Cebu, Oslob, Siquijor & Bohol
Only spending a couple of days in each, I don’t think these locations required their own specific posts.
Instead, I’ll detail the journey that we took after leaving Siargao and flying into Cebu-Mactan airport.
We knew that we needed to renew our visas, so researched and found an Immigration bureau in the shopping mall in Mandaue City, not far from the Southern bus terminal that we required. We arrived at 7am, entered our information, passports and payment, found a coffee shop with wifi and waited a couple of hours to be granted 29 more days.
Afterwards, we hopped on the bus to Oslob - 5 hours later, we arrived in the South, found some dinner nearby and got an early night.
The next day, we woke up at 04.30am and wandered down to see the whale sharks. We were in a moral dilemma of whether to pay a guide 100php each to guarantee us first boats - was it going to be a scam? However, we knew that our ferry to Siquijor was at 10am, so we took the risk and it paid off! We learnt, there and then, to trust the locals - they are good people and stick by their word. We had a tapsilog for breakfast, hopped on the bus to Liloan port - but our ferry was going from the port down the road, so paid 100php for trike to take us there. Got on the ferry in time, and bumped into our friends from Siargao. It’s a small world!
When we arrived in Siquijor, we ate at Jo’s Chicken, where we ordered chicken sisig, tuna kinilaw and rice, which was amazing. We then caught a trike to San Juan for 400php and checked into our apartment which was bright and clean. We wandered around the little town, bought our first Actimilk - soy, the beginning of our addiction - and settled down for an early night.
Day 2
Waking up early, we hopped on our scooter and headed up into the hills towards the Butterfly sanctuary. This was beautiful, and the beginning of an amazing ecology project. We stopped at Poo Bridge on the way down, then went to Cambugahay waterfall; there is just a donation to park and payment of 10php each to go down to the waterfall. Be aware that you have to pay for everything down, though, there even the rope swing!
walked back up, looked for some food - stopped in Lazi at 24, ordered the Halo Halo with a papaya, carrot & pineapple juice which were both delicious
After the waterfall, we stopped in Lazi at 24, where we discovered the best Halo Halo of our whole trip! We also had a papaya, carrot & pineapple juice, which was sensational. That evening we met our friends for dinner at Annabelle’s, which is quite the experience - you have to walk round picking everything out yourself, including each and every vegetable you’d like stir fried (this means it is amazing and personalised to YOU!)
went for drinks at Dagus which are lethal
went back to Annabelle’s because it is 24/7
woke up sooo hungover
ate muesli & soy milk
headed to Boho Bar to use wifi & finish up working
day 3 - rained but went for a full island tour
Day 3
Our night with friends was long and very drinky, ending up back at Annabelle’s after a risky 4-adult scooter ride and in need of meat. We woke up with a bad hangover, and as the weather was facing the tail of a typhoon, weheaded to Boho Bar to use their wifi and finish our work.
Day 4
Rain all day! We headed for a full-island tour on our scooter, stopping at all the essential places: back to 24/7 for coffee, a delicious chicken noodle soup for lunch and buying our ferry tickets to Tagbilaran for the next day.
We went back to Annabelle’s for dinner, where we had amazing barracuda, chicken and stir fried veggies.
Day 5
We boarded the fast commuter ferry from Siquijor harbour to Tagbiliran in Bohol - then got the bus to Jagna, in order to get a ferry the next day to Camiguin. We ate at Jagna market, where all the school kids were enjoying their lunch. This was tray food to the max!