Philippines: Day 5

June 5th: Journey to Negros

Saturday we made our journey out of Cebu and off to another island called Negros. The island itself is divided into two parts--Negros Oriental (East) and Negros Occidental (West). Negros Oriental was part of Kari's mission and was actually where Kari's first area was.

As a side note, if Asia is/was considered the Far East/Orient, would Europe been considered the Far West/Occident? Just a thought.

Moving on, so like I said, we spent the day traveling to Negros. Now there are several ways to get there--airplane, the ocean ferry (or super ferry), or a bus and ferry combination. We decided to go by bus, which even though it took longer (altogether a 5 hour journey), it was much cheaper and we got to see more of both of the islands.

The first part of the journey was the longest, and made up most of the trip getting to the southwest side of Cebu island to catch the ferry to Negros. It was nice once we got to the ferry and get off the bus for awhile.

Here are some of the pictures once we got to the ferry:

 That would be our ferry.

 Hello Negros!

 Isn't that water beautiful?

 About ready to dock, and just a short distance left to our destination.

Back on the bus, I believe it was another 30-60 minutes to Dumaguete, the city where we would be staying while on Negros. I was so happy when we finally arrived (don't get me wrong the journey wasn't too bad and not nearly as bad as the bus trips in Cambodia, but I wasn't feeling super well that day).

 Our hotel, the Bethel House. Definitely not a nice as the last hotel, but definitely nicer than the hotel we would stay at when we would return to Cebu.

 Dumaguete is right on the ocean and seemed to be kind of a fishing town. Bethel House was right along the water which was nice as we would get the wind right off the water. You could already tell that it was cooler getting out of Cebu and all the pollution. Here are the views from the hotel.

After settling into our hotel we went in search of an internet cafe and real food. We found a place to use the internet, and we even found a restaurant that the Reeds had told us about called Casablanca. For the most part it was pretty delicious and once again it was more of the Italian variety.

 After dinner we walked along the "boardwalk", if that's what you could call it, to explore a little bit of the area. While we walked and stopped to just take in the scenery we also made some friends with some children who at first tried selling us stuff.

 

 Finally it was time to hit the hay (no not literally...the bed was nicer than a pile of hay). The next day was church in Tanjay, to meet with some of the first people Kari met on her mission.