Arrival in Cebu

I was lucky enough to be met by my friends at the airport and given a lift back to our acommodation because dealing with public transport, directions and the need for local currency would have been an extra bit of stress at that time. They are living in a Salesian community in Cebu city and working as volunteer teachers in a technical college for students who otherwise wouldn't be able to access higher education, and I was staying with them on campus.

The community is quite small (around ten people) and most of them were leaving for the week just around the time that I arrived. We had lunch together, then spent the afternoon interspersing exploring the campus and the local area with naps for me to catch up on my sleep.

Not that I did a huge amount of that. As it was Easter Saturday, we went to vigil at the college chapel in the evening. The service started with a bonfire outside the church which was then used to light candles for the vigil. It also involved the blessing of bottles of water and liberal sprinkling of it over the congregation, but having been brought up as a Protestant, I don't know how many of the things that were new to me were specific to the Philippines and how many are common to the whole of the Catholic church.

After the vigil, we headed back to the boarding house for a bit of a party. And in the Philippines, I learned, no party can take place without a bit of karaoke, or videoke, as they call it. Parties with priests being no exception. So the Salesian Fathers, Brothers, my friends and I ended the evening belting out Bohemian Rhapsody and I Will Survive until the early hours of the morning. Jet lag? What jet lag?

A Confession

When I booked my ticket to the Philippines back in November of last year, I should probably have felt excited. And to some extent I was: excited to see good friends again, to do something different, to travel not only to a new country but a new continent. But in truth, I have to admit that, faced with my first trip outside of Europe, my first journey of the first world and my first voyage to a country where the Foreign Office Advisory map is not purely a reassuring shade of green, I was probably more nervous than anything else. Nervous about everything from jet lag to dengue fever, and also a little bit embarrassed to be so worried about what leaving my Euro-comfort zone would be like. I knew that it would be a worthwhile experience but my over-cautious brain was stopping me from truly looking forward to what I was going to do.

It was only when I set off for Charles de Gaulle airport that that started to change. As I checked in for my flight, I smiled at the fact that for the first time I was on a long haul flight to an exotic destination and not a short EasyJet hop, and I realised that while I did have a little knot in my stomach, it was made up as much of excitement as of nerves.

And my optimism proved well-founded. Far from being the equivalent of spending 15 hours on Ryanair (something akin to experiencing one of the deeper circles of hell), my flight with Cathay Pacific was actually enjoyable. I had a window seat and spent a large part of it comparing the position of the little plane on the screen with the view down below of Eastern Europe and the plains of Siberia. When it got dark, the selection of in-flight films and TV series was so good that I was reluctant to go to sleep. The knowledge that I would be arriving at 11.30 local time and 5.30 my time, having missed out on an entire night of sleep did push me to get some shut-eye, but only when I had caught up on a couple of the movies that I had recently missed in the cinema.

My transit in Hong Kong was ridiculously smooth and I was lucky enough to be by the window again for the short flight to Cebu. My only regret was not keeping my camera out as we prepared for landing, because the view of the Philippine islands with their lush greenery, coloured roofs and silver beaches nestling in the tropical turquoise sea was absolutely stunning.

And then there I was in the Philippines, suddenly ready for the experience of a lifetime.