dolphin watching, balicasag, virgin island

our second day in bohol. thru the help of our friendly google, i decided to go to balicasag. it was always the "i" who decided since this was my plan. everything was in my hands. after all, this was my idea from the start. all i asked from my family was the financial and a bit of moral support.

dolphin watching, balicasag, virgin island. this is usually the itinerary. a lot of locals who offer this tour, hang around alona beach in panglao. some have their laminated pictures with them in order to convince the tourists to take the tour but i didn't choose to hire a boat through this. instead, i rummaged a lot of blogs and then, i came across a boatman named viao. (not sure with the spelling) he was recommended by a number of people in the blogs that i've read and i then made a reservation for this day. i didn't make a deposit ahead and he just simply told me that may 31 was for me.

then came may 31. thank heavens, we had a good night's rest after our day tour in bohol. we even skipped dinner for that good night's rest.

 Early Boats in Panglao

bohol day tour

this was already a long overdue promise to my sister, erlene. like 2 years ago? she wanted to go somewhere other than cebu. this was some sort of her really late birthday gift and for getting through college still sane. so bohol had to be this year and then finally after several change in plans, i gave her the bohol get-away that i promised, tagging along the rest of my family.

we had our day tour around bohol on our first day. we took the 6am ocean jet from cebu to tagbilaran and happily dozed off in the 2-hour trip since the free wi-fi on board was good as nothing. 

for the day tour, i already made a car reservation early on.  it was arranged that we would just meet up with the driver in tagbilaran port. after a quick survey for my name  in the  welcome boards held out by many welcoming tour guides and  resort staff, i  then found my full name and to save myself from the publicity (as if anyone would really care. lol), i quickly approached the man which turned out to be our driver and a tourist guide in one.  then, the five of us fit ourselves perfectly in an innova.

(1) Chocolate Hills

we headed first to carmen where the uber famous chocolate hills are. we went first to the farthest and then headed back to tagbilaran, stopping at other places along the way.

The Forever Steps

hopping around mactan

this was with friends. friends from college but with extensions. this was sort of my idea. i seldom insist on something like this when it comes to friends. aside from it's difficult to plan, it's just hard convincing my friends. they all have the issues. and we don't basically meet often. in other words, we are busy on our own lives.

yes, one way to know that you are all getting old in your group is that if you don't have that much get-together as the earlier days, then you are heading to... well, "maturity". some are already busy with work, with their loveys, with their plans for their "future families", quite a term by fame.

and so i came up with the idea of a summer get-together. it was for the summer birthday celebrants, the supposed-to-be welcome party for manny from japan, celebration of love by filden, and just plainly to connect again.

i suggested island hopping for i had just hopped islands together with my old group in my company. it was fun and i thought of sharing this to my friends. but of course, i asked them if they wanted something else, and since no one seemed to care, it was then island hopping.

7 in costabella, mactan

5-3-2010. just went through with one of our endless fights. i never did think what we would do this day. one of those times when i simply didn't care. anyway, like we always do, we were able to patch things up before this day came.

so this wasn't even planned. it was some random idea i thought of. good thing, this day was another holiday because labor day (5-1) fell on a saturday and in short notice, malacanang declared monday as holiday. wonderful.

we went home late the day before. well, technically it was already on 5-3 because it was way past dawn when i got home. we went for videoke with my friends since my friend who is based in manila was in town.

groggily, i suggested we went to costabella just for a day use and perhaps he was into the idea or he was just left with no choice, he agreed.

well, it turned out real fun somehow.

Costabella's Beach