Another new pin - Cebu (11 February 2010)

After leaving Curacao on 8 February at 6.30 am I finally arrive in Moalboal in Cebu in the Philippines on 11th February at 3pm – bit of an epic journey, but the Cathay flights make the second half and longest half very easy. Can highly recommend! I decided to bypass Manilla, the capital, as it has a really bad reputation both for crime and terrorism and fly straight here. We saw enough guns in Central America to do me for some time....

Cebu is one of the larger Philippine islands and its main economy is based on tourism and furniture.... not sure why - unless the hotel I am in doesn't use the best available!  (see pic)On the way from the airport to Moalboal where I am staying, we skirt Cebu city (I will visit it later on) and it looks at first sight more third world than I had imagined. But we are travelling through the dock area so that may have something to do with it. Shanties are piled up around the place and the dusty streets are lined with small dark workshops. Cockfights take place on the pavements. The jeepney’s that I had expected (old US jeeps tarted up and highly decorated) were nowhere to be seen, instead they seem to have morphed into a second generation version which are larger open sided vans, but still highly coloured and decorated in various ways, most of them imploring God, Jesus or Mary for a safe journey – they may be better off looking towards their driving style.... There are also multitudes of the Philippine tuk tuk, motorbikes with a sidecar stuck on the side and again highly decorated but all seeming to sport tens of big yellow lights.. The journey was about 2 ½ hours and I had wimped out and ordered a taxi to bring me here, looking at the bus driving I was glad!


Once out of the city area, across lots of flat reclaimed land that will be developed as and when the economic situation improves, we slowly make our way across the hills. Lots of the road is in bad repair following numerous landslides, and the hills in many places bare of any trees gives a clue why. Along the way we pass through a great market held every Thursday selling livestock, vegetables and all manner of machinery. It’s held weekly and is all the local mountain villages who come for the weekly trade. But this impedes our progress more as we get stuck behind large open top trucks laden with people, baskets and cows. Luckily my cab driver takes a safer way of overtaking than the buses who pull out regardless of what is on the other side of the road....


The taxi driver is a nice man and we stop for a cold drink on the way. The stop is in a shoe making area and along with the coke and ice cream stalls are rows and rows of shoe stalls. A big display of a huge shoe greets us as we drive in – it was submitted to the Guinness book of records as the largest shoe in the world, but they turned it down as it wasn’t a pair....


The driver also gave me an insight into some of the culture. I commented on the number of schools we passed – the whole route seemed to be schools and churches – and he was telling me how important he feels education is. Especially for girls as they want to learn to be nurses so they can work abroad. Also so they can marry a foreigner.... According to him there are five girls for every boy here (not a statistic I think can be right) but it means they have to look elsewhere for marriage partners. He also gave me an insight into tourism, the Europeans, he said, come here for the warm weather, the Americans come here for “matrimony”....