Laughing while snorkeling is imposible. You end up swallowing a whole lot of salt water.

Because we couldn’t dive in Malapascua, we didn’t see the Thresher sharks which are known for their long tails. Instead, we asked the nice man selling hand-carved wood thresher sharks to shorten the tail on one so we could have a black-tip shark or, more accurately, a white-tip shark.

Megan’s first Piña Colada was on Malapascua Island, Philippines. Fresh Coconut and fresh pineapple. “That’s one for the books” she said. QFC premix has a lot to live up to.

We now have credit for 16 dives with Sea-explorers good for 3 years. Guess we’re coming back to Cebu.

$178.82 for 6 days of food and drink. This included our fair share of margaritas, juice, two massages, and one pedicure. Megan doesn’t like having her feet touched.

Our next stop was Balamban in the middle of Cebu Island and James (AKA JamesBond) is our driver. AC in the car! Woohoo! We walked this plank with our big bags on to get off the boat. We didn’t even fall.

Some things that we have seen on motorbikes:

-Two adults with two kids sandwiched between them, with one kid holding a chair.

-Two men- passenger is holding a ladder upside down.

-Two babies driving but mom and dad were there too. Not quite sure what was going on there.

-Mom, Dad, kid and a dog.

-Us!

-700 bananas held between the driver’s legs.

-At least 160 eggs, also held between legs.

-An AC unit as passenger tied on with Saran Wrap.

-Gigantic bags of dinner rolls, bigger than the bike.

-Pretty sure that was two men with two medium, two topping pies from Domino’s.

-6 foot long weed whacker held vertically by passenger.

-A baby asleep on his Dad’s shoulder. Dad was the driver.

-Passenger is side saddle, two hands on her phone and going at least 30 miles an hour on a busy street. Impressive.

Most of the adults in the city wear helmets. Only half the kids have one on.

The people just seem to have a much better sense of balance than me. Sitting on the edge of a fully loaded truck bed piled at least ten feet tall. There were about 4 men sitting on top of the pile.

Many of the cows hanging out on the roadside had septum rings- tied on the other end to a tire. Sometimes just a septum rope, no ring. Just rope through the nose.

Incredibly steep hill up to Evo Nature Camp where we are Glamping. I am not a camper. I grew up a camper and feel like I have done my time. I KNOW it is great. Everyone says so. It’s just not for me. You will not find me loading the car for a weekend away with a pit toilet. Not gonna happen. You WILL find me in a tent that has AC in the Philippines! There are 8 tents at this place and we are the only guests here. Yep. All alone. That means we also get the entire restaurant to ourselves for dinner. “Dinner for two” takes on a while new meaning when the entire restaurant is open just for you.

We had a chance to talk to Will tonight. We paid the equivalent of 54 cents each to have Wifi for the next 24 hours. When asked if he had read the blog he said “No. There are too many words”. Gotta love the brutal honesty of that young man. Megan told him he could have his phone read it to him. No need for him to strain his eyes. He is thinking about it.

There is a bathroom near our tent. Complete with running water, flush toilet and a shower. My kind of camping! There are also a lot of toads and bugs. We are hoping they are not the biting kind. Tomorrow will tell.

This place is on the side of a mountain. The local cows resemble mountain goats with one set of legs longer than the other. Not really, but you get the idea. We are not able to identify 90% of the sounds at night. The only one we are solid about is the occasional motor bike. The rest is a mystery.

It’s like living in a greenhouse. Wet, warm and green.

Lightning bugs are awesome.

“Dinner for two” is one thing, “the whole place to yourselves from 7pm on” is weird. The staff locked up and left while we finished our dinner, we had no idea. They didn’t even say goodnight.

Having a son at home willing to log onto Facebook, for probably the second time in his life, and contact the driver that you want to cancel is great.

Having Will cancel the driver that was going to charge us 12x the going rate for a ride back to Cebu City meant we got to Vanpool! It cost us 6 dollars to go one hour. We were told the van would arrive between 11 and 12. We were packed and ready at 11. We got a motorbike ride to the main road at 12:30 (2 minute ride). Van picked us up at 12:45. They didn’t seem bothered with our large bags, so long as we kept them on our laps. The one hour drive was surprisingly comfortable. We probably should have gotten off at the right stop. That would have been smart.

Got to see physics in action on our van ride. Hauling ass down a hill so the van full of 13 people can make it up the next hill. Fantastic. Science IS real!

Times honking is encouraged:

-Going around a corner

-Passing cars, bikes, people, dogs, and chickens

-Saying hi to a friend

-When you want someone or something to move out of your way

-If you’re bored

You are not expected to change your behavior if you are honked at. Carry on, as you were. Honking is rarely done in anger. It is a simple “Beep Beep”. Like your car’s way of saying “have a nice day but please do what I’m thinking”.

We have met some incredibly kind and helpful people on Cebu Island. We would definitely recommend traveling here.

We were only in Cebu City the second time to spend yet another couple hours in a mall before our next flight. Don’t judge. They are air conditioned, clean, and have food and toilets. We flew to Manila for a 24 hour stop before going to Thailand. And yes, I should have paid more attention when booking our flights to the Philippines. We could have avoided a detour to Manila and just flown in and out of Cebu City. Next time I will do better.

Favorite airplane snack: dried peas and mango. Sounds disgusting but “it is fire”.

Manila was a blur. We were there for such a short time. But it turns out that we love private rooms in a hostel.

We saw Fort Santiago and read about horrifying things that happened to people kept in dungeons there during the Japanese occupation. In 1945, 600 bodies were removed from a very small dungeon and the remains are now buried under a simple white cross. There were signs explaining that this is sacred ground and to treat it as such. 99.9% of the people did, except the mom that took pictures of her daughter posing next to the replicas of prisoners in the dungeon. Yikes.

Megan also got to see a Catholic wedding. Okay, well just a short part of the wedding. We heard the exchange of vows. We did not stay for the rest of the Mass, we got bored.

Our final adventure in town was a huge rain storm. We ran to a coffee shop and waited it out.

Not a big fan of the Manila Airport. Good grief. Online check-in usually means you do not need to stand in line for an hour to get a printed boarding pass. At least the guy in immigration was friendly.

We do hope that Chiro the dog makes it safely to Manitoba. Happy Birthday Chiro! We know it’s his birthday because his crate said so. If I remember correctly it said, “My name is Chiro and it is my 8th Birthday today!”.

Security took forever. We had a face razor thing in a bag. They took the blade out of it. Good thing we still have the two replacement blades we packed, no one wants to see our girl ‘stache.

At the gate, we were told that the airport was on Red Alert and no ground or air traffic was happening. That alert lifted in 20 minutes. We think it was lightning. Fingers crossed.

We arrived in Bangkok pretty late. It was a dark scavenger hunt for the key to our condo. The instructions included things like “walk one block away, find the cabinet, unzip the cover on the cabinet and use the pin to open the lock box with your key”. We are not describing this well. Just imagine an escape room but the goal is to get INTO the room.

I am lonely. This is the first time we have not shared a bed on this trip. Megan is thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to sleep without pants and in the starfish position.

Ordering Açaí bowls to our room using Grab was a stroke of genius. We enjoyed a lazy morning in our two bedroom place. At one point Megan said “Hey Mom! I’m in a different room!”. I wonder if she will be this excited at home when she realizes how tiny her bedroom is and that she shares it with her cat?

We started by visiting the largest solid gold Buddha statue in the world. It is something like 15 tons of gold. I mean no disrespect when I tell you I took a picture of its backside. That is one expensive booty. I couldn’t help myself. And the photo is great.

Chinatown in Bangkok is massive. We started by letting little fish nibble at our feet for 15 minutes. Hilarious! Megan is no more tolerant of the feeling than she was in Bali in 2015.

If it weren’t so hot, we would wander Chinatown all day. The food and fruit stands were something to behold. Mangos, bananas, watermelon, loose tea, huge bags of goji berries, chicken and rice, shark fin soup, mystery meat on a stick, barbecued chicken hearts (five per skewer), and durian. So much durian.

Durian: “I have literally smelled death and it smells better than that” -Mom

We are excited for Will and Emily to join us! They had a number of things to organize at home. Cat nails needed trimming, medicine needed to be picked up, packing had to happen and they got Maria all situated at the house. To all our neighbors: Maria is awesome. She has been encouraged to make the house her home. If she decides to throw a party on the deck, we support this plan!

We ate fire today. Okay, not real fire, but we did order a spice level of three out of five on our pork, basil and rice dish. The “standard” is four. We mixed that duck egg in and ate that fire. Yeah we did. To be honest, we ate half. It was spicy.

If you haven’t played with SnapChat filters lately, you should. They are still laugh out loud in the back of a Grab car funny. “LOL, that’s what I would look like if I was broccoli!” Another good one- “I would’ve made a sexy man, you should’ve made more boys!”

Now we are patiently waiting the arrival of Will and Emily. We will see how they look after 24 hours of traveling.