When the limit of your plastic, reaches the end You start payin' for your time

With the amount of things I took in yesterday on my adventures through Cebu, I didn't really come up with a plan of what to do with myself today until late last night.

That's not to say that there are a lack of things to do generally in Cebu City, but it appears that all of them take either a lot of organisation or a bulging wallet. A couple of examples are things which I had theorised about doing - one was hiring a bike and heading to a place called Tops Lookout which has some excellent views of the city, and the other was visiting a Taoist Temple which also looks down upon Cebu. There are also beaches elsewhere in the province, but this would have meant taking an expensive taxi ride, where as the other two would have probably required me to plan a little further ahead considering how far out of town each one of them was.

Instead of just focussing on a single activity for today, I decided to try and hit three different places on my last full day, all within walking distance to minimise the use of transport - which I am about fed up of having to use at the moment.

I planned to walk in the opposite direction to the way I had walked yesterday which was away from the pier. I have to be honest and say that my navigational sense hasn’t been that fantastic since arriving in Cebu. There aren’t too many maps, I guess because it’s not a city filled with tourists, and as in Bagiuo I’ve mainly had to rely on the sporadic appearance of a road sign, or pick out where I’m going, and then walk in a straight line hoping there are no obstacles like water in the way.

Today’s first stop was the SM Cebu City Mall which I had actually spotted yesterday on my walk home from the city centre. I just happened to glance down the road which runs parallel to my hotel and see that it was down there it looked much further away on a map, but considering I could see the entrance quite clearly I figured it wouldn’t take me an unreasonable amount of time to get there.

After about a twenty minute walk I eventually made it to the front doors. The street that I had walked down was filled with warehouses so I spent most of the time walking in the road or gutter as what little pavement was there had been parked on. SM Malls are very popular in Asia, and like the last one which I visited in Bagiuo, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. It was starting to get close to lunchtime as well so I figured this would be a good opportunity to solve my hunger issues.

It was nice to walk around in the air-conditioned surrounds of the mall as it was starting to get pretty humid outside, what with traffic everywhere and a significant lack of breeze. I walked around a few of the stores, picking up a couple of postcards in a book store, and eventually after getting some food I decided to head elsewhere.

I didn’t really have a particular destination to head to next, but I thought it’d be interesting to see if I could walk to Mandaue which is the next city over from Cebu. It is the crossing point into Lapu-Lapu which is the island which is next to both Cebu and Mandaue.

I walked down the side of the road for about half an hour, eventually making my way into Mandaue before deciding that turn around and head back in the opposite direction to move onto my third and final calling point of the day.

As it turned out, I actually walked around in a giant rectangle as I came back to the SM mall on the same side I had left it on when going towards Mandaue. I ventured in the direction of the city centre as I was going to walk around the main shopping area which I had seen yesterday, but instead decided to continue walking straight towards some very important looking buildings I could see in the distance.

When I eventually got to the buildings in question, I discovered that there were actually a number of skyscrapers, mainly housing big businesses including Globe, China Bank and Lexmark, and tucked in between them all was the Ayala Building. The name sounded familiar to me, not as a business I’d heard of, but I had read that there was an outlet type area near the building and after following the direction which all the people in this area were walking in, I eventually found the Ayala Center.

It is a large, mostly outdoor area filled with an indoor mall, and restaurants which all face into a picturesque looking courtyard. There were some seats out there so I found one which was in the sun and enjoyed the slightly cooler afternoon temperatures as I read a few pages of my book. I decided to walk through a few of the shops, but also get up to the highest floor possible so that I could take a few pictures of what was quite an impressive, and pretty outdoor area.

It was starting to get a little dark, and with all the walking I had done, I had no real idea of how long it was going to take me to get back to the hotel, but using my now slightly improved navigational skills I walked parallel with the street I had taken to get the SM Mall earlier, and eventually cut out on the road which runs at the bottom of the one which my hotel is located on.

A slightly more restful day today, with a lot of walking and no big plans but I figure in what is set to be a six month stay on the continent, I’m not going to be on the go, and seeing world class sights every day.
Tomorrow morning I will be returning to Manila for my final three and a bit days in the Philippines.
Cebu hasn’t really been what I expected it to be, in terms of it’s layout or enjoyment factor. Perhaps it is due to where I am staying, or because I’m in Cebu City itself which is quite an industrial area I’m not sure. I feel like I would have been happy to have crammed all of my sightseeing into one day, but I guess this is the risk that I will always run planning as I am going along. There are probably going to be plenty of places where the opposite is true, and I’ll end up wishing I had booked a longer stay there.

My stay in Cebu hasn’t been particularly positive or negative, but I feel like if I were to come back then it would definitely be to a different part of the island. And I would make a recommendation not to see Cebu as just a place with soft white sandy and crystal blue waters, as in my stay I have clearly encountered much more than that.

Shopping Bags (2004)
De La Soul