Bali - Seminyak

We got to our five star hotel to discover my parents had phoned ahead and not only booked us some goodies (massages, dinner, drinks, transfer car), but also upgraded us to a suite. Sweet!

I'm writing this by the pool as we wait to go to the airport. The room is incredible, and everything in the hotel feels like its special. For example, pool food.

Or the pool fountain...

Or the pool floats...

Reading is a big part of our time here, as it has been throughout our trip. 

Books Chris read

Dune by Frank Herbert

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Slaughterhouse five by Kurt Vonnegut

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut 

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Books Jane read

A Passage to India by EM Forster

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

High Heat (Jack Reacher) by Lee Child

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

The Right Hand of Evil by John Saul

Faces of Fear by John Saul

Chances by Jackie Collins

Angels by Marian Keyes

So a typical day was relax by the pool...

Relax on the balcony...

Relax by the pool again...

Relax over dinner.

Relax after dinner.

Repeat for three days, then both get too much sun and spend a day in bed with sun stroke.

Though even when pooping 30 times a day and sweating all night, it's hard not to enjoy this place.

We have two ten hour flights, and then we are back to the sunny UK!

Chris

Bali - Canggu

We spent six days in this surfers paradise, but unfortunalty it was seemingly the one week of the year there was little or no surf. 

With the storms and rain sweeping pollution into the sea, the water really wasn't that nice to be in; Jane got sick after 30 minutes, and on day three it hurt when I peed. Yay. 

We boycotted the sea, so spent the remaining time by the hotel pool, visiting shrines, and playing our favourite game (Bananagrams), without which I'm not sure we would have mentally survived this trip.

The hotel we were in was ok... The staff were annoying (useful trait in hotel staff), and actually laughed at us when at 8.55pm, they closed the 7 till 9 happy hour, as we walked into the bar.... We thought they were joking. They were not.

The town of Canggu is very surfer-skater-graffiti based and so there was a nice young vibe around.

Finally, we visited Tanah Lot, a beautiful shrine in the sea, where we were reminded of India once more with a blessing.

One more hotel to go, then home..... Hope the weather gets better first!

Chris

Singapore

We were planning on three days in Singapore, but with hurricane Queenie having forced us to arrive early, we had seven. I can't remember what we actually did on each day, as it's a blur of fast food, malls, and coffee shops, but some of the highlights were:

Botanical gardens

Stunning gardens with bonsai trees, a tropical rain forest area, sweeping grass plains....literally everything. I touched lots of plants because a sign said I should.

Bonsai trees (didn't see any in Japan!)...touched those.

a swing chair.... Not a plant, but connected with it.

Waterfall!

No idea what this is....and I don't understand it; did many stems grow up from one seed into a single tree, or did the tree at some point decided to grow both up and down??

Didn't touch this.

Orchard road

A road of shopping malls. Not just one big shopping mall, but dozens of them, each with hundreds of shops. Insane. Even has a unicorn.

Chinatown

A bustling Chinatown right by the business district, we had some great food here on our first night! There's a closed road very close to here which is full of expats drinking on a Friday night... Lots of fun but with beer in Singapore at £8 a bottle, a bit expensive!

Clarke Quay

The touristy, but cool nightlife area. We walked around and soaked up some of the atmosphere.

Arab district

Markets, groovy tower blocks, and interesting temples!

Raffles

The classic colonial hotel... We walked around, and the gawped at the £20 price for a Singapore Sling (which they invented). Typical Singapore cars parked out front.

Coffee shops

Starbucks are here in force, and were unfortunalty one of the only places we could go for affordable food, wifi, and air conditioning. However, there are loads of independent coffee shops springing up further to the north (little India and farrer park), where we stayed. 

Bayside area

Incredibly modern, with malls running under most of it. You never see anyone on the surface here.

The hotel to the right has a garden and pool on the roof! And a mall underneath. We spent time watching some skaters jump a stair set and some other 20 something's cosplaying... Was the only alternative culture we saw here though.

Football!

We went and watched Malaysia beat Singapore 3-1 in a really close game that was decided in the 90th minute when at 1-1 the referee gave a penalty for some unknown reason. All went downhill from there and riot police were called.

However... 

   - we bought our tickets on the day of the match.

   - it was mainly families there for a night out.

   - it cost £15 a ticket.

This is what English football should be like.

Universal Studios

Jane was apprehensive, I was excited. I had my photo taken with EVERYTHING. However we got there to find the main rollarcoaster was shut till next year! Since we arrived for opening though, there were no queues for any rides so immediately went for the next two biggest rides; the Transformers ride and the Mummy Returns ride.

Jane did not like these rides. The Transformers ride was one of the 3D glasses combined with movement rides. Jane may have thrown up. Four times.

Pushing on, we didn't discover until it was too late that the Mummy ride was a fast rollarcoaster in pitch black. Probably not the best for Jane, so afterwards she decided to spend some time sitting down (in Starbucks), while I went on the Mummy ride another four times. 

The highlight of the day was the Waterworld show which was a live action scene full of explosions, jet ski jumping and high falls into water. Even the site was pretty cool.

After a quick lunch, I started having my photo taken....first with a car.

Then Mr and Mrs Woody Woodpecker.

Pinocchio.

Kungfoo panda I think? He didn't introduce himself.

Optimus Prime! 

This guy who had bigger muscles than me. 

And best of all, the penguins from Madagascar. Through all these photos, Jane looked at me as though I was bonkers. There's only so many times you can line up with kids to get you picture taken with a penguin.

We also went on the Jurassic park water ride (on which I was told off over the loud speaker for taking photos), and then all the kids rides; muppets ride, Madagascar ride, spinning teacups...etc..

And then at the end of the day, Jane went on the Mummy ride with me again! 

Newton food area

We met up with a friend of Jane's who moved to Singapore a few years ago, and after a couple of drinks we moved to this food area. Basically it's 30 to 40 restaurants with a single outdoor seating area, so you pick the best dishes from each place! Perfect....

This is our chilli crab, which we scoffed down with bread rolls. Unfortunalty this was the only place we found tradional Singapore food, though it was tasty and cheap!

Cars

I asked Jane's friend why all the cars here are high end Porsches, BMWs, etc... And was shocked by the answer.

   - Cars can't be older than 10 years here. They get scrapped after that.

   - You must have a certificate of entitlement (COE), to buy a car, and it lasts 10 years.

   - To buy a COE costs £40,000. 

So buy the time you've spent £40k on a piece of paper, I suppose you aren't really going to buy a Fiat Punto.

Museum of Singapore

We went to the museum of Singapore and actually really enjoyed it. It was the first museum we had been to since Japan, as we hadn't really been in the mood, but this was a well laid out experience, and we learnt loads! For example, Singapore was part of Malaysia for two years and Mr Raffles didn't own the hotel.

Light show

There are three light shows around the city each night. We only managed to see one, but it was great to sit by the waterfront with a beer and watch it.

Avoiding the heat

After our first few days above ground, we submitted to live as a mole person and went underground. The malls are all air conditioned and run from one MRT (metro) station to the next, so you really have no reason to go into the stifling heat. We were shocked when we found out that this was their cold season, and that it was far far hotter in the summer. 

The other thing that is slightly worrying is the pollution; the sun is hazy and barely visible on a clear day, due to the burning of rubbish in neighbouring Malaysia. It's a real shame given how clean and green Singapore is.

Seven days may have been too long here, but I do feel we got a really good feeling of the place... and we would definitely need to adapt better to the heat if we were to move here.

Chris

Cebu and Bohol

From Puerto Princesca we flew East to cebu island and it's capital, Cebu City.

Cebu city is one of the largest cities in the Central Visayas. We had been warned it's not a great place to relax and more to use it as a jump off point for the surrounding islands. The traffic was nose to tail almost from the moment we left the airport and was representative of anytime of the day in Cebu. From the surface I can only describe Cebu as unattractive urban sprawl designed around a port. In places this is interrupted by fast food restaurants (mostly JollyBee's), malls and expensive hotels. We had been warned.

When we (finally) arrived at our hotel it was great. Massive pool, welcome drink, lovely buffet breakfast, and great room so we were happy! Of course it had the normal compliment of old American guys with girls young enough to be their grandaughters but we've had to start accepting that that is part of what we'll experience everywhere in the Philippines. Chris chatted to a guy in the pool before the conversation turned to why he was in Cebu; apparently he was having issues marrying his 13 year old girlfriend, and was annoyed that having paid off the judge, the prosecution now wanted cash as well. Chris swam away.

The next day we got a boat to the neighbouring Bohol island, famous for its chocolate hills and Tarsiers. We had read online that Alona beach was a good place to base ourselves so headed there to find accomodation. After an hour of wondering up and down the beach we settled on the cheapest acceptable room we could get...£20 a night. A little rusty and depressing but it was cheap.

This is the view from Alona beach. The boats are either dive boats or fishing boats and are accompanied by an array of dive shacks and restaurants on the shore.

We had agreed before we arrived that if we could we wanted to do our Advanced Open Water in the Philippines so after accomodation was sorted we went to find out if we would be able to do it here. We spoke to all the dive shops to ask about price, equipment, what skills they did etc and ended up going with the first guy we met. He's a French guy called Greg, smokes about one cigarette every five minutes but is just a lovely. We were due to start the next afternoon.

That evening we headed to the beach and had dinner. They served me almost the biggest burger I had ever had but I was hungry so no complaints. This is where we had dinner. Pretty lovely.

At first we liked Alona beach with its simple accomodation and plentiful restaurants but as we walked to and from dinner we began to be harassed by people trying to sell various tours, goods and massages. Groups of children approach the table at dinner singing pop songs and demanding money. It was our first experience since India of this but just as frustrating! I couldn't help wishing they would leave me alone for ten minutes so I could relax.

Dinner over we went to bed and read up on our dive skills for the next day. Day 1 we covered Peak Performance Buoyancy and did our first night dive!!

Night Diving was something I was really scared of before, but Chris and Greg encouraged me gently and I'm really glad I did. Underwater looks very different at night with lots of different creatures coming out. Scorpion fish were everywhere, we saw an enormous lobster and many sets of red glinting eyes looking at us. Plankton becomes fluorescent and crabs are out in full force.

Day two we headed to Balicasaq island which has some of the best coral in the Philippines. It also is home to hundreds of turtles. We saw three....I was ecstatic! First dive of the day was our deep dive. Straight in we descended down a vertical sea shelf and equalised as shoals of fish swam all around us. There were thousands of fish everywhere and they were so beautiful that the dive felt like one of the shortest of my life even though it was 55 minutes long (most dives are 40-75 minutes depending on air consumption).

These are the turtles that we saw....

Dive 2 and 3 of the day were 'Navigation' and a mixture of 'fish identification' and 'search and rescue'. Greg's father-in-law joined us for these two last dives of the day which was great because it allowed me to buddy with him and dive for longer after Chris' air ran out (he always runs low after about 45 minutes and my tank lasts me over sixty so on all the early dives I was returning with a half full tank!)

Anyway we are now proudly 'Advanced Open Water Scuba Divers'.

That night we went for dinner. I had a Swedish massage on the beach for about £5! It was awesome. Chris had a halo halo... A mixture of ice, ice cream, fruit, and smoothie. 

And got hassled more and more...and gave me the below smile to say 'loving my drink but the constant hassling is driving me mad'...I think he nailed it.

The next day we were going to relax at Alona beach...but by lunchtime had become so frustrated with the constant hassling that we decided to do a half day tour to see the highlights and then leave.

So we saw wild chickens (?) Not sure why this always excites Chris so much.

We saw the world famous 'Chocolate Hills'...

We went to a butterfly farm and the largest butterfly in Indonesia landed on Chris a few times...

We saw Tarsiers...

...And learnt that if a Tarsier becomes distressed it commits suicide, so you look from a distance and don't make any sound near them; obviously tough for Chris.

Chris started a conversation with our driver about Manny Paquiau. This turned out to be a mistake when we discovered he was the local vicar and Manny Paquiau has recently changed religions. The consequential rant lasted a 'short' while.

The next day we left Alona Beach and Chris could finally relax hassle free. Smiles all round.

We spent a lovely two days sunbathing in a hotel in Cebu whilst we waited for a ferry to Donsol (to see Whale sharks). Then the day of our boat the port closed down for two days due to 'Hurricane Queenie' and our ferry was cancelled. There was not another ferry for four days, so we spent a day arguing with TigerAir (who are a nightmare), about changing our flight from Manilla to Singapore. They charge an extortionate amount of money for a change, the phone calls were becoming painful, so we actually had to go to the airport to see them!

Finally we flew into Singapore almost a week earlier than expected. The solution...an extra few days in Bali. Not bad.

So in a nutshell my overview of the Phillippines is as follows:

   - one of the most beautiful places in the world

   - clean unpolluted waters and great diving and corals

   - amazing beaches in places

But our experience was tarnished slightly by the difficulty getting between the islands (and consequentially the city stays), the huge number of sex tourists, and unfortunately the frankly rude Philippino people that we encountered. Never an hour went buy that we weren't harassed, lied to, made fun of, scammed or just abused, whether by hotel staff, taxi drivers, waiters, or locals, and that is a huge shame.

Jane (and bits by Chris)