Arriving

Smallest airport I've been to.  This was the only plane there and it just landed.  Everyone is walking to the airport randomly because there's no traffic to watch out for.  Tourists hung out on the tarmac taking selfies with the plane.  Kind of like me, but I took mine while still walking.

You see those people walking in the door?  That's where you come in from the tarmac.  Right to the baggage claim.  Which is loaded from the portion that rotates outside.

This is the whole airport.

This is the resort we are staying at.  They picked up a large group in addition to us so there were two vehicles.  We rode in the white van, but this one was more exciting.

Bangkok also had wiring like this.  No safety hazards here, just move along.

I think these motorbike taxis are cool.

Random housing.

Not sure if this is construction or deconstruction, just thought it looked cool.

We arrived in Dumeguete on time.  We walked off the plane and into a small building they sometimes use as an airport.  From there, we got our bags and headed to the shuttle.  The ride was about 45 minutes and we saw such cool things.  There were kids playing basketball in spite of a cow standing stubbornly on the court.  They just played around it.  There were all kinds of motorbikes with all kinds of people.  My favorite was watching the moms trying to ride the motorbikes with their small kids.  Safety standards here are not what they are in the US.  The cars also just drive wherever.  Supposedly there are lanes, but eh, who need 'em?  We stopped shortly after we started because the big group that we came with all said they needed toothbrushes and whatnot.  Ok.  So we stopped.  Then the driver comes back out and says the group wants to stop at the mall as well.  Whhaaaat???

Carina answered before I could (I was in shock as to why anyone would want to go to the mall after spending all day on a plane) and said "What!  No!  No, we are not doing that, we need to get to the hotel so we can plan our dives."  So the group all had a discussion and those who wanted to go to the mall went in the yellow bus and the rest of us went in the white van.  We finally get to the turn off and it's just this random, gravel road that runs along some run down houses.  I was like... "I thought this was supposed to be a fancy resort?"  All of a sudden, through the trees you see these nice looking buildings.  It's the resort and it's nice.  Thank goodness.

I'm going to wait to post pics of the resort until tomorrow because the sun was already going down when we got here.  So I need better pics.  They took us straight to our orientation brief where they talked to us about the resort while giving us our free back and neck massages.  That was nice, but a little awkward.  Then we got a free fruit platter.  Then we went to our room, unpacked and went back to dinner.  Dinner was very good, but I don't have any pics.  Overall this place is amazing.  The resort is super nice.  The town reminded me of Cambodia without the French influence.  The boats for the dives look great.  So tomorrow we shall see what adventures await.  I'm super, super tired so I'm going to bed now.

Traveling Day has Arrived!!!

This is me at the start of the trip.  I look terrible!!!  I had a really, really long week and I didn't sleep the night before.  So I was already like ... blah.

I don't care for flying much, so I kept the window closed most of the time.  When they said we were descending, I felt better so I opened the window and saw mountains!  Hooray for beautiful mountains!  My favorite part of Earth.  This was coming into Manila.

More shots coming into Manila.  The closer we got, you could see the boats in the ocean.  They really do look like pictures, with the flotilla things out to the side and whatnot.  There were also slums we flew over.  You could see the houses built right on top of each other without roads.  It was probably just narrow alleyways that people could walk throughout.  Who needs a car in the slums?

An island we flew over.

Residential living in the Philippines.

Carina was like, "did you just take my picture.  When we landed, there was only one restaurant.  It was a fast food joint sort of a mix between McDonald's and Kentucky Fried Chicken.  We got pancakes and an ice cream Sundae.  We didn't want to eat meat because.. we weren't really sure it was meat.

This is what passes as a boarding pass here.  Basically a receipt.  I lost it and some guy ran up and returned it to me.  Good thing he did because otherwise I might still be in Manila.  And they never checked my ID.  Not at the ticket counter, not at security, only when I got to the gate.

For whatever reason, I never pictured Manila with skyscrapers.  There was a gorgeous shot of them flying in where they were juxtiposed against other, more traditional buildings, but I couldn't get the shot.

So the day finally came for me to take a vacation.  I'm going to do my best to blog about each day, but I don't know if I can.  It takes a while for the GoPro images to get on the blog, so we'll see.  But I haven't taken vacation in a long time.  So this was nice.  I'm freaking out a little about not being at work tomorrow just because there are some things going on, but I will just have to relax.  The things I'm behind on blogging about will just have to wait.  The day before, I went into work for about 3 hours, then had a productive day of cleaning.  My house isn't "clean" like it should be, but I got it picked up and took the trash to the dump, which was an experience.  Then I was invited over for games a dinner.  So I went to my friend's house.  They were also taking me to the airport, so I brought all my stuff and spent the night.  I was up til midnight then I called Dad before I went to bed because it was his birthday.  There were two dogs in my room and they kept me company throughout the night, which I was mostly awake for.  I was super excited about leaving and somewhat nervous, so I woke up constantly.  Finally, it was time to leave.  I got ready, went downstairs, quickly switched everything from my computer bag to the backpack, and man I'm glad I did.  I forgot how comfortable that backpack is for traveling.  No issues whatsoever.

We got on the United Flight to Manila and took off.  It isn't much of a flight.  I listened to an auidobook I downloaded for a couple hours.  The problem was this audiobook is pretty heavy on the history and I couldn't concentrate well enough.  So I may have to listen to those sections again.  I then watched the first half of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" before they shut the movie off to land.  I need to finish that at some point.  We landed in Manila and it was somewhat of a let down at first.  The airport wasn't much of an airport.  There was one place to get food, Jollybee's, and it wasn't that exciting.  We couldn't believe there was only one restaurant, this was the international terminal!  But we got food so we wouldn't starve and then headed over to the other terminal for our other flight.
Driving in southeast Asia is always an adventure.  This bus took some tight turns.  We also drove through the tarmac to get to the other terminal.  Why go around when you can go through?  Seems logical.  There was a two lane road with a bunch of taxis double parked and the bus just made a new lane and went by them honking his horn.  We got off and explored the new terminal.  It had food!  Lots and lots of food.  It was like a standard airport.  It also had lots of levels and stairs.  Not sure why.  We discovered the hard way that the stairs are for emergencies only and they don't have handles on the inside because if there is an emergency, you head to the ground floor.  I hate that.  There were hotels in Europe I've stayed in that did that.  I want to use the stairs!  Anyway, we sat at some restaurant where we got smoothies and connected to the wifi.  Carina watched the last few minutes of the Duke game and I got on facebook.  Then we went to the gate and sat.  We still had a few hours.  I tried to take a brief siesta, but eventually gave up.  Since I didn't have the awareness level to listen to the audiobook, I pulled out my phone and quickly downloaded a Brandon Sanderson book from the Navy library webpage.  I read that a bit then and on the next plane.

Coral

Swimming, Swimming

Just Keep Swimming

More scuba pics

This tells you how much air you have left.  The bottom dial is well over 2000 so that means I have plenty of air.

I have no idea what these things were, but they grew everywhere.

The dive watch tells you about the dive.  It says I'm currently at 13 feet deep and the deepest I went was 67 feet.

Before going to the surface, you have to do a safety stop.  This is so the nitrogen that accumulates in your body can escape.  Otherwise it forms bubbles and you can get very sick or even die.  You are supposed to stop around 15 feet for about 3 minutes.

Scuba Pics

After getting stung by jellyfish, we went diving at a different beach.  These are the pics from that.  It was my first time with the gopro on a dive,  I am still mastering how to take pics underwater.  The water moves you a lot, so some of the pics are blurry.  The videos, if I get around to posting them today, are better.  I may stick with that in the future, but I can only do about 20 second clips due to blogger's restriction on video size.