Holiday: Day 3

The two guys who went island hopping turned out to be english teachers in Tokyo. They were really cool and the next day we joined them on the Cebu city tour.

Cebu is not like I imagined. I imagined a city with tall buildings, maybe not as tall as Hong Kong, but still quite urban. I didn't think it would be such a poor city. I guess the Philippines as a whole is very poor but I didn't think it would be. It's definitely not a tourist place. We first stopped at the Mactan Shrine where the Philippians fought off the Spanish. There was a nice park and loads of kids. Lots of them wanted their picture taken. They kept following us around. I don't suppose they see many westerners. At the end though some of the older kids started shouting "Give us a gift...Give me a Christmas gift" which is sad- that they only see us as having money. Although that is true. None of them go on holiday to America or the UK. When we went to the cross thing in Cebu city there were the smallest children begging.

Here we are: Greg, me, Jo and Derek
After the shrine we went to a guitar factory. Well we were told that but it was basically a guitar shop. There were big guitars, tiny guitars, middly-size guitars, funny looking guitars, expensive guitars...guitars, guitars, guitars. None of which particularly interested me. After that we went to another guitar factory because this old American guy called John (who kept talking about the Vietnam War) wanted to hear someone play. At least at this one we got to see where they made them. So then we were driven to the cross. It was put there in the 1500s or something when 800 people got baptised by a missionary. There was a nice painting in the roof but the begging children kinda ruined it. The one girl followed us back to the van and kept pouting. I would have given her money for food if she hadn't got an ice cream in her hand...Felt sorry for her though if that was how she got food. We then went and saw a Catholic church. There's a lot of catholic churches in Cebu, as a Catholic country, but none of them were as big as this one. I don't know what to tell you about it because I didn't find it particularly interesting (again)...There were a lot of statues and pictures of saints, and a queue to pray before a picture of the saint of Cebu. There were loads of people outside the church selling candles and things. John was trying to get these women dressed in yellow (nuns?) to dance. I don't know why...And he kept going on about finding a wife. That's John in the hat:Then we made the tour woman find us somewhere for lunch because we were starrrving, but she wanted to take us somewhere else before we ate. We went to a typical Philippine BBQ place and had a really good lunch. Someone told us that they had really bad food here so I wasn't expecting anything great. We had BBQ bacon...mmmm...and BBQ fish which was the best EVER, and fish soup, and BBQ chicken too. I ate so much and it was all really delicious.

Next stop was the fort. We walked here from the BBQ place. There wasn't anything here than intrigued me either. We walked up onto the battlements (?) and there was a Korean model doing a fashion shoot. Strange location to do that... We all took lots of pictures of the garden. Then someone decided we should spell out "help" on the grass below whilst the guide took a picture. It was so funny doing that! Trying to get John to make an E shape...In the end Derek just did it himself. Greg got the pictures on his camera and said he'd email them sometime. Down in the courtyard there was a blind man and a little girl doing a double act. He played a guitar and the little girl sang and danced. It was cute- they were singing "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas..." and she was jumping about and singing really loudly and out of tune. We put some money in their pot and then we were taken to the Taoist temple.

...Well we thought that's where we were going but we stopped at the Buddhist temple by mistake. So we took a few pictures and left to find the Taoist one. This one was much bigger, much more decorative and more worthy of a visit. We had a really good view of Cebu from the top.

That was the last stop of the tour but we asked to be dropped off at the SM mall which is HUGE. They have an 8 screen cinema, a massive supermarket and a ton more shops in 4 different wings and on 4 different floors. The tour guide took us to a desert place for "Hallo-hallo." It's this big ice cream dish with jelly, crushed ice and sweets in it. I wasn't a massive fan of it, after tasting the sweet potatoe ice cream especially. Yuck.

The tour guide and John then left to go back to the resort (thank goodness, John kicked up a fuss because they wouldn't give him an OAP discount). The four of us then went to the cinema and looked round the shops. They have much better fashion taste here than in Hong Kong. Some of the stuff here is vile- all covered in lace and bows. The supermarket was great too. I really miss having a big supermarket here. We have Wellcome and Park n Shop which are both no bigger than a Spar or Co-op. We stocked up on snacks and then headed back to the resort.