CEBU

If anyone is interested in traveling to the Philippines, I would highly suggest Maribago Blue Water Resort in Cebu. The whole weekend was awesome. I made the trip with several of my friends from IU (Abe and Lili) and two girls from Canada (Katie and Kelsi). We flew directly from Hong Kong to Cebu and landed about midnight in Cebu International Airport. For the first night we were night scheduled to stay in the resort, so the Taxi driver took us to a cheaper option just feet away from the resort. I must say that the hotel was interesting and looked a lot sketchier at night instead of in the day. Everything turned out great though and we were just steps away from the resort for the next day.

The first day at Maribago turned out to be a little rainy, however we still had a lot of fun. The resort had an American style buffet that was included with the room. It wasn’t that bad of an imitation to American food. After dinner we had drinks at a bar that overlooked the ocean. (You can see most of the photos so far if you click on the slideshow that is playing to your right.) The resort had a private beach and island available to its guests. On the beach there was a life-sized chess set.
The rooms were the thing that stood out the most for the Maribago. We had a bathroom with a tub that was surrounded by rocks. (The pictures will provide a much better description).
Saturday was the most eventful day of the trip. We started the day at 10 with an Island hopping trip. The boat left from the hotel, but to get out to the boat we boarded a smaller boat that was pushed by locals for only about 100 feet that we could have walked anyway. Later I noticed that about three or four boats full of locals would wait by our resort all day looking for tourists to use this service.
The island hopping tour’s first stop was about a 30-minute boat ride away from the resort. On the first island we snorkeled and laid out on the boat. The snorkeling was amazing; we were able to see some very interesting, beautiful fish. The next island was a private island that was reserved for trips like ours. After returning from the tour, we had a native Philippine meal. Most of the meal consisted of different types of meat with unique sauces and several types of seafood. The most unique thing I had was octopus. The dinner included a show with Philippine dancers.

The next couple days included rest and relaxation by the pool and ocean. Overall, I had a great time in the Philippines, it was a nice break from two tough weeks of school (just kidding).