Philippine Travel Photo Journal: Destination 1 – Bohol

Hi Friends!

Some of you may know that I went on a few weeks long trip overseas, sick to my native country, which is the Philippines. Gosh, it has been 12 long years since we have been there so you can imagine the excitement.

The reason why we went was to bury my grandmother. She passed away here in Texas on July of 2012. Her remains got cremated but we wanted to give her a formal burial so that was the primary reason why we went. The rest of course was leisure. *Smile*

My aunt who lives in the Philippines is the best! She had an itinerary planned out for all of us which made our whole stay really fun and enjoyable. It was great to be home!!!

The day after my grandma's burial, we flew to one of the islands in Visayas, called Bohol. For those of you who don't know, the Philippines is an archipelago. (Shucks sounds complicated huh?) It's made up of 7,100 islands, big and small.  The three major islands are Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. I'm not really about to give you a geography lesson here but thought it'd be nice to throw in that information. Ha! So we went to a city in one of the Visayan island called Panglao. We landed in a city called Tagbilaran.  Since pictures paint a thousand words, I will let you look at some of the pics below from our first destination and I'll add a few caption here and there. Enjoy!

PS: These images were shot with my Sony NEX-5R. Thank you so much Sony for such an amazing camera!

THE CITY: Tagbilaran

The city is called the City of Friendship because the locals are so friendly. I don't think I ever met a single rude soul while we were there. This is the arch at the airport.

This is called tricycle. It's a public transportation for short distances. The reason I took a picture of this is because every single one of them has a Biblical scripture or a saying about God. Just like the picture shown above, it says "God is Love." Apparently, it is a city ordinance. The tricycle will not be able to get an operating permit without it. I so love that! It's no doubt that the city is prospering.

This is typical of a public transport in the Philippines, not only in this city. Especially during rush hour. I've seen worse than this.  Some even have passengers on the roof, making the whole thing sort of like a double deck bus. Haha!

So this is the airport. There was no gate or anything. It was only a few yards from the "concourse" and a few steps out. I believe only one plane could land at a time. It was pretty funny because while we were in Manila, our flight was moved an hour later because they said the airport in Tagbilaran is crowded. I laughed when I realized how crowded it can get with just one plane.

Something captured my heart about this scenario. These are old couple, perhaps in their late 60s, that were riding a motorcycle. I thought that's pretty sweet!

THE ACCOMMODATION: Bellevue Hotel & Resort

Honestly, even if we had just stayed in the hotel the whole time while we were there, I would still have enjoyed it. A lot of times on vacation, I just like to chill, sit by the pool or the beach and just ponder on God's wonderful creation. Bellevue Hotel & Resort was where we stayed and it's the only 5 star hotel in the city. It's fairly new so some of the amenities, such as the spa, were still not completely built. They have the friendliest and most amazing staff and the complimentary all-you-can eat breakfast was the best. Mind you, they're not one of those continental breakfasts, but it's a combination of continental and typical Filipino food. I think they even had some Japanese and Chinese. And that's breakfast! When I think of this place, that's the first thing I could think of and I kinda miss it!

This is my favorite spot in the resort. By the pool or in the nipa or cottage restaurant. I'd go by the pool in the morning to have my quiet time with the Lord and in the evenings when I have nothing else to do, I'd go in the nipa to check my emails and do some work. I took this picture early morning, around 5:30ish, that's why it's still pretty dark. Compared to the states though, the sun rises pretty early in the East.

Just another view of the pool which was shot once again early in the morning.

Oh my gosh! The rooms! They're amazing! The beds seem like queen beds!

Props to my mom who captured this beautiful sunrise. Although I am more of a sunset fan, I can't help but get mesmerized by this beauty. God is such an awesome painter! So glad my mom captured it.

I believe these were the boats for the inter-island tours which we never got to take. We wanted to do it but we have my 2 year old niece with us so we didn't want to take the risk. I believe the tour includes going to 3 different islands and you can hop out of the boat and chill and swim for a bit.

Heyyyy it's me! It was shot pretty early in the morning thus the look of "I just woke up." Just a quick OOTD on that, the white shirt was from Boca Leche (c/o), shorts from Marshalls, and the flat shoes from Deb Shops. (c/o)

CITY TOUR STOP 1: The Loboc Tarsier Conservation Area

Okay so instead of taking the inter-island package tour, we did the City Tour. It was about a 6 hour tour in the city and our first stop was the Loboc Tarsier Conservation Center.

Meet YODA! I meant the Philippine Tarsier. It does look a lot like Yoda huh and I can't help but think that the creator of the character did get an inspiration from the Tarsier. No originality tsk tsk. LOL

Tarsiers are one of the smallest primates, measuring anywhere from 3.35 – 6.30". They are tiny (thanks to Sony's zoom lens!) and I believe they are endangered species. At the conservation viewing area, only a handful number of them were out. They are nocturnals but because of people viewing them, they can't help but get woken up, like these two I've shot. I feel bad for them. Boo. But it was great seeing them in person. It's pretty amusing.

CITY TOUR STOP 2: Chocolate Hills in Carmen, Bohol

So we had a quick stop at Chocolate Hills which is a very famous tourist spot in Bohol. I believe these hills were formations from volcanic eruptions billion years ago and they're called Chocolate Hills because they are normally brown during summer. Our tourist guide said that there are about 1,600 of them spread out across acres and acres of land.

CITY TOUR STOP 3: Loboc River

This was the part that I enjoyed the most – the Floating Restaurant where we had lunch. It's just basically a mini cruise but I totally enjoyed it because of the amazing scenic view. Gorgeous, just gorgeous and breathtaking! On the right were the parked floating restaurants. After lunch is finished, it takes off cruising in the river while someone is singing live.

Don't tell me this mini falls at the end of the Loboc River isn't amazing! I'm so happy I was able to snap a pic of it and it turned out pretty good too.

This is a hut within the Loboc River where there were some locals who sang and danced for us.

The locals performed a couple of Philippine native dances. One of them I actually captured in video. Hopefully I can upload it.

YAY my mommy (a.k.a. my photographer) was in front of the camera! She's very camera shy, I sometimes had to force her to get her picture taken.

CITY TOUR STOP 4: Baclayon Church 

This is another quick stop. It's called Baclayon Church and it's the second oldest stone church in the entire Philippines. I wish we would have gone inside because it's pretty historic and I could have taken some neat photos but upon reading now, I learned that I would have not gotten in anyway because I was wearing high-low tank and shorts. According to folks, one must be very well covered to enter. I guess I could understand that. At least, we got to drop by and snap a pic of it.

CITY TOUR STOP 5: The Sandugo

Thought it's pretty amazing to be standing in this historic site. This is where Sandugo took place. Sandugo is basically a blood compact between Miguel Lopez de Legazpi, a spanish explorer, and Datu Sikatuna, the island's chieftain. The blood compact sealed the first treaty of friendship between the Filipinos and Spaniards. After 333 years of colonization, I wonder if one way or another, we would think, Datu Sikatuna should have never made that darn blood compact, haha!

 

CITY TOUR STOP 6: Meet Prony!

We also had a quick stop at Albuquerque and here I was sitting next to Prony, which is the biggest python in captivity ever known and named after its captor. I might be smiling here but it scared the heck out of me. They said he's pretty full so he doesn't need me but I bet this 23 feet snake can easily swallow me! If the snake that tempted Eve at the Garden of Eden was a python, I could understand why she was scared and just gave in to the temptation LOL.

FINAL STOP: Hinagdanan (Laddered) Cave

The Hinagdanan Cave wasn't actually a part of the package but we decided to add it to the trip since we heard some pretty good things about it. Here's a picture of my family (except the 4 guys on the right hand side). This was a pretty comical experience because the locals who were touring us inside the cave were just freaking hilarious, I couldn't stop laughing.

The cave, which is about 100 meters long, is made of limestone. Do you notice a green light somewhere? I wonder what it could be. I just noticed it while editing this picture.

These are stalactites and stalagmites sticking out from the ceiling.

It has spring waters formed like a lagoon, which according to the tourist guide, has healing properties but was said to have high amount of karst pollutants. We thought we could swim but it looked too deep for us plus if you're pretty clostrophobic, you probably won't be able to stay long in the cave anyways.

The local who was acting as our tour guide inside the cave told us to make a "holy" pose. We thought what in the world is the holy pose. So it turned out that the "holy" pose is for us to look at the HOLE above the cave, hahaha! The hole was actually how the owner of the land discovered the cave underneath.

My mom and I at the entrance of the cave. That's why they called it Hinagdanan or Laddered is because of these stairs.

 

Hope you enjoyed this photo journal of our first destination! Definitely stay tuned for the photo journals of the other destinations we've been to as well.