Cebu, Philippines

Our Philippines island hopping adventure has been unreal and we’re excited to check out the next one on our list, Cebu! We woke up at the butt crack of dawn to take a 6am ferry from Bohol to Cebu. It took about an hour and a half, but it was a scenic ride and we spotted a whale jumping out in the distance! Once we arrived at the port, we noticed there wasn't a dock the boat was pulling up to. We got about 30 feet from shore then the crew just threw out their anchor and told us to take our shoes off and start walking. I had SUPER tight jeans on, so I did my best to roll them up. After tiptoeing our way to shore we put our shoes back on and got our bags. All but me, of course. I couldn’t roll my pants back down to save my life and it was cutting off my circulation. I was literally about to ask someone for a pocket knife to cut them off. After slowly shimmying my jeans for a half hour, I finally to them rolled back down. Phew! It took about that long to get our bags off the boat so all good.
 
We hopped in the smallest trike we'd ever seen - that magically was able to fit all our luggage strapped to the roof. I’m pretty sure we tripled the weight capacity of this little trike because we could only go like 10mph max up the hills. Gradually, we slowly made our way over to another port where we took a short ferry ride to the private island we were staying the night at.
 
Once arriving at the island, we changed into our swimsuits and headed over to the gorgeous sandbar that is the main draw of this island. We swam around in the crashing waves and the soaked in the beautiful turquoise water as we waited for our room to be ready. 
 
Once we were done swimming, we stopped by the front desk to find out our room was ready and it had been upgraded to a private villa. We’ll take it! We opened the front gate of our villa and the first thing we saw was our very own plunge pool. Awww yeah! Then we noticed the gorgeous sweeping ocean views from our villa. Score! We were pretty tired at that point, so we decided to relax in the room for a bit staring out at crashing waves through the open doors. It didn't take long for the boys to get bored, so we spent about an hour playing hide and seek, finding every nook and cranny to squeeze ourselves into. 

Later that afternoon we took a gander around the island and went back to the sandbar for sunset pictures. The tide was super low so we could walk all the way out to it. We skipped about 100 rocks and snapped a few pics before heading over to the playground. Marshall and Tyson played chess on their giant outdoor chess board while Wesley and I played on the teeter totter. By that point it was dinner time so we grabbed a table at the hotel’s restaurant and had a buffet dinner that included lots of yummy desserts. 

We woke up the next morning excited for our whale shark tour! After scarfing down a delicious breakfast, we left the island on a ferry to the mainland. Our tour guide met us at the terminal and drove us over to a beach a few minutes away. There is a ticketing system to get a place in line to get on the little rowboats that take you to see the whale sharks. We were informed when we got there that they were closing the tours for the day because of the windy conditions. Our tour lady went and talked to a few people standing next to the ticketing desk and she came back with a huge smile on her face. She got them to give us the very last tickets of the day before they closed! Phew, that was close!
 
While we waited for our turn, we walked over to a nearby coffee shop to grab some drinks. Our tour guide said it could be up to a 2 hour wait, but it only took about 15 minutes. Yay! Since we were the last ticket called, we ended up getting a boat with a crew of 4 rowers all to ourselves. They rowed out about 100 feet and then told us to jump in the water. The locals were throwing chum in the water to attract the whale sharks. We didn't see anything at first and then all of a sudden a mountain of a shark came swimming right towards us. Turned out there were several swimming within a couple feet from us. Their mouths are massive! The boys couldn't believe how big they were. Such a cool experience!

The next stop on our tour was Tumalog Falls. This waterfall looked straight out of Jurassic Park! There was guy hanging out by the waterfall that calls himself the “human drone”. He basically takes videos for you and moves around really fast, making it look like a drone did it. Pretty cool, thanks dude! Next to the waterfall was a pond that had the little fish that bite the dead skin off your feet. We've seen these at 'massage parlors' before in SE Asia, so we were curious what it would be like in nature. We all sat on the edge of the pond and stuck our feet in. Tons of fish swam over and started nibbling on our toes. Such a weird feeling and the boys were surprising digging it.
 
After leaving the waterfall we had a 4-hour drive ahead of us to Cebu City. Yaaay...NOT! We were already hungry, so to hold us over, we stopped at a good ol’ 7Eleven to grab a few snacks for the road. We made the most of the ride and just sat back and enjoyed the scenery as we drove through several small towns along the way. 

Around 5pm, we arrived at JPark Resort which is a huge resort with several restaurants and a waterpark. Unfortunately, we got there about an hour before the water slides closed. To top it off, the reservation I'd made months ago didn't get into their system, so the front desk had to completely rebook us. Luckily, there was a room for us and the boys happened to already have their swimsuits on so we quickly walked over to the slides to get a few runs in before they closed. The boys only got about 30 minutes on the slides, but all good, we had the majority of the day the next day to hang by the pool and beach before our flight out of Cebu.
 
Once we got cleaned up for dinner, we headed over to the Chinese restaurant next to the pool. We noticed outside the window that there was a cultural performance happening, so we ran out to enjoy the show while we were waiting for our food. There were singers, dancers and fire throwers performing next to the pool. So cool! 

​The following morning, we started our day with the biggest buffet breakfast we’ve ever seen with all kinds of international foods. Once we were stuffed, we set out to explore the rest of the hotel. We found the arcade which had a couple bowling lanes, air hockey and dart boards. So, of course, we had to play all those until the pool opened.
 
Right before the pool opened, we ran up to the room to change into our swimsuits. I figured that would be a good time to check into our flight that was leaving at 3pm. As I’m doing our online check in, it says our flight is leaving at 10:50am! What??? That can't be! I checked again, and sure enough they'd changed our flight on us without any notification to me (or at least that I saw). I looked at the current time and it was 9:20am. Our flight leaves in an hour and a half and the airport is nearly 30 mins away!! We scrambled to get our suitcases packed up and ran out the door. We asked our taxi driver to put the pedal to the metal! 
 
As we got closer to the airport, our driver turned off to a side road and asked us if we had 100 pesos. We weren’t sure why, but we handed it to him and then he handed it to an airport security officer at a side gate. Apparently, you can bribe the security officer to let you take the shortcut road through the back of the airport. Sweet! We got to the airport with one hour until our flight left and luckily were able to make it to our flight on time and even had time to grab a coffee. Phew, that was a close call! Well, the boys didn't end up getting to go on the slides much, but hey, at least we didn't miss our flight!
 
Cebu, Philippines has a lot to offer and wished we could have explored more but it’s time for us to head to our last stop on our trip.
 
Next stop: Taipei, Taiwan