Wrong.
In the beginning God created the Philippines and the earth. Correct. Well apart from the whole God thing... Anyway, the point is that the Philippines is incredible - and one of our favourite countries we've visited on our trip so far.
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| This is Tony - his girlfriend is 19 |
We started with a few days in Cebu - the second city of the country. Without much sightseeing to do, we made the most of the more westernness (compared with the rest of Asia) social life, and hit the mall, had lunch at McDonalds, before heading for a wild night out. Special shout out to Moon Café, a Mexican restaurant with incredible food/drink for incredible value.
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| Beasting |
We hopped in a taxi afterwards and cried "take us to the clubs!". A short drive later we end up outside Planet X. This place sounds awesome we think. The first thing we saw upon walking in was a 70 year-old man with around 5/6 "prostitutes" clamoring over him. I say "prostitutes" as you don't directly pay for sex with the girls in the Philippines. You simply pay for their drinks, clothes, housing, university courses and medical expenses, and then in return, they sleep with you. This makes everything morally cool. Probably. The fact that the man was an OAP wasn't a rarity. Filipino girls are of the opinion that 'old western guys have the most money'. So a 60 year-old has more money than a 50 year-old. And a 70 year-old has more money than a 60 year-old. And anyone who isn't white? Man they're poor!
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| One day we may RETURN TO PLANET X (geek joke) |
Back on to the wild night out story. Planet X was little more than a sex shop for oldies, so after we finished watching Paranormal Activity, we headed off to a club for young 'uns. It was good. At one point, some blokes that were leaving bought us some drinks. For being white. We are pretty good at being white I suppose. The night ended with Myles losing some money, which made him angry enough to kick a lamppost. Turns out this hurts a lot. Overall it was a top night out though.
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| I won't divulge the translation |
Following Cebu, we hopped on a ferry to the island of Bohol. We first stayed in the small village of Loboc. It was essentially right in the middle of a mini-jungle. Think Jurassic Park mixed with Avatar. And the lack of light pollution meant the night sky was incredible. Our first night there was topped off by our restaurant giving us a lift home, owing to it being a boat that travelled down the river where our hostel was.
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| The Philippines is huge on safety |
Butterflies, tarsier monkeys and chocolate hills also filled our itinerary whilst in Loboc. All three were brilliant in their own way, although the torrential rain on our way back (we visited them on a beasty bike we rented) was certainly unnecessary. After meeting all the local kids "Hi, what's your name, give me money", we were off to the beach. Loboc was nice but there's only so many times you can take being woken up by 4 million cockerels every morning.
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| E.T. was based on a tarsier - true story |
Alona beach (on the island of Panglao) is simply your stereotypical beach. Straight from Lost or something similarly beautiful. And we had no shame in spending day after day just lounging about there. The highlight of our time there was without doubt, going scuba diving. Just drifting by thousands upon thousands (without exaggeration) of fish, coral and turtles with an incredible feeling of weightlessness was amazing. The variety, and quantity of life we saw was bordering on insane, and there was never a dull moment. The only shame is we weren't able to get any photos of us diving.
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| I guess it looks alright |
But following a few more days of meeting hot Norwegians, security guards with shotguns and 80 year-olds with better sex lives than any of you, it was sadly time to depart. Nothing more than an absolutely brilliant country.
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| Every Tesco in England needs one of these |
