots more people smiling, and we could see people actually living...by contrast, even though uptown was supposed to be safer, it also felt more sterile...there weren't nearly as many people out and about...cebu doesn't have a lot to see, but it is worth nothing that it was on the island of cebu that magellan first landed in the 1500s...there is a cross in cebu called magellans cross...supposedly somewhere in that cross is a splinter of the cross raised by magellan (well, not him exactly, more likely by his underlings) when he first arrived...magellan himself didn't last long, he died not long after arriving in a battle with a tribal leader named lapu lapu...which only put off spanish colonialization by 100 yrs or so, but at least it's something...lapu lapu is now one of many filipino national heroes...layna and i both enjoyed just walking around the city, particularly downtown...layna found a supermarket that had a make your own salad section, both of us went a little crazy...there aren't a whole lot of fresh vegetables available in the phils, so it was a real treat for us...(most filipinos wouldn't agree)...
from cebu we took another ferry to the island of bohol, the city of tagbilaran...bohol is known for two things...(which are both promoted tirelessly by the department of tourism)...tarsiers and the chocolate hills...tarsiers are one of the world's oldest and smallest primates...they split from the genetic line that would eventually make humans about 45 million years ago...(how do they figure these things out?)...anywho, they are sometimes called the worlds smallest monkey, but they're not monkeys at all...they do look a little like monkeys though...and owls...and gremlins...and ET...they fit in the palm of your hand, but they can also jump 5m...their eyes are 150x bigger than human eyes, relative to body size...their heads can rotate 180 degrees in either direction, just like owls...their eyes are bigger than their brain and stomach!! all in all, they're super cute...they hunt nocturnally, but we saw them during daylight and they were plenty awake...not moving much, but they were awake...
despite what my sister told me 5 yrs ago, i was hoping things had changed...i was hoping the chocolate hills would turn out to actually be made of chocolate...but i was disappointed...the name comes from the way the vegetation supposedly turns brown from the sun during the dry season, but we saw them when everything was green...in all the postcards and other pictures i've seen, they're always green...so why the name? i don't know...i think it's false marketing...UNFAIR!!! anywho, at the chocolate hills complex (which consisted of two viewing platforms, around 10 souvenir shops, and a hotel) we climbed up and saw a bunch of hills...i don't remember how many there are in all, but they're all nearly the same shape...some are bigger than others, but otherwise they're all similar...it isnt known for sure how the hills came to be...right now geologists think coral deposits have been pushed up from underneath the island...personally, i enjoyed the bus ride to and from the hills more than the hills themselves...
from tagbilaran we took another ferry to dumaguete...it's a university town, pretty laid back...it's on the island of negros, which is another visayan island...negros is full of pretty beaches, mountains, etc...lots of outdoor stuff to do...but we didn't have time to do any of it, so we just enjoyed the town, wandering around like we normally do...it was in dumaguete that i received a marriage proposal, a profession of love, AND a declaration of my beauty all in the same day...but not from the same guy!!! gotta love this country:)
from dumaguete we took ferries all the way back to manila, where we stayed for 36 hours before moving on to singapore...when we got off the ferry in manila we thought we'd take a taxi to a hotel because it was raining and we had all our stuff...but none of the taxis would use their meter, and instead were suggesting prices at least 10x what the meter would have been...one driver even tried to justify it by saying it would take an hour or two to get to our hotel...later, we both said that if we had taken his taxi, we would've made him drive around for over an hour, just because!! the one full day we had in manila both of us walked around, not doing a whole lot of anything...the whole day it kept raining, which wasn't fun...i hate rain...not only was it raining, but most of the time it was raining sideways!!! ugh...but after putting on a very very very cheap poncho, i decided to suck it up and just go...so the rainy part ended up being kinda fun...walking through flooded streets, walking into a fountain to take a couple pictures, etc...hee hee...
i wish we could've stayed longer in the philippines, but several things were stopping us...one, the visa you receive on arrival is only 21 days...which isn't very long, considering there are 7000+ islands making up the country!! it takes a long time to get from place to place, so 21 days doesn't really allow you to see much...not nearly as much as you think you'll be able to see...and we don't fly when we're in a country...second, we didn't have more time, just cause there are other countries we want to see...sometimes we wish this trip was longer, sometimes we're both ready for it to be done...