We began the day by testing the hotel restaurants buffet breakfast. It’s pretty good, but finishes at 10am and we’re attempting to sleep in most days this week before the Tearfund portion of the trip begins so don’t always get up in time.

We then caught a Grab to SM City Cebu Mall. It was such a huge mall - 11th largest in the world apparently. Like the Ayala mall though it wasn’t laid out well so we got lost quite easily. The other odd thing about malls here is they seem to REALLY not want you to sit down at all. Not unless you’re at a restaurant or other establishment at least. I understand it to a point, but it does feel like a bit of a deterrent.

With SM City being further away it also meant we got to see a few more sights on the drive there and back. It was hard to fathom what we were seeing - we’d be in a relatively “normal” street, then turn one corner and suddenly we were in a neighbourhood affected by such poverty. The buildings were in poor condition and built so far out that they essentially were on the road itself. At one point our driver took us down a dirt road, turned a corner, and then somehow we were right by the mall next to our hotel again! I was (obviously) expecting to see poverty on this trip, given what we are here for, but the part that is difficult to reconcile is how close together the scenes of developed and underdeveloped are.

Once we got back to the hotel, Bert nipped out to the 7-eleven to stock up on bottled water and Coke Zero. Weirdly, Pepsi is an endangered species here. If you keep your eyes peeled you might spot a bottle of regular Pepsi, and if you’re extremely eagle-eyed you MIGHT see a lime flavoured Pepsi Max. So far there has been no one with generic Pepsi Max though. As far as travel issues go though, this is very low-tier.

After this we watched a bit more tv and ordered a pizza from room service. We’re pretty happy to stay in the building in the evenings so either room service or the hotel restaurant is doing us well for dinners.

The next fun hotel-related activity is going to be conquering their laundry services. I found their price list and turns out it costs 31 php per pair of women’s underwear and 41 php for men’s. Unsure what it is about men’s undies that pushes up the cost, but 41 php is just over $1 NZD so it’s not as though it’ll break the bank!