Cebu

From Puerto Princesa I flew to Cebu. Kent and Sara were on the same flight so I had someone to chat with while waiting for the delayed flight. The flight into cebu actually lands on an island, so you have to catch a taxi in. I shared a cab with a swiss girl, Bettina, who happens to be from St. Gallen where David Fleukinger from ACI is from. So she was quite impressed I could talk about appenzeller and the tankstella (david's favorite bar). We were both searching for budget places and were having trouble finding anything under 13 dollars for a single room, which is extremely high for a city. So we ended up just sharing a double room for that price instead. I must have fooled her that I wasn't a creep with all that talk of st. gallen.

Yesterday I had some errands to run (electronic finding, credit card fraud calling, etc) so I headed off to the monstrous SM mall here. I spent the morning there in much frustration. In one area there were selling apartment and flats for buildings they were building in cebu. Amazing how cheap the stuff was. You could get 1 bedroom apartments in really nice complexes for 27,000 dollars and ones on the ocean in a gorgeous location and fancy complex for 45,000. In the philippines you can't buy a house or own land if you're a foreigner, but you can own an apartment, so it was quiet tempting actually. The houses were even nicer and they tried to offer them to me, but I said I can't since I'm american. No problem they said matter of factly, you can buy one if you marry a filipina. Then they quickly said it should be no problem for me since I'm young and fit. They estimated 3 months and I would have a filipina wife. I couldn't help but smile at that one. One of the ladies even said she'd be interested in a date right there. haha...i find that whole marrying westerners thing kinda crazy. The afternoon I toured around downtown cebu (we're staying in uptown, the newer part, but now there is an upper uptown), which is really a terrible, dirty, polluted, crowded place except for a few spots. Went to an old spanish fort there. THe first one built when the spanish settled here. Cebu is where magellan first landed in the philippines and also where he was killed by king lapu lapu. Saw the cross that magellan planted on cebu and went to a really famous basillica. The holiest basillica in the country and has the santo nino statue that magellan gave as a gift to the queen of cebu. pilipinos travel from far and wide to see worship at it. I ran into Bettina in the supermarket where I was getting some water (its so hot hear now I can only drink and can't eat. I used to crave cheap eat all you can places, which they have several here, but I can't go b/c I'm too hot and still full from the food on the borneo explorer). We went and got massages at a pretty classy place, but the cheapest yet (4 dollars for 1 hr. 15min).

Took a bus today from Cebu City to Moalboal and then walked to Panagsama beach. After over an hour walking around to find a place I finally found a decent price (8 dollars, by the beach w/ private bath). The lowest I could find when I first got there was 15 dollars but I was able to get it down enough b/c know one is here. I'm the only one at my resort and every place else is empty, so I get a lot of attention from all the people at the restaurants and bars trying to get me to come in. Of course I walked back to moalboal for dinner b/c it's much cheaper.

Went for a long snorkel today (3 hours). It was the best snorkelling in the PI I have done so far, though nothing compared to diving Tubbataha. Saw 3 different species of pipefish (seahorse family) and each species was all over. This was pretty crazy b/c I'd only seen 2 individuals in all my snorkelling experience before that. Also saw a school of squid which was cool and unique. A turtle cruised by and I got caught in the midst of a monstrous school of mackeral. They all avoided where I was, but they completely encircled me. Also saw a flounder (flat sideways swimming fish) which are pretty rare. The best part may have been scaring the beejesus out of two divers who were diving the house reef. B/c of my swimming experience I'm pretty good at breath holding diving and can pretty easily go down 20 meters. I saw them down there and dove down to see what they were looking at. I think they saw this big dark figure (me) out of the corner of their eye and thought I was a shark or something b/c all of a sudden I saw all the air rush out of their regs as they gasped and spun wildly around.

Mom you would have loved this snorkelling. The water was incredibly hot partly b/c it was very shallow. I was sweating and the dive shops reported a surface temp of 33C which is 91F. And it was very shallow, like 4 feet, so you wouldn't have been too scared of the deep, yet there was a really nice wall going down 50m right off of the flats.

Tomorrow I plan on diving Pescador Island which is pretty famous in diving circles. I found a filipino run shop which is quite inexpensive and is charging pesos instead of euros like the rest.