March 2024. 1: Philippa in the Philippines!

And I’m off on another adventure, this time to the Philippines, a country made of many islands situated in the western Pacific Ocean in Asia, surrounded by the South China Sea, Philippine Sea and Celebes Sea. It’s 7000 miles from Portsmouth and only 1850 miles north of the tip of Australia. The country forms the upper part of what is known as the coral triangle, which probably gives a good indication of why it is my destination of choice. The Philippines in its entirety has a population of 114 million people but the island I’m on (Cebu) is home to around 3.3million people.

Anyway, the journey to Heathrow went remarkably smoothly with a lift from my Dad despite the best efforts of all the local and national road initiatives to fill the UK transport network with as many roadworks and road closures as possible. I had a classically overpriced, but quite delicious, airport lunch of chicken dippers and veg and popped via the coffee shop to get a tea refill in my travel cup ready for the journey. The servers were blessed with the youthful skill of being able to work painfully slowly, stop and chat to other server friends behind the counter and take longer than you would imagine is humanly possible to take and make an order while being totally unconcerned by the huge queues and frustration of waiting customers. No one on my side of the counter in the queues showed the same level of apathy as the serving staff so there was a lot of huffing and puffing and watching glaring! I prioritised getting my tea above all else and had plenty of airport time planning in so didn’t really mind the wait.

On my walk to the gate, I passed by a mum struggling with two young kids, both toddling next to her and several bags she was trying to carry as one of the children begun the stirrings of a full-blown tantrum based on not wanting to walk a step more. I stopped and offered some help and was gifted with a large bag in the shape of a penguin to carry and the hand of a small child to hold and I walked with them to the gate. The small child chatted to me about her sister (now being carried) and the dog they’d they left with grandma while the mum told me all about how her husband has nipped off to grab something from the shop and left her with the kids and bags and that it all put a lot of pressure on her pelvic floor and made her feel like everything was going to fall out of her. I wasn’t sure on quite the appropriate response of etiquette in this conversation so I smiled and kept helping her until I deposited them at their gate. I was thankful for my first big glug of tea after that!

I am now on the first leg of my journey - a fight to Dubai, where the local time will be around 1am and I have an hour to get off this plane and make my connection to fly to the Philippines. There, I should have someone waiting to collect me for the long drive to the first destination. This is a 7 hour flight to Dubai, which is 4 hours ahead of the UK then a further 9 hour flight to Cebu in the Philippines, where they are 8 hours ahead of the UK. I think it’s around a 4 hour transfer to the coastal town of Moalboal, where I’m staying. Once I get there, I’m there for a week, thankfully! I have no idea really how long it’ll all take or what the journey time is except to say ‘really long’ and I think it’ll still be March when I arrive!

*****

I’ve arrived! It is March and seems to be bedtime of the day after I left! Although long, my second flight was uneventful - unless you count my two seat row companions; two aging Philippino ladies. One (the one in the middle next to me) was tiny but needed a lot of space it seems. Every time her bony little elbows stretched beyond both armrests, which was most of the time, one dug into my side. She must have felt it but clearly wasn’t bothered. She spread her legs out diagonally from her body and was very comfortable. She didn’t seem to know how the tv screen in her seat worked so she randomly pressed buttons as and when the desire took her and she mostly watched Oppenheimer without any headphones plugged in and her eyes closed. She also kept her massive plastic / leather jacket, her pink fluffy scarf, blue b,a jet scarf and purple hat on for the duration of the 9 hour flight, only taking it all off as we landed and getting her sunglasses out! She slept through most of the flight once comfortable but didn’t seem to like the landing - so she held my hand! Her companion was very smiley and waved at me quite a lot. She knew how to plug her headphones in, successfully navigated to the music section, found the greatest hits of Queen and proceeded to sing along to most of the choruses. Loudly.

I watched Oppenheimer; I was finally in the position where a 3 hour film length wasn’t prohibitive for my enjoyment! I realised early on that aside from knowing he was the person behind the atomic bomb, I actually know shamefully little about the history or science or politics of it (aside from those linked to nuclear weapons of course!). I remember teaching kids about Hiroshima and the horrific effects of the bomb but know little else aside from the fact that Sting sung about Oppenheimer but Billy Joel didn’t list it in ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’ (which I find interesting!) - although he does mention Truman (president who dropped the A-bombs) and the H-bomb. I also almost certainly shouldn’t admit that I was surprised to see Einstein making a few appearances in the film; I definitely thought he was earlier than that and perhaps more around the time of Archimedes, DaVinci and Newton, who I’ve now learnt were an Ancient Greek from prior to Jesus and then from the15th and 17th centuries prospectively. Exposed some giant gaps in my knowledge and dreadful science / maths awareness there! I quite liked the film and found it pretty engaging for its full 3 hours. Yummy aeroplane dinner arrived mid-watch, which was described as beef with mashed potato. It was cottage pie! They give you metal cutlery again now, which is good although the knife has been stunted, presumably to deter from using it to stab people or get hijab-y. It’s daft really as the fork clearly has more damage potential and would surely be the weapon of choice but they have it adapted that at all.

Anyway …. After a 4 hour drive and some expectedly questionable driving by my taxi and pretty dreadful road conditions, I have arrived in Moalboal, the town on the west of Cebu island. I’m staying in Neptune Dive Resort and can see the sea from the restaurant here, which is lovely, my room is nice and has a kettle but not a fridge but that's ok because I've brought plenty of milk powder sachets along with a couple of hundred teabags with me. Tomorrow I shall enjoy a lie in then have a walk round and explore!

*****

On realising this morning that my USB plug seems to have chosen now to give up and stop working, I did an emergency trip ‘The Mall’ - a massive supermarket and shopping centre around 2 miles away, where I was able to buy the new plugs I needed and also a new water bottle, having left mine in the taxi (I think!). I decided against the water ‘bottle’ that holds an entire gallon, although it’s the sort of thing my sister would think is sensible given her water consumption. I was very tempted by the 2 litre tea flask straight out the 70s though! I also picked up some mini UHT milk cartoons, so I'm fully supplied for tea this week! After my trike ride (kind of cross between a tuk-tuk and a motorbike with sidecar set up) to and from the mall, I spent the day wondering the town, finding little bits of sand (it’s more coastline here and not really a beach destination -  mostly the restaurants and dive resorts sit directly on the sea with access only for dive boats and entrance to the water for snorkelling!), but there are places to get to a tiny stretch of sand, which I did and had a very pleasant book reading in the shade of a big tree which I know is not an oak, beech, willow, rubber or silver birch tree but I can’t identify as that is as far a my tree identification learning has got. I also indulged in some shoreline walking & shell collecting session before a late lunch at ‘Chili Bar’ on the sea.

This evening will be dinner and bed, still trying to get out of the tiredness of jet lag then a couple of days of diving to see what this sea here offers up and the famous Moalboal sardine run!