Still deaf from high above
Nov/090
I love flying but often suffer from “ear popping” upon ascending and descending. A web search landed me to a few forum posts and health sites; weirdly, only one article mentioned yawning which is my own remedy but sadly didn’t work this time around. Having arrived home from Cebu two days after posting this my ears still feel clogged.
It was a great trip.
How can I begin to tell you the awesome? Food was heart stopping, beautiful women and sights to see. It felt like a ‘provincey’ version of Manila while keeping the things you get from a big city: business, convenience and leisure. Cebu was clean and orderly, I only expect the best from a renowned name in tourism.
I especially loved the convenience of pulling over a taxi, quoting a driver –“there are more taxis than passengers”, this essentially means not only is it easy to get a cab at any hour, they don’t even require you to pay extra or haggle for fixed priced rides.
Had the lost in translation situations where other would usually come up to me and just flood me with Cebuano (their local dialect) which gave me the benefit of the doubt that they were reassuring me of my near fit figure as the only good reply I had was a shrugged nod. Of course.. there’s always people who would offer concubines having noticed my Japanese blood. Mabuhay!
I had friends guess where this photo was taken after each one got a quick glimpse. Not surprisingly, they all said Greenbelt. You would be fooled too if you saw it for yourself –the Terraces at Ayala Center Cebu. It’s gorgeous to see and hang out at night where bars stay up ‘til late.
One of the few places we got to visit on a very tight schedule for anything other than work was Sto. Nino Church while is conveniently just beside Magellan’s Cross.
I may have pissed off a group of people when I forgot to disable the flash from my camera and ….fired a very mean beam inside the hall where the actual Sto. Nino was. To make things worse there was this sign conveniently placed outside:
Yeah I got an instant +1 to the many things I need forgiveness for.
For lunch we dined at the Tinderbox, which I found to be your run-of-the-mill semi-classy restaurant from the outside as I walked in. I was wrong, upon seating I got around and noticed a house made entirely out of what seems to be……. graham biscuits! After much sniffing curiosity got the best of me and while no one was looking I had executed a quick lick.. yes they’re real graham cookies! It would be shallow to judge the overall quality and status of an establishment entirely on the material they picked to make their Christmas festive decoration, but that’s the kind of guy I am and I say graham is a classy choice.
Oh yes, the food was great too.
Pictures to follow; above the Tinderbox restaurant is the coveted Z-Bar by Kenneth Cobonpue, a popular name in interior design. We arrived in the late afternoon and it doesn’t open until 6PM but a friendly staff showed us around. I wasn’t able to take pictures as my camera is highly unreliable without proper lighting therefore let me just recommend this blog post: http://experiencedelux.blogspot.com/2009/05/kenneth-cobonpues-z-bar-cebu.html
The next stop was the Taoist temple in Beverly Hills where this panorama was taken. We were greeted by a hard ass guard who “timed” our stay at thirty minutes and warned us to be extra quiet. It seemed as if he knew I was trouble! He stayed at the entrance where we didn’t expect him to come look for us once we got in but not long he got around and sent us on our way out.
Cebu was just the trip I needed, wait…. that’s bullshit travel talk. Cebu was fucking awesome!