• Panglao

    January 5 on the Philippines ⋅ ☁️ 82 °F

    6 dives ea
    Happy to leave the cold weather of South Korea, we landed in the Philippines at one thirty in the morning.
    It was an interesting trip. You would have thought we were rookies.
    We made it to the airport with plenty of time. We got checked in, got our bags checked, got our tax refund, had plenty of time to enjoy the lounge, but then it all went awry.
    Keep in mind, all announcements are in Korean, so we were at a bit of a disadvantage. We thought the flight was just delayed, and that's why they hadn't started boarding yet, but when it came close to departure, time and they still hadn't started boarding, we decided to ask. We were at the wrong gate. We quickly grabbed our stuff and took off running for the correct gate. Luckily, it was just a short distance away. They were of course waiting for us. We were the last aboard.
    That was bad enough, but that wasn't the end of it.
    When we landed in Panglao at 1 am, we were reminded that we needed to fill out e-travel documents prior to landing in the Philippines. Oops! We spent most of an hour at the baggage claim area trying to get the documents filled out. We were fortunate to have a young lady who worked at the airport help us out, saving us a ton of time.
    We got a half price ride to the hotel by a driver picking up guests for an other hotel. Great, except the vehicle was too big to drive down the last road to the hostel. So we ended up having a block and a half walk carrying our suitcases because the road was to rocky and muddy to roll them. Did I forget to mention that we were only staying in that hotel because I got the days mixed up and we needed to check in a day earlier to the hotel we were really staying at. Which, by the way, had a nice concrete drive.
    But hey, it was warm.
    We got up the next day after our very short night and we managed to move our stuff to the correct hotel But this time we hired one of the motorized tricycles that could make it all the way to the hotel, so we didn't have to carry our bags back through the muddy road. We found a delicious vegan restaurant and we booked dive trips for the next two days.
    JASDIP!
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