Travel + Day 1

It’s been a whirlwind couple of days!

We started off in NZ on Monday with viewing Grandma at Windsor Funerals. It’s a simple room, with Grandma on the table, covered by a cloth (coffin arrives the next day). This was the first time Nathan saw Grandma since she passed away as well.

It was nice to do the viewing before we leave as our next opportunity won’t be till we get back around 26th Feb.

Travel day

After the viewing, Kathleen took us straight to the airport. On the way we were reminded about the primary reason for our trip as we passed the tearfund offices

We arrived at the airport in good time, after a quick bathroom break we went and lined up in the ‘internet checkin’ line. We had turned on auto check in so we assumed this was the correct line, and it seems we were correct.

Checking was smooth, bags check thru to final destination (Cebu), and both boarding passes supplied. We then went thru customs - one of Christine’s bags was flagged for extra checks, but after they looked at the screen for a minute we were good to go. I pretty much always have to go via the full body scanner, so did that, but other than that no issues.

We had some lunch (Better Burger), then headed off to the gate area. Arrived with a little bit of time spare, but not a large amount. Christine was wearing her hidden disabilities sunflower lanyard, so we got to board early which was nice. We got to our seats, and were seated - When we booked we chose the centre section of seats, and ended up with one empty seat between Christine and the next person.

The flight to Singapore was fairly bumpy - not like big massive bumps, just reasonably constant. We were given lunch which was noodles and chicken - it was pretty tasty. After lunch they dimmed the lights and we were supposed to sleep. I struggled to get comfortable so didn’t really manage to get much sleep.

Throughout the flight they were handing out drinks/snacks etc, then about 2hrs from Singapore, they served dinner. We ended up with a bunch of snacks that we didn’t eat, and left them on the seat next to us.

We arrived at Singapore earlier than anticipated - on the plane we’d looked at where we needed to go, and the map of the airport on how to get there, so we were able to make our way to the sky trains, and to T2, and walk thru to the gate that we needed to be at. We had a quick toilet stop, then thru to the gate.

We boarded shortly after that - a much smaller plane with two rows of 3 seats. This time the seat next to us was empty again, so we had the row to ourselves. We had chosen the row right at the back of the plane which was near the toilets, but I think these might have been the only toilets on the plane cos they were really busy. We moved to the seats 1 in from the aisle and cos we were very tired by this point managed to get some sleep after they fed us dinner again. I don’t recall what dinner was, but remember there was ice cream.

We arrived in Cebu around 1.30am, then made our way thru customs - there was a really long line, so it took quite a white to get thru. We had to do an arrival card to get a QR code to present at the airport, however when we went thru customs, all they did was check that we had a QR code, then let us thru… Seems kinda pointless 🤷

Because we were arriving at a very late (early) time we had arranged a driver - so we found the person with the sign, and they called the driver to come get us.

The ride from the airport to the hotel was approx 30 mins. It was raining so it was a bit hard to see out the window, however what I did notice that even tho it was like 2.30am or so quite a few of the small shops etc were open - I noticed some food establishments, as well as mechanics etc. I guess to make ends meet they need to try pick up customers at all hours.

When we got to the hotel, we made it to our room pretty quickly, and cos we were VERY tired went straight to bed.

We were woken up in the morning by some knocking - seems I had put the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door the wrong way around, so instead it said ‘please refresh the room’, how ever we were too tired and didn’t wake up properly to deal with that. We went back to sleep after that for a little bit, but there was general commotion in the hallway, so eventually we decided to get up for the day.

Day 1

We sorted out our rooms somewhat, had showers then headed out into the world. We’d looked on google maps and it was like a 15+ min walk to get to the nearest mall so we’d decided to get a Grab (point to point passenger service like uber), however one of the people there asked where we were going, and advised it was only a 5 min walk to the mall, so we decided to do that.

As per last time, trying to cross the road etc is a bit hectic! Basically try follow a local who is also crossing the road, or step out confidently, and the cars will stop. Also cos they drive on the other side of the road, its very easy to not look the correct direction!

We made it to the mall without too much issue. This is the same mall that I went to last time I was here - it’s quite large, and its layout is a bit confusing. We wondered around a bit then decided to stop at Shakeys for brunch. We had some Mozerella sticks and a garlic cheese pizza + 2 drinks.

After this we wondered the mall a bit more, visited a few specific shops we wanted to go to, then made our way back to the Hotel.

We’d decided to try the hotel buffet for dinner, so around 6pm we went down to eat. There were plenty of foods on offer, so wasn’t too hard to find something we liked. The unusual thing was that the food wasn’t really ‘hot’ (temperature) like we’d normally expect. Everything seemed to be fresh though, so it wasn’t really an issue, just unusual.

After eating we went back to the room, watched a little bit of TV, but realised we were pretty tired, so went to bed by about 8pm

Observations

• its not as warm as I remember it being - its a few months earlier, and its raining. Maybe this impacted it somewhat
• the smell I recall isn’t as bad as I thought, again maybe due to the rain, so will be interesting to see how that progresses
• the mall is just as confusing this time as last time