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Greetings from the Philippines - preparing for a boat trip

Greetings from Cebu City in the Philippines! We have now started our big Philippine adventure and have spent a few days in Cebu City, where the flight landed. Here it has become preparations for the upcoming boat trip.

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Greetings from Cebu City

Cebu City located on the eastern coast of the island of Cebu, is a bustling city with around one million inhabitants. The city is in turn part of the even larger metropolitan area of Metro Cebu, where around three million people live.

We are here with our friends Micke and Julia and have, during these first days, focused on shopping and running errands for upcoming adventures on the Philippine islands. We have travelled around a lot on foot, but perhaps most of all with the help of the taxi app Grab, when we needed to travel a little longer distances.

Focus on preparation

So, what are we preparing for? We hardly know ourselves. We know that we are heading to the island of Malapascua, where Micke and Julia know a family that owns a boat. The plan is to go island hopping on this boat. The details of the island hopping are still a bit unclear, but we will soon discuss everything in detail with the family.

What we fat right now is that we need to prepare as best we can to have access to electricity and internet, even when we are on board the boat and hitchhiking around smaller islands. Because you want us to be able to update here at FREEDOMtravel, right?

We also know that the range of shops and electronics shrinks drastically when we leave the big city... So we've been shopping for things like SIM cards, surfing, solar panels and batteries.

There are plenty of shops in Cebu City, ranging from small holes in the wall to huge shopping centres. We visited Robinsons Galeria, which is far from being the biggest mall, but where you can find the Bureau of Immigration, among other things.

Since we are planning to stay in the Philippines for three months, and since you can only get a visa for two months in Sweden, we had to extend our stay by one month. It went smoothly, we must say, even if we had to queue for a little while.

As well as technical stuff, we've been looking for things like flip-flops, sun hats, thin towels and fishing gear. Because yes, the guys want to fish from the boat! In the small but well-stocked Cebu Tackle Shop, we got great help from a whole bunch of enthusiastic and knowledgeable guys. In addition, it was a nice moment with a lot of talk and laughter!

Hang out in Cebu City

Of course, we also just hung out with our friends in the heat and drank Red Horse beer, which is common here. There has also been a lot of grilled chicken, and grilled pork, along with rice at the countless simple places you find along the streets. Affordable and delicious!

Best this week

The best part of this week for us? That we are in the Philippines of course! And being able to hang out with our friends Micke and Julia! Our adventure here has only just begun, and we are more excited than ever.

What does it look like for you? What can you highlight as positive from your week, big or small?

Bingo on the street in Cebu City. Micke bet a coin, but didn't win anything ...

The week ahead

In the coming week, we will still be in the Philippines, and we will be travelling to the island of Malapascua. Here at FREEDOMtravel we continue to tell you about our adventures, mixed with some other reports. We haven't had time to tell you everything from the last Austria trip, so hopefully we'll get that out too!

Did you miss the last Happy Friday? Read the Home between Austria and the Philippines

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