As the title suggests, I’m still alive and moee importantly, still travelling :)

I’m currently three countries behind in my bligging, but with a broken phone and my favourite keyboard not working, I’m down to horrificly slow typing!

I will eventually get back to it, probably when i get home and have a physical keyboard again ;)

In the meantime, I’m making sure my journal is up to date for when I do have a chance to update :)

I decided to wander around and get a feel for Cebu while I visited a few of the tourist hotspots. One of the things I love about the Philippines are the greetings you get wherever you go. I was ‘hi ma’am’ed all the way to fort San Pedro and around Cebu until I got back to the hostel that evening - some even the in ‘I love you’ when I said hi back… Such a great country! I should live here… I’d be loved forever! ;)

Anyway! I digress :) I managed to meander along to the fort, which is absolutely beautiful. This is mostly due to the fact that a gardening society had control of the port at one stage and planted the most gorgeous flowers and gardens there. A blind man was playing a guitar and singing beautifully while I was there, which also helped!

I made my way to the Basilica of the Santa Niño to look at the statue - I tell you, they don’t do Catholic churches like this one at home! The ground were stunning, full of fountains and well maintained gardens and the church itself was beautiful.

Then it was time for Magellan’s cross. I thought it would be lovely, but the big sign over the cross you can see is that this is a cross that was built to contain Magellan’s original one. I felt a bit shafted ;)

I got back to the hostel and was trying to plan my next move when I got chatting to the owner of the hostel. I told him I was Irish, he says oh! Bill Cullen! I say, wtf?? How do you know him?? He told me he loves the apprentice shows, so he watched them all, including the insanity that is the Irish one ;)

After the owner disappeared I went back to my musings and meet a girl called Leanne, who decided to come with me to Bohol - yay for company! :)

My flight to Cebu was later on that day, so I got everything ready and started my trek to the airport. I got dropped to near the terminal (I don’t think tricycles are allowed into it) and went to check in.

Normally, check in’s are all the same, but not this one.. I was asked if I was pregnant, to which I gave my usual reply - ‘thank God no!’. This time however, I was definitely told off about my attitude, the check in last said to me, absolutely straight faced - ‘Babies are a blessing ma’am’. Well! At that point I felt I had to say that they were, but not for me, not right now… Definitely felt like a hell though!

After the check in, I then sauntered around until my flight and for the first time in I don’t know how many years, I didn’t have to finish my bottle of water before walking through security, happy, happy days!

I got a taxi from Cebu airport to my hostel, though it was clear the guy didn’t have a clue where it was! We went to talk to the world and it’s mother before we finally found Tr3sts (treats) hostel by complete accident and using my eagle eyes! All the training at finding car parking spots for my mother when we were younger finally paid off! ;)

My first morning in Manila began with breakfast in Starbucks. I thought I’d get wifi there, as is usual with Starbucks, but it seems that over the last two days I found the only two Starbucks shops without wifi!

I ended up going to an internet cafe afterwards to book my flight to Cebu the next day, then went for a wander through Rizal Park. It was all going well until I went past some loudspeakers beside a lake - they were blasting Christmas tunes at the start of October!

At that point it began to absolutely poor with rain - and continued until well after I’d gotten back to the hostel. So I did the only thing a girl can do in those situations -I found a nice café and chilled for a few hours! :)

Flight days are always a bit nerve wracking, you’ve to get to the airport, check in, make sure everything guess ok. The only drawback is that here, you usually don’t speak the language they do ;)

I got up and booked my bus to the airport, then had to find an internet cafe to book a flight out of the Philippines (a requirement by some airlines) as well as accommodation, since I’d be arriving so late. An hour and a half later, i had somewhere picked out but no booking and had decided to fly to Singapore. Of course, thus all meant i had to get back to the hostel, pack and book everything before 12, giving me a grand total of an hour to do this, as wifi changes everyday at midday and check out was then too… Talk about stress and cursing myself for being a last minute merchant ;)

Somehow, i managed to book everything in fifteen or so minutes (flight took about 8!) and got myself packed and checked out on time, fantastic! At that point, breakfast was definitely on the agenda before the airport pickup. I met Tom for the second time that day - people from Crookes just keep finding each other! :D then it was time for the pickup and trip to the airport :)

The flight was uneventful - mainly because i had an emergence row to myself, SCORE! Thankfully, getting a bus from Clark airport in Angeles to Manila city Centre was easy enough. it took two hours and a bit but the time flew - i got chatting to a Filipino missionary about how hard it is to get Bibles into Vietnam/Cambodia, they really don’t like that there! Then he jokingly said that if i ever wanted to smuggle Bibles to give him a shout, hilarious! The radio was also playing great stuff -Cynthia, Rachel you’d have loved it, they played ‘Way Back Into Love’ from music and lyrics, fantastic!

After all the promises of waking up early and doing Bangkok, we woke up at midday, just in time to pay for that nights accommodation! it was definitely time for breakfast after that, but unfortunately my body decided that the tuna sandwich was not going to happen :( so not fair!

i ended up spending another few hours back in bed, as did Tracey - it seems neither one of our bodies liked being up and about! After some sleep and a good chat we decided to do some shopping.. Let’s just say that i can barely closer my bag now, but good news is, i have a new dress and two gorgeous new skirts… That’s ok, right?? :D

I also managed to find a woman selling the most comfortable seats I’ve Sat on in South East Asia, so definitely going to have to buy some before i go home… Thank God i haven’t booked my flight home yet… ;)

The train arrived into Bangkok about an hour late which is nearly on time for Thailand trains, according to everything I’ve heard!

Myself and Tracey got a bus to the Khao San road area of Bangkok and found a nice little shop for breakfast. After that it was time to get a hotel and wander around!

We both got massages - I’ve decided i do love leg massages the most! - and then i got to see one of the coolest things ever - a person being tattooed! Amazing!

We wandered back to the hostel and had a cocktail and as we were chilling i saw pineapple guy from langkawi -a lovely guy who had offered us all freshly chopped pineapple in the guesthouse at one point :) turns out his name is Tom and he’s not only from Sheffield, but Crookes! The town I lived in for a year and a half before traveling! I couldn’t believe it! the three of us had a good chat before the broken sleep of the night before caught up with us and sleep was the only option!

Today I began my long trek to Bangkok. I said goodbye to Zoe and got on the back of a red truck to the bus station. My idea was to get a bus to Trang and then train all the way up to Bangkok from there, but the kind people in the bus station told me my best bet was to go to Surat Thani and head up on the train from there.

As it turns out, they were right :) i got to Surat Thani in time to have dinner and get on a bus to the train station, then chill out in a nice cafe before going back to the train again. It was in this coffee shop that I met Tracey, who kindly felt my temperature - something you never really think about before going traveling, then you end up asking a random stranger if you feel hot… :)

We ended up getting the train together and had great chats before we decided we’d probably better get some sleep and let the rest of the people on the train have some peace from our conversation!

I awoke at 7 am to see if the weather would grace us with a nice day. The idea was that we might be able to get onto a kayaking tour that morning if we were lucky, but the weather had other ideas ;)

Instead, thanks to Zoe (who got us moving fair play) we ended up traveling to the tiger temple just outside of town. We had a hammer at the temple and then we saw it. A sign indicating that something was at the top of 1237 steps. Of course, that did it ;) we had to go up to the top ;)

The way forward began really enough, but by steps 300 odd, myself and Zoe were beginning to feel it. Matt had gone on like a gazelle bounding his way to the top easily - don’t worry, we hated him too ;) we got to just under 500 steps (they were happily labeled for you to use while struggling up), when we met a woman who had told her husband previously that she couldn’t go on, that she’s stay here. We tried to convince her to come up but to no avail, just as well, as we met her husband in the way down at about 900 or so ;) just so no one thinks we’re exaggerating about the difficulty, the steps were actually as high as my knee at times and there was a section that was so steep it was cordoned off and another set of steps had been built around it for people to use!

We eventually made it up the steps (and found Matt again) to see stunning views and cloud doing mad things in the mountains in front of us. Unfortunately, what goes up must come down…

Now, I do have to preface this by saying that done of the things you learn as a child really are the best way of doing things. The example I shall use here is climbing down the stairs backwards, you remember, just when you’re beginning to learn and you’re not confident enough/allowed by parents to walk downstairs in the normal way. Well, for this set of stairs, that piece of learning was definitely one of the better things to know! I ended up climbing down half of it that way as it was so steep and nearly all barefoot as my sandals were too wet from the rain. (Side note: I don’t think I could have done this climb in the sun!)

Matt, being a gazelle and incredibly hungry it seemed, again left us, but that was probably to spare himself the embarrassment of being seen with these two eejits laughing away to themselves on the side of a mountain ;) you can imagine mine and Zoe’s incredible sadness when, at step approx 300, we saw a monkey using a wrote as a zipline. While we wouldn’t have been able to use it ourselves, we cried with laughter at the thought of how easy it would be compared to what we’d just done! That said, it was nothing to the fear we felt at about step 1100 on the way down when Zoe thought she’d left her camera up there! (thankfully she hadn’t!)

We descended the last few steps arm in arm - what else could you do at that stage? Bonded for life we were! It could also have been that we’d gone a little crazy, neither one of us could stand without our legs shaking, so caffeine and sugar before the trip back to the hostel it was!

The three of us plus two guys from Matts form went for a good feed that evening and then back to the bar containing the pool table that had so mocked me the previous night. I always worry when the bar staff remember you, especially when you were only there once before and only for one (literal, not fabled!) drink. That said, all seemed to be well, until it became apparent that the pool table wasn’t done with embarrassing me yet. I was kindly told by one of the female bartenders that she is exactly the same as me and knew the solution to my problem : I just needed to have more alcohol! It always helped her! That said, Richie (one of Matts roommates) was kind enough to give me a few pointers so I actually managed to pot things - go me!

One of the most fun bits of the night was getting to see the video of the new dance craze - gangham style. I’d seen this posted all over Facebook by different groups of friends but hadn’t heard or seen anything of it. One watch was all it took, I was totally hooked! Fantastic! :D