THE ARRIVAL

Yesterday, I finally arrived in Cebu Philippines and got settled in my quaint little room, but that's not the beginning of this story. After landing, I took a nice, big, black SUV from the Mactan Island airport to the joint I was originally planning to stay at. This fairly long SUV ride cost me about 475 pesos, which equates to about $10.00 USD. For comparison, I also took a nice, big, black SUV from my apartment in Los Angeles to the airport there. That cost about $80.00 USD. As to why I am not at that first stopping point, it all boils down, once again, to internet. The internet speed there was excruciatingly slow. Luckily for me, I didn't prepay my reservation, so I decided to move on.

I researched quite a few locations to stay at before leaving L.A., and even though I didn't have access to my list, one of them stuck in my memory. Something about their website caught me and said, "This is the one," yet for some reason I chose to ignore that still small voice and go somewhere else. Well, now was my chance to correct that mistake. I went to the place still tugging at my memory and checked into the room pictured above. They had internet! They even had high speed internet. Unfortunately, thanks to the recent storm, it was down at the moment. I thought about leaving to continue my search, but something still said that this was the place. I chose to stay.



When I got settled into the room and ate at the downstairs restaurant, I knew I had made the right choice. Of course, eating a great meal for just over $1.00 will do that. Still I knew I like the place. That just left the solving of my internet issues as the final hurdle to totally settling in. I already had a few ideas on just how to do that, but as usual, in this place, there's a solution around every corner.


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