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Over the Lunar New Year Break, Christine and I took a trip to the city of Cebu in the country of the Philippines. Inspired by wonderful, amazing, and downright swell friends from church, we booked our tickets, packed our bags, and took the first ever resort vacation of our lives!! And what an amazing time it was: smiles, sun, cute animals, a dash of danger and intrigue, and even a near medical calamity highlighted our little jaunt :)
Tuesday found us once again up at the butt-crack of dawn (sorry-no nicer way to say 4:30am :( ) and heading out to the HK airport. Tickets were purchased on one of the local discount airlines and by 8:30 am, we were airborne and Cebu bound. We even won a cool bag organizer for correctly guessing a trivia game question! We arrived at the resort with enough time to throw on swimwear and head to the beach, do a little exercising in the cardio room and lounge in the hammock on the porch. Dinner that night was Pan-Asian themed and we were treated to a performance of dances from all around the world.
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| Our room in Cebu :) |
Wednesday was our beach day. On the beach the ENTIRE day!!! It was awesome :) Just to keep things interesting, we ran into the the crystal clear water just in time for Christine to get stung by a jellyfish. Then we ran right out of the water and to the lifeguard. He said to go to the restaurant to get a lemon to put on the sting site to help it heal. So we ran to the restaurant where Christine was promptly given two sliced calamansi. Calamansi is a citrus fruit native to the Philippines and looks and tastes like a miniature cross between a lemon and a lime. The good news is that the fruit was so cute it kept Christine's mind off the pain of the sting :) We have calamansi juice sometimes at school for lunch, but the fresh juice at breakfast was way better! Dinner that night was Philippine cuisine and we watched as the dance troupe performed local traditional dances.
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| The beach where we read and swam with jellyfish |
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| A cute calamansi |
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| The calamansi taking a turn in the hammock |
Thursday was our adventure day. We jetted out early in the morning to catch a ferry to the island of Bohol. Bohol is the tenth largest island in the Philippines and has a population of 1.2 million people. It is the birthplace of a former Philippine president and has a literacy rate of 98%. Eco-tourism is definitely their main industry. Our tour included lunch on a river boat, the Chocolate Hills and going through the man-made forest. It is also the home of the TARSIER!!!!!!! This little primate is the smallest monkey in the world and probably has the greatest eyeball to body weight ratio of anything on earth. It is also extremely cute, even when it is grumpy because all of the loud tourists are ignoring the "Quiet please. Tarsiers are nocturnal creatures." signs at 2pm. To add to the adventure, open returning to ferry port in Cebu, we found no taxi or shuttle driver to pick us up. (Cue dramatic strings.) Where were they? Did they forget about us? Do we jump in the back of a Jeepney and try to get back to the resort?? Would we make it back for Tex-Mex night at the restaurant?? As luck would have it, the driver was just at a different ferry terminal and after a few calls, many odd facial expressions, and some shoulder shrugs, everything was ironed out. Not in time for Tex-Mex though...:( (Still an amazing and incredible day!!)
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| The Blood Compact Site in Bohol |
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| The view from our lunch on the river |
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| A tarsier!!! Such big eyeballs!!! |
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| The Chocolate Hills |
Friday was our wrap up day and it consisted almost entirely of sitting and reading either in the hammock or by the pool with just a dash of packing and traveling. We arrived back in Hong Kong early Saturday morning with our eyelids heavy but our hearts light and full of thankfulness for the opportunity to take this adventure. We even got to bring back trip presents for our friends at church :)
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| The Pool |
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| Simba and Stitch got some hammock time in too |
And so we continue our march through a year living and teaching in Hong Kong. The more people we meet here and everywhere the more we are reminded of the fact that humans are humans wherever you may be. People want to be noticed, respected, and loved. A smile transcends languages and rude can be sensed from miles away. It is never the "things" in our lives that determine our success, but rather the amount of love, dignity, and grace that we share with our fellow humans in our interactions. Please make sure that you tell your loved ones that you love them and give the ones closest to you a hug. And while you are at it, please give yourself a hug from the two crazy kids in Hong Kong. You matter :)
Love from the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China),
Tim and Christine
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