Panglao Island, The Philippines

After Boracay we caught a ferry to Iloilo where we spent a night in a Pensionne. It was owned by Carmen, a Filipina widow. Her husband had been a General in the army and had died 3 years ago of Alzheimer's disease. As his pension was not enough to live on she rented out the 8 bedrooms in her house and usually had backpackers and travelling salesmen stay in them.

Her daughter was a scrabble fanatic and travelled Asia attending competitions and all her awards were displayed in the room.

From Iloilo we caught a ferry to Cebu City. The journey should have taken 12 hours but actually took 14 hours. We booked an economy class bunk which was on an open deck. It did have a plastic cover for the sides if it rained but it didn't. We managed to get a reasonable night's sleep and were woken by roosters crowing at about 4am. Some of the passengers were had their fighting cocks in cardboard boxes beside their beds!

When we arrived in Cebu City we were met by hordes of people in bamboo outrigger boats begging for money. They had large sacks attached to poles so they could catch the money as it was thrown from the decks above.

Cebu City is not dissimilar to Manila City so we were not interested in staying any longer than we needed, so booked into a quiet pensionne in the sleazy uptown part of the city. There were a lot more people on the streets begging here than we had seen in Manila.

From Cebu we caught a fast ferry to Bohol Island and then a rusty old bus without windows to the small island of Panglao which is joined to Bohol by a bridge.

Christmas dinner

Panglao has a small white sandy beach area called Alona Beach with lots of resort style hotels lining the beach. There are also the usual outdoor restaurants and bamboo bars. We are staying just off the beach in a quiet (Swiss-Filipino run) resort in a self- catering cottage with air-con and TV. We have managed to get some groceries and cooked for the first time since leaving NZ!!

Swiss and Filipino friends!

For Christmas day we ate a Filipino style buffet on the beach. The buffet included a whole pig that had been cooked on a spit (Lil had seen it earlier being dehaired in the yard across the street), whole fish in sweet and sour sauce, fried chicken and lemon, beef stew, grilled oysters and some desserts made from rice, coconut and corn.

The restaurant also put on a show of traditional dances from several of the islands and invited the guests to try to dance between the bamboo sticks without catching their legs as the dancers banged them together. It was too dark to get any decent photos which was a shame. It had rained earlier in the day and on the night the moon came out and the sky filled with stars!

A typical Sari sari store where you can buy one of anything.