Chinese New Year = Vacation! So now for the next 10 days I'll be around Philippines. I booked the tickets in time but it was still almost sold out since so many are leaving China for the holidays. The tickets cost me pretty much the same as tickets home to Finland although this is much closer.
We had a connective flight in Manila and got around 5 hours to go see the city in between the flights. Arriving at the customs was smooth, visa upon arrival for Finnish citizens 3 weeks without any kind of application. Visa was free even thought the Internet says it costs 25 U.S Dollars.
Add about Russian choco, now haven't I heard that phrase before...
People here speak really good English, in China they are no where NEAR the level and China should be more developed than here (but then again so should Korea and Japan be). Anyway, the policeman at the airport told us to go to a huge recently opened mall. It was just next by the sea and had a huge Ferris Wheel we went to ride. Also some shows by a local fat magician man :) They even had an ice skate park, in +32 degrees sunshine. Must be energy efficient to keep it cold. The people who were skating probably never seen skates before, they kept holding the rail and had shaky legs.
Some skyline pictures of Manila city here, not too clear though. The city wasn't as poor as i expected after hearing all kinds of stories and seeing video footage or then I obviously didn't move far enough from downtown.
After a few hours in Manila we got a cab back to the airport and it was half of the price compared to the departing on. Around 1,5 Euros so it's really not a big loss...We flew to Cebu city which is about 1 hour south east of Manila. We had had a car pick us up at Cebu airport and it drove around 80-100km/h in the jungle on REALLY bad roads. This was the first time in my life I got carsick but managed to be withouth throwng up. After 3 hours of crazy-frenzy driving we arrived safely (What's the odds after THIS ride??) to the port where a boat picked us up. It was quite stormy and VERY dark. But another 40 minutes later we finally arrived to DIVERS PARADISE! MALAPASCUA! This is thanks to Matt Reed @ Evolution Divers who is our dive instructor and has been living on this island for over 2 years now. A good 7am - 2am trip in total.
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