Monthly Archives: May 2014

Movenpick

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Other than the Mactan shrine there is not much else to see on Lapu Lapu island.  After the shrine, if you continue along the road you reach a bunch of high end resorts.  These seem like the kind of places where people fly into Cebu, get a shuttle to the resort and don’t leave there for a week.

Most of the resorts have private ferry terminals behind where you can take boat trips without mixing with the regular people 🙂
Anyway, it was close to lunchtime and google maps shows a movenpick, which is a pretty fancy five star resort.  It has a couple of restaurants and a security guard with a gun at the front gate.  I asked if I could eat lunch there and they escorted me in.  I guess not many guest just walk up to the front gate!
It was quite fancy.  I had fish that was fished today and everything was very fresh, but it was very pricey for a lunch in the Philippines.
Before the main course, they served bread and a small appetizer. Everything was well presented.
Lunch ran in at 750 pesos, which is about 18$ Canadian.  From a western perspective it’s not that bad, but to put it in perspective here, I can usually eat lunch for 100 – 200 pesos ( 2.50$ – 5.00$).
The place was pretty quiet with a mixture of westerners and well dressed Filipinos.  The resorts clocks in at 200$ US per night which seems crazy expensive here!
I took a jeepeny back into town which got some smiles from the staff and some odd looks from westerners staying at the resort.

Lapu Lapu

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The Philippines big hero is Lapu-Lapu who defended Cebu against Magellan back in 1521.  The location where the battle happened is on Mactan island where the Cebu airport is located.  Since I’m staying on the island tonight to catch a morning flight tomorrow, I decided to check it out.

Apparently Magellan was wounded by a spear to the head and retreated to his boat, where he later died.  The boat left Cebu and continued on to finish circumnavigating the globe.
From Cebu city itself it’s kind of difficult to get here.  However, if you are already on Lapu Lapu island then you can ride a jeepeny around the back of the airport for 10 peso.

Cebu pacific

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This morning I flew from Camiguin to Cebu.  They have a single flight each day that departs at 7:30am.  Since there is only one flight, I do wonder why they could not of made it at a more reasonable time but I guess it’s a scheduling issue with the airline.

It was a small ATR turboprop.  As usual in the Philippines, we walked across the runway to the aircraft.
There was no cargo hold, the luggage went in at the front of the plane. They also weighed the passengers so they could balance the weight on the plane.
What made me laugh though were the safety announcements!  They announced that in the event of a decompression there were oxygen masks above some of the seats!  While I looked up to see if I was one of the lucky ones (unfortunately not) they announced that a tool was required to open the panel and a flight attendent would assist if necessary.
This seems to be a good example of how Cebu pacific follows most of IATA safety regulations, but not all.  This aircraft never exceeded 15,000ft anyway so it didn’t seem to be a major concern, but it still made me laugh.
The schedule was interesting.  Once the aircraft was full we left.  The actually landed in Cebu just after we were supposed to leave Camiguin! It was just a 40 minute hop with great views of the islands.
Yesterday I took a small boat across to another island with a marine sanctuary with some pretty good snorkeling.
Now these boats are interesting.  They are balanced by bamboo on each side so they don’t topple over.  There is not much to protect you from the ocean though, so you usually get soaked!