The pic doesn’t really do it justice, but Sal made friends with some lovely critters a couple of nights ago… 
VERY ITCHY!!

This is the street food place across from our hotel today, 26 different dishes available!
They range from sardines in vinegar and chilli, to smoked eggplant with coconut and ginger, chicken hotpot with tomato and soy beans, stewed pork belly, it’s all delicious, and at only one dollar a plate it’s amazing value.

This is our breakfast, greens, rice, eggplant and sardines…
Loving it here!

The sign just outside our room

Toledo to Cebu city today on the scooter, we took the road over some ‘mountains’, up to almost 1000m!  Nice to feel some cool fresh air for the first time in months.
It’s always nice to find some altitude anywhere in the world, for whatever reason it’s usually cleaner, better kept and people take more pride in their houses and surroundings.  Lots of flowers, bullocks lazing in water flooded terraces, dogs sleeping on the road, smiling people. Really nice ride.
Then Cebu city… Horrible. Where we went shopping for some bits and pieces in a couple of mega malls. Christmas decorations are in full swing over here, the street kids begging for food are even singing carols to try to make money!
Anyway we eventually got the bike back to the hire place, then took a mini van thingy half way to the pier, and a taxi the rest of the way, 2 hrs on the boat and a 20min walk to find somewhere to stay in the town we landed in called Tagbilaran.
So now we have a lovely clean room, walls painted pink? and green, two single beds and a shared bathroom.  Sal is asleep, time I did the same.

Last couple of days have been making miles on the little hired scooter, from Dauin to Binalbagan last night, then to Toledo tonight which we opted to stay in rather than push on into the night to cross the island to return the bike in Cebu city.

Today’s ride was really pretty, we crossed Negros island, west to east over some little mountains. The road was lined with sugar cane most of the way, but in all the little towns there were nurseries set up on the roadside selling flowering plants, very colourful.

It can be hard work on such a little bike though, sharing the road with lots of sugar cane trucks, buses, motorised tricycles and in the towns the pedal powered tricycles are everywhere.

I’ve never seen these type of tricycle before, they’re an old bmx bike, with a sidecar welded to the side. People use them to go to get around town with, I guess it’s like a budget taxi.

The next step up is a little motorbike with sidecar welded to it, 7 pesos for a 5 min ride, (20c). 

Then it’s the jeepinos, imagine a stretch jeep, with people crammed in like sardines.  And finally the mini van, which is usually only carrying twice as many people as seats, and may even be air conditioned!

Over dinner last night we got to talking to the owner of the resto about the Philippines, life in Manila and the people in these little towns.  He explained that life in Manila is comparatively hard, so he and his wife had moved to the country where food is much cheaper to buy, and so here they can exist without so much of a struggle.

He went on to tell us that the ten year old boy hanging out across the street was actually homeless, pointing to a bench seat across the road, ‘that’s where he sleep’.  Pretty hard going to be only ten and homeless.

In the same breath he asked whether we’d had any problems with people here, which of course we haven’t, and he told us that it’s quite dangerous in some parts, that it’s not uncommon for someone to be carrying a gun!

Then he lowered his voice and told us that many people still believe in vampires, or not really vampires, but people who can change form into animals at night time. It was a full moon too…

Then he told us that one night his wife and her friends were in their house, when they heard some noise from outside, like a man breathing, deep heavy breaths.  Then out of nowhere a cat jumped through the window and ran through the kitchen, and they had to chase it out of the house.  He leaned forward in his chair and whispered

‘before I did not believe, but now I not sure’

‘Ok… There are cats everywhere here, why couldn’t it have just been some random cat?’ We asked.

He nodded wisely and agreed that maybe that’s how it would seem to us…

We’re still not sure if he was having us on 🙂

Tomorrow we drop off the hunk of junk scooter and get a bus to Bohol Island.

So after lots of days on buses and then lots of hours on a crappy hired scooter we finally made it to some recommended dive sites!

First stop was Moal Boal, on the west coast of Cebu. Macro dives which were made more interesting with a fantastic dive master who pointed out animals we had never seen before. Apart from losing Dean on one of the dives it was pretty easy diving…. Luckily he was waiting on the boat for us when we surfaced 😁

After a few days we caught a ferry over to the next island, Negros and headed straight down to Apo Island. 

We ended up diving with a Korean dive shop named Crazy Bubble and it was one of our  best days yet ☺️. It was one of those days where everything just flowed and we didn’t want the day to end. We ended up spending about 15 hours with the manager Gemma, dive master Blue and fellow diver Joon (no doubt incorrect spellings!) and left wanting Korea to be our next travel destination!

The diving was good, made better by Blue and his attempts to communicate with us in Korean but the company was even better.
We were lavished with Korean food and culture and ended the night with white wine (the first since I left home 😁) and a sad good bye 😔 but I have no doubt we will see Gemma back in Australia one day!☺️

Back on the road today we had to negotiate about 30kms of unmade road which was pretty hard going on the scooter which already sounds like it’s about to break in half! Not so much fun… We may need to revise our plan of travelling around the islands and just head to the next dive spot!