We arrived here late so didn’t do anything in the evening as we had to be up at 5.30am. So, the next day we got up early and went to the whale shark centre. They took us out on a boat and they had workers in other boats putting food into the water for the whale sharks. People are against this as they are wild animals and shouldn’t be reliant on food from humans… but either way, it was such an amazing experience!! When our boat stopped, we could see the tip of one of the whale sharks mouths and it didn’t look that big. Then, we got in the water and was so shocked!! They are HUGE! Some of them are the size of a bus! They are the largest fish in the world and they are actually sharks… harmless of course! We had such a good morning! After this, we took a ferry to Siquijor.

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We arrived in Cebu city in the afternoon and then got a bus straight to Moalboal, so we arrived late in the evening, had some food and a bucket of beers (it was 45p a bottle) and then went to bed!

On our first day here we relaxed on the sunloungers at the resort we stayed at and went snorkelling. We were amazed at seeing so many turtles so close to the beach! Also, lots of cool fish and a sea snake! Later in the afternoon our friend Tina, who we met in El Nido came here to meet us. We had food and drinks with her later on.

The next day we all went to do ‘the sardine run’. This is what Moalboal is known for and it is basically snorkelling about 30 metres from the shore and coming across thousands of sardines all swimming together in the same direction. It was really cool, we were literally surrounded by them! In the afternoon we sunbathed at the resort again, snorkelled, played pool and later on we went out for drinks.

The next day we hired scooters and the three of us drove to Kawasan waterfalls where we did canyoneering. This is basically walking/swimming to different jumps from the top of waterfalls, rope swings and natural rock slides. The highest jump we did was 12 metres. It was this jump that Kerry must have landed wrong and hurt her back and bum!! (back is now ok… bum still in pain). Anyway, it was a really fun and scary day! Later on we took a bus to Oslob…

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We took a minivan here which took a few hours, arrived at 4pm and went to the mall. There isn’t much else to do here, it’s just where the airport is. We had some food in the mall and a wander around and then chilled at the hostel for the rest of the night. The cities in The Philippines are not very nice atall!

We took a minivan here which took around three hours. We had some food and then hired a scooter and drove to white beach. The roads on the way there were scary, in fact, I’m not even sure you can call them ‘roads’. It was so uneven, lots of gravel and parts of it was just mud (which is quite slippery on a scooter). We arrived safe and were the only people on the beach. It was so nice there, we chilled out and went on the swings and hammocks before it started raining!! We headed back straight away so we didn’t get stuck in the mud on the way back! In the evening we went to a bar which had around five people in it, we tried to leave but another storm started and it was too heavy to walk back in! (Oh no, we got stuck In a bar).

The next day we stayed on port barton beach which was just a two minute walk from where we were staying, in the town. In the evening, we were faced with another storm and got stuck in yet another bar, haha!

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We took a ferry from Coron to El Nido and arrived at 5pm. We went for food and then for some drinks at a bar which had swings so we were loving that. Later on we met some people we had met earlier in a bar with live music and had a good night.

The next day we hired a scooter and went to Lio beach first which was really nice. We had some food here and then carried on to Nacpan beach which is probably one of the nicest beaches we have been to! It was a bit cloudy but we still made the most of it and went for a swim and sunbathed! On the way back, we got caught in a huge storm which was pretty funny being on a scooter as we were both absolutely drenched! We went out for a curry once we were dried off, showered and the storm had stopped!

The next day we went on a tour around 5 islands. We visited two beaches and 3 lagoons. One of the lagoons we had to climb through some rocks to get to it, this was the hidden lagoon. The big lagoon was our favourite, we hired a kayak around this one – it was beautiful! We had such a good day. In the evening we bumped into Tina (a girl we met on our first night) and her friend Gabby. We ended up staying out drinking with them until quite late.

The next day we didn’t do much atall, we just chilled out!

On our final day we did another tour around four different islands. We visited three beaches and a lagoon. Again, another amazing day and some really beautiful beaches and lagoons!

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17 hours later, we made it! We managed to get a bit of sleep and it wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be… but we’re not going to do it again tomorrow.

We arrived on Jonho’s birthday and we booked a nice hotel with a pool so we had birthday beers at 10am and Kerry put balloons up around Jonho’s sun lounger. We chilled round the pool for the day, went out for food in the town later on and went to a bar with live music on!

The next day we had another pool day and on our final day we went on an Island hopping tour to seven different places. We snorkelled at a couple of the places which was amazing as the water was so clear, the coral was really colourful and there were loads of cool fish! We also had a go at stand up paddleboarding before there was a huge storm! It soon stopped though and we carried on with the tour to couple of different lakes and lagoons. It was a really good day! In the evening we had food at the hotel and stayed around the pool.

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Arrived around 4.30am, collected luggage and got to the AirBnb for around 6am. We couldn’t actually check in until 11am so we crashed out on the sofas for a few hours. In the afternoon, we had a walk around and it is not somewhere you want to walk around for too long. It smells, there is alot of traffic, lots of prostitutes (most of which are transexuals) and it was extremely hot so we decided to head to the pub. We were very happy with the price of the beer here – 92p for a bottle of San Miguel! It was quite a good people watching spot aswell haha!

The next day we decided we would try and do a bit of sight seeing- although there isn’t an awful lot to see… and what we did see was pretty awful haha!! We went to Intramuros which is the historical centre of Manila. It is a large area with a wall around, lots of old buildings, cobbled streets, churches and a fort – none of which were particularly impressive. Later on we went to the green belt park area which was a lake and lots of palm trees with restaurants and bars around the outside which was nice. For our evening meal we went to our first ever Michellin star restaurant.. it was once a Hawker stall in Singapore and one dish was given a michellin star which apparently gives the whole restaurant chain the same recognition.. it was pretty good anyway!

At 4pm the next day we headed to the ferry port to get on a ferry to Coron. When we arrived, we went to the boat operator “office” which was a shipping container. We boarded the ferry and realised this was our biggest “dorm” yet. There were over one hundred beds in the same room and in the bed next to us there was a man who decided to bring along his three noisy hens and in the bed on the other side, the woman brought her goldfish. It was very bizarre. We took our travel sickness tablets ready for our 18 hour journey both on top bunk beds!

We took two mini vans to get back to KK and arrived in the afternoon. We had lunch and then went to a hotel nearby to the place we were staying to use the pool (the same hotel Lizzy and Vinny stayed at on their honeymoon a few years back). Later on we went to a Chinese restaurant and then went to a laundrette and did our washing- rock and roll Saturday night!

The next day we planned to go to one of the islands but it rained all morning so in the afternoon when it finally stopped, we went back to the pool!

On our final day here we went to Mamutik island which was our favourite one out of the three we visited! It was like paradise! It was so quiet in the afternoon once alot of tour groups had left and by the time we got the boat back, we were the last two people on the island which was weird!

Later in the evening we went to the airport as we had a flight at 2am.. next stop THE PHILIPPINES!

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We took a mini van to Sukau which is the town where we were staying. It arrived at 3pm and our first river cruise started at 4pm. We were debating it at first as it started to rain, but glad we decided to still go! We saw a wild Orangutan within minutes which was so cool. We were really happy as we were told it’s rare to see orangutans and elephants. Around 15 minutes later we heard elephants and were getting all excited so waited around to look out for them. Then we saw around 10-15 borneo pygmy elephants on the river bank and some of them even came in for a swim! Then on the way back we saw Probscis monkeys, long and short tailed macaques, a silver langur with a baby and a morph of silver langur. It was amazing and this was our first cruise so it was always going to take alot to beat it! There was nothing more to do in this town so we had an early night, in our bug infested hut.

The next morning we had to get up at 5.30am for our second river cruise. We saw lots of proboscis monkeys, lots of colourful birds, lots of other monkeys again and a crocodile – but unfortunately it was dead! We weren’t lucky enough to see the ‘rare’ animals, but it was still really good! Later in the afternoon we took our last river cruise where we saw all the types of monkeys again and a monitor lizard.

We got a bus here in the morning and it took us 6 hours. We stayed in Sandakan town which was a bit of a dump so didn’t do anything here. We only came here to go to Sepilok but there wasn’t any good accommodation there.

The next day we got a minivan to Sepilok and went to the Orangutan rehabilitation centre which was similar to the one we went to in Kuching but this time at feeding time, only 1 Orangutan came for the feeding. We did see a couple playing in the trees on our way out though which was really cool. In the afternoon we went to the Sunbear Conservation Centre to see the rescued sunbears. It’s crazy hearing some of the stories about the bears. Some of them had been kept in cages as pets for 10 years until the owners couldn’t cope with them, others were “mistakened for dogs” which is just ridiculous. Some of them will be released back into the wild once they have learnt how to survive in the wild but others have no chance of survival. They were so cute! Later on we went back to the Orangutan centre, but none came for the feeding as it started raining, really bad!