Unusual transport

After scraping onto our flight out of Hong Kong (since they moved the flight forward 20 minutes so we actualy arrived 10 minutes after check-in closed and had to depend on a kind lady from another desk to print us a ticket and take us through security, whilst abandoning penkinfes etc in order to get our backpacks on as hand luggage, as we could not check them in), me and Dad ended up in Cebu, the second biggest city in the philippines, on Xmas Day.

There is not much going for the city, apart from the interesting insight into Urban living with relativlely low quality housing in most of the city apart from some bad slum areas, and the gated 'beverley hills' area (it is actually called that!) above the city, for the rich to look down upon everyone else (or so it seemed). It was our first introduction to the 'Jeepney' a cross between a Jeep and a bus, which is highly decorated by their owners with all kinds of sporty/religious/crazy painted designs and other things stuck on them.

I did not what to expect from the Philippines, as it is hardly high up the list of visitors' destinations. I guess it is poorer than i imagined and Cebu is quite similar to many run-down chinese towns with some exceptions -like the bizarre lack of eating places in the Philippines and the dominance of English signage everywhere, even though most local people use their local dialect for every day conversations (their English tends to be quite good though). Coca-cola has definitely used its US history and brand to its advantage with Coke or Sprite seemingly taking up half of the area's consumer spending (along with beer)!

After a day in Cebu we jumped ship for the island of Bohol to a scene of even crazier transportation options; whose name i am not even sure of. Nonetheless they are fundamentally a motorbike with sidecar, though modified somewhat as the metal roof/windows look a bit like something from a military vehicle with small windows and the inevitable painted cusomization of the vehicles!