100 days in Southeast Asia | Part 3 | Philippines: Cebu

It was quite good splitting the trip into 2 parts, we were way more relaxed and the second flight was really short which helped a lot too. We had a stop over in Kalibo that is the airport for who is going to Boracay. This time we were not going there, but I heard that it is quite popular, crowded and expensive, full of those luxurious resorts and stuff like that. 

Well, not my first option really… Not that I wouldn’t go, but if I had to choose, as I actually had to, I picked some different islands.
Watch our short video here :)

One thing you need to know is that there are over 7 thousand islands in the Philippines, so forget about visiting all of them. Specially if you have limited time, like we had a month haha you can barely see a couple of islands with that time.

So the trick is to pick a couple of island and not try to see as many islands as you can, but try to explore more the island you chose. Because traveling from island to island around the Philippines can get quite expensive and time wasting. You can usually take ferries but i’m not sure, maybe some it is only flying that you can get to. Or sometimes the ferries may take agessss, hours and hours so you might want to take a plane anyway.

We did 5 islands in 4 weeks which wasn’t too bad but if I had to do it again I would’ve done differently, not going to so many islands. But sometimes this happens, you are already there and want to hug the world and see everything. Still, it was a good trip!

We first arrived in Cebu Island, stayed there for 1 night near the airport, at the Chambre Hotel Mactan in Lapu-Lapu city, just so we could adjust and think where to go since we had no plans as usual. 

At the time we paid about $25 (AUD) for the night. Simple, clean and cozy room with wifi and hot shower. Friendly staff too.

So we went for a nice meal and drinks near our hotel and got a great relaxing massage - 1h Swedish massage for $10! They were very professional and clean too. They wash your feet before the massage and everything. Really good, wish I remembered the name…

We asked a Filipino friend for recommendations and so we decided catch a local bus from the terminal that goes to Moalboal.

Oh gosh have I mentioned how bad the traffic can be in Cebu City?? Wow, it was insane, not sure if it is always like that but damn it was terrible, it took us so long to get to the terminal. Ew.

We went to the South Terminal in Cebu city and of course we went to the wrong terminal. I mean, we had no idea there were 2 terminals haha… and right next to each other. Apparently one is the new one with new buses, aircon etc.

And the other one, that we went, which is old, a bit cheaper and no aircon buses, actually really old and rundown buses haha.

Well, I don’t know if it was the taxi driver’s joke or what, because we told him where we were going and he didn’t mention anything about the newer bus terminal. I don’t remember my Filipino friend mentioning anything about it too.. Well he did mention it after I told her how our bus trip to Moalboal was hahaha She LOL badly.

I even tried to excuse myself saying that we were traveling on a budget anyway so it was a good thing catching the bad bus… But the price wasn’t actually very different haha...

But you know what? We got the full local experience! I can use this excuse at least haha it was a quite interesting nearly 4h bus ride too… 

Old bus, packed with locals, we were the only tourists, it felt like a tuna can, and it was stinking hot outside, there was no aircon (which i’m ok with since I prefer windows), the windows were pretty bad tho, but still, they opened and it was good the breeze when we weren’t stuck in traffic jam.

We were quite lucky tho, I can’t really complain… we had a seat and our bus didn’t have any flat tires! Winning!

On the next post I will talk about our days Moalboal, our first ‘real’ destination.