Today is Wednesday 11th February, and technically our second day here in Cebu. Yesterday we attempted to keep things lowkey because we had essentially been awake for 24 hours due to travel etc and were pretty exhausted, but I’ll attempt to recap what’s happened so far.

Monday 9th was leaving day. This was a really hard day for me as my mum had just passed away on Thursday evening so along with the usual emotions that come with this type of trip I was also processing this loss and the grief that comes with it. There was also a level of guilt about leaving so soon, but mum had told us repeatedly that she didn’t want us cancelling our trip or cutting it short due to her illness (or in this instance, her passing), so I’ve been reminding myself that this is what she wanted, and how upset she’d be if we cancelled our plans. We were however, able to go visit her at the funeral home before heading to the airport which I found really helpful and gave some closure.

The flight itself was good, quite bumpy, but I had read previously that turbulence actually keeps the plane in the sky rather than pushing the plane out of it so I didn’t mind it at all. I did get a bit teary at one point thinking about Mum though. At some point through the flight it occurred to me that I wasn’t stressed, anxious, or otherwise out of sorts. I realised that God was there answering my prayers for peace, and I am so thankful to him for this.

The second flight was “only” 4 hours. We were already exhausted though so didn’t bother unpacking our carry-on and settling in. We just tried to sleep as much as one could in a small airplane seat!

First impressions after leaving the airport when we arrived in Cebu - Although it was 2:30am, there were a lot of people up and about… immediately outside the airport gates there were encampments with people living in them, and also little makeshift “shops” that were essentially put together with whatever tin and wood was available. The thing with these shops though is they appeared to be open 24/7. The concept of needing to be available in these shops at all hours is a challenging one to think about. Being dark though, there wasn’t a huge amount that I was able to see and absorb.

The next day (yesterday) was our first time seeing Cebu in daylight. There was a lot I was already anticipating, seeing as Bert has been here before and told me about his experience - things like the excessively spaghetti-like powerlines, although, he hadn’t told me they were literally right by your head!

The hotel we’ve chosen is a 2-3 minute walk from a really large mall so we decided to head there for some food, supplies, and shopping in general. It was raining a little bit which we think dulled down the heat somewhat, so that helped with settling in. The mall itself though… when I tell you we kept getting lost, trust me. This place is a labyrinth. Part of the issue is that the upwards escalators would be nowhere near the downwards escalators and there’s at least 4 levels in this mall. Add to that the odd zig-zagging paths in this mall and you’re in trouble! Somehow we even managed to get lost INSIDE various stores when trying to exit, and then we got lost in the mall when we were trying to figure out how to leave and head back to the mall. I’m pleased to tell you that Bert has mastered the art of map reading, and we were able to find our way back to our abode. Weird observation though, when we arrived at the mall there wasn’t much going on outdoors but by the time we least there were 4 stray dogs who had parked themselves at the entrance. I suspect they’ve learned the times of day they’re likely to be given scraps.

By this time we were pretty hot and tired so we chilled (literally, I love aircon) in our room until 6pm then went downstairs to the hotel’s buffet restaurant for dinner. You’d think that a buffet restaurant would be a relatively straightforward event too, but I like to overthink everything (hello, AuDHD!) so we were suddenly faced with fun questions like “do we reuse our plates or get new ones?” It turns out the unexpected answer was to get a new plate BUT reuse the cutlery. The more you know. Back up to the room we went, intending to watch some tv for a while but timezones man, they’ll get ya. I was nodding off during our show so bedtime was about 8pm. That’s 1am NZ time so personally, I think we did pretty well actually.

That evening as we were chatting, I was trying to describe my observations to Bert because they weren’t the most uplifting of observations ever. Essentially, here at the mall obviously the predominant nationality we have seen are Filipinos, secondary to this I’d say are tourists from Japan. After that though is where the discomfort enters. Of the European peoples I’ve seen, most are male - and they tend to be older men with younger Filipino females. Obviously not all men with a younger female companion are “bad”, but it opened the door within me to concern for their wellbeing. Bert said they discussed this as a group on their last trip and is a bit of an issue here, but who knows to what extent.

The other observation, which thankfully is a lot lighter, is that other than the stray dogs and one solitary fly, I have not seen ANY wildlife whatsoever. No birds, bugs. Nothing. It’s extremely odd. We did hear a rooster later at night but with the local culture of rooster fighting I’m not sure I’d consider this to be wildlife either.

That leads us to today, Wednesday 11th. We’ve headed back to the mall to have some brunchternoon tea (timezones, they sneak up on you). One of the first things we saw when leaving the hotel was a young male and female sleeping on the footpath next to the extremely busy intersection. They must be truly exhausted to sleep with all going on around them. The dogs were also already out and about so I suspect we’ve had a later start to our day today.

We’ve got a couple of shops we want to look at in this mall, including National Bookstore to get some supplies for the Tearfund centres to use with the children (paper, pens, etc), then we’re considering taking a Grab (like uber) to the other really huge mall as there’s a store there I want to visit. We’re hoping to keep the day relatively relaxed but we’ll see what happens I suppose.