Bahala na

We did it! After years of dreaming and months of planning, we are now in the Philippines and our adventure is underway! This post is a trial run, with a few pictures of our travel days. Learning to blog has proven more challenging than I expected, but I think I’m getting close to something functional :-). Travel started Monday afternoon, Jan 8, with a drive from Neepawa to Winnipeg (Thanks, Greta!!). Tuesday morning we were up at 03:00 for a shuttle to the Airport, then a 05:30 departure to Vancouver. Then we had a 5.5 hour layover in Vancouver, a beautiful airport, where Leisel’s phone and Eveleigh’s sling bag were lost and miraculously retrieved. Then a 12 hour flight to Seoul. Korean air service was impressive, with very fast and efficient stewardesses. We had a very short layover in Seoul: someone from the airline was waiting for another couple and us and rushed us through the airport and security to our next flight. We’ve lost all track of time at this point.  The last flight was a 4.5 hour flight from Seoul to Cebu. Then a friendly “Grab” from the airport to our hotel. (Grab is the Philippines’ equivalent of Uber). The view from our hotel was amazing, but we basically slept for the next 36 hours, with brief breaks for swimming and eating. 0700 Thursday Morning, Philippines date and time, we called our previous Grab driver who brought us from our hotel to the ferry terminal. Traffic and transportation here is interesting enough to get its own blog post – stay tuned. We had a 2 hour ferry ride starting just after 10:00 to get us to the island of Bohol. We saw lots of little tropical islands and fishing boats en route. Our next driver was waiting for us on our arrival. I’m not sure how he picked us out of the crowd… Our 3 hour drive across the island started with a stop at McDonald’s for lunch! They offer fried chicken and rice, but we opted for classic cheeseburgers. Our resort is just outside Anda, on the southern tip of the island of Bohol. It’s a little piece of paradise called Blue Raven. Well, that’s a bit longer of a post than I anticipated for a trial run, but I suppose that’s appropriate because it takes a long time to travel to the other side of the world! We’re excited to see what comes our way in the next couple months. If this post works, then I’ll try to post frequent updates. Bahala na!