We woke up in the room without windows just in time to fetch the last of the complimentary breakfast. The plan was to get back to Ayala mall for some shopping. Mirsada needed to replenish her supply of moisturizers and we both pondered investing in some snorkeling gear to avoid the hassle and cost of always renting. Apparently they don’t make masks fitting a handsome face like yours truly. We found Mirsadas goods however and also a store bearing the apple-logo. The items inside was not cheap by any means though, in general game consoles or Apple products seems more expensive here than in the US or even Sweden.

We headed off to the airport and were surprised to find out that we were flying with PAL Express, now that 10 kg limit applied and we had to buy ourselves an extra four kilos due to excess weight. Good thing they at least didn’t weight my hand luggage where the bulk of my weight was. The propeller plane we flew with got there on time, and when we saw the arriving airport we were glad that we’d used the ATM on the departing one. Gothenburg City Airport sure isn’t big but it’s a giant compared to this one.

The next planned step was to head towards Port Barton as soon as possible, however we were told by local tricycle drivers that these transport only left early in the morning. This could be true so we decided to stay put for the night. After refusing the 1.5€ ride into town (1km or so) we started walking and learned that the rate actually was 0.1€.

My hair had lost all shape and form and badly required professional help. Little did we expect to find this help in a pink plywood box but inside was a metrosexual Filipino guy who cut my hair like it was his destiny to do so, and all for the bargain price of 0.5€. Nice.

We had dinner at a local place and tried their Sashimi, it wasn’t that bad when it actually thawed. We went to bed early since we needed to get up before 0600 the following day.

The dive was not cancelled! However the fact that up to some 30 divers had congregated pushed the dive shop to it’s organizational limits and beyond. Yours truly was not so forgiving to find out that despite direct instructions both our wetsuits were changed to a larger size without notification. This meant I could more or less skip the wet suit and freeze.

In the end we both managed to find wet suits one size below though (more tight than snug) so I guess it worked out. I don’t have to mention that we were three guys doing an adventure dive with one instructor (Davis?) who didn’t as much as look back at us while descending for our deep dive. Well at least I got a certificate so I can go down to 30m in the future without instructor now.

We waited for the sharks, and waited, and waited. Suddenly someone pointed out that we had four big mantas swimming above us though, looked nice but visibility wasn’t great. We had to ascend without spotting sharks. Back on the boat some guys had actually spotted and filmed a shark though that we hadn’t seen. So close. Overall it was still a ok dive, but I’d rather do it with a smaller group.

After breakfast we left with boat for Maya where a public bus already was waiting. After some 45 minutes Martin and Karin, the Swedish couple got off and we said our goodbyes. We had good comfy seats, blasting Philippine remixes of old school dance music and for the first time the sun was shining bright. The bumpy roads wasn’t so bad after all and in general things looked quite bright. That’s when the bus broke down.This bus wasn’t going to get fixed anytime soon so it was time to refund the tickets (perhaps 3€ for both of us) and start hitchhiking or get on the next bus. The next public bus arrived only after 10 minutes but was completely full. As the next one most probably would be as well. When a private bus stopped by we decided to get on while it was possible and gave away our refundable tickets to a local as a late christmas present.

I think I’ll try to contact the guy responsible for cramming passengers and livestock into the bus when I get back to work. I’m quite certain he’d beat the lot of our optimizers and probably a few of the physical laws as well. Finally we got to Cebu Northern bus terminal though and a quick taxi took us to the spot where a good hotel was supposed to be according to our guidebook. The hotel was nowhere to be found and the address was correct, again we were tricked by the guidebook. We decided to check in at the closest hotel we saw which was good enough although lacked any windows.

As a last activity for the long day we strolled around in Ayala, the gigantic mall opposite the hotel, browsing electronics, clothes and searching for snorkels and masks. An interesting sight or lack of was when there was a blackout while we were eating at Chowking. The whole mall went black for a couple of minutes, I wonder how shoplifting alarms work without power? In the end I bought a hat and Mirsada some accessories for her iPod earphones. Tomorrow it’s off to Puerto Princessa, Palawan with Philippine Airlines inshallah.

Long sleep followed by a late and lazy breakfast as compared to early trials from the spanish inquisition was very nice for a change. The theory is by no means difficult, it just takes time to plow through the reading material. We settled the financial details with the dive shop and headed home, it was slightly raining and I’d decided to leave my ears and sinuses a days rest.

Mapping out what we would do during the rest of the trip until a late lunch was more or less what we did after breakfast. Time really flies when you do nothing at all. Which reminds me, I haven’t thought about work at all today, sweet!

After writing the blog it was time to dress up for New Years, we’d signed up on a evening at Angelinas (which seemed to be where the dive instructors and others also were going) for some nice food, wine and fireworks.

The food was nice, we had perhaps set our expectations a bit too high but it was good value (I guess only the wine would have costed more in Sweden) and we spent some time chatting with another Swedish couple we’ve run into earlier.