12 & 13 April 2014-
It's time to go home. It's been fun. It's been amazing. I doubled..almost tripled…the number of dives in my log book. We got to see sharks in a calm manner. We read lots of books, swam in the ocean every chance we got, and got a few VERY PAINFUL massages. (oh, yes. OUCH!!!! THE PAIN!!!!!!) We ate amazingly blah food but had some very lovely fruity drinks. Why, oh why are there no fresh coconuts on this island???? Would have loved fresh coconut juice. Bummer. I also managed to feel super self conscious about looking like a beached whale (and I briefly got over that awful feeling too).
But now? Now it's time to eat breakfast quickly, go for one more quick swim in the ocean, gather up our stuff and head back to Busuanga Airport (via a boat ride and a van ride).
Ava stopping for just a second in front of the dining house:
One last look at the pool and the reception building:
Annika busy reading here book at breakfast:
Waiting for our boat:
Saying good bye and thank you to Marvin, our diving guide:
The musical trio serenading us as we leave (that's not Ava, by the way…another family with similar age children was also leaving at the same we were):
One last look at Club Paradise:
I still can't get over the color of the water, the sand and the sky:
At Busuanga Airport:
There's our plane!
We got into Cebu mid-day and as our next flight didn't leave until the wee hours of Sunday morning we decided to take a room at the same airport hotel we stayed at going out to Club Paradise. We all got some excellent naps and ordered room service food. Nice to have some down time!
By the way, something you may or may not know: you have to pay extra cash to leave the Philippines! I'm not sure what happens if you don't have the cash on you but why oh why don't they just incorporate that fee into your plane tickets (like airport taxes???)??? One American nearly got stuck but fortunately another passenger came to her aid. We had just enough to cover our family's exit fees. Weird, right???
And guess what??? We got the same awesome, fully reclining seats on the flight to Incheon! How cool is that? We're not sitting upstairs in the bubble but honestly, I just want to sleep and I'm glad I got to do it once. Thank you Korean Airlines!!!!
We had a few hour lay-over in Incheon – we passed the time by getting coffee and eating a quick breakfast before boarding our Tianjin, China flight. Oh boy. Have I mentioned that you can always tell when you're boarding a flight bound for China? I'm sorry to say this but the smell of urine is pervasive as is the sounds of people spitting. Yuck! I won't miss that part about living in China.
Home, sweet home!