Author: Sarah

First time in The Philippines 🇵🇭 Flying Scoot & Arrival into Cebu

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So much has happened since I last wrote a post, however I have no time for a life update as I’m currently on Day 1 on my trip in The Philippines!

I’ve never been to The Philippines and to be honest, I hadn’t thought much about going. I’ve never done much research on this beautiful place in Southeast Asia, however my friend Bree is getting married in July and she mentioned she was thinking about doing a trip to Asia as a pre-wedding celebration so I jumped on board! She’s a bit like me where she could hop on a plane and travel solo anywhere so when she said she thought she’d tick off a country she hadn’t been to, it would have been rude of me to let her go all alone…. (Well, that’s what I told the husband anyways 🤫)

So Thursday evening, Bree’s fiancé Jack dropped us off at the airport where we had a smooth check-in with Scoot Airlines then made our way to the Airport Aspire lounge for drinks, dinner & some yummy little carrot cakes for dessert 🍰

Thank god we had the lounge because our flight was meant to depart at 9:45pm but was delayed until 11pm so it was nice to have somewhere to relax to pass the time. By the time we boarded the flight and everyone had taken their seats we took off for Singapore around 11:30pm

When we looked at going to The Philippines originally, the flights were around AUS$480 each. By the time we decided on dates, I got time off work and we booked online the flights came to around AUS$800 per person. When you add your seat selection and baggage etc… it’s not as ‘cheap’ as advertised but still not a bad price. We considered going with Singapore Airlines instead of their budget airline sister Scoot, however the flight departure and arrival times weren’t ideal so we stuck with Scoot.

The flight was scheduled to take 5 hours, 50 minutes however it only took 4 hours 30 minutes which was a relief because it was definitely in the top 5 worst flights I’ve had. Not because the weather was bad or anything but because it was a red eye flight and I barely slept. Firstly both Bree and my seats wouldn’t recline at all, then it was too hot in the cabin so I started fanning my face with the emergency instruction card when we had taken off. THEN I started thinking about how hot it was and started to feel claustrophobic and got anxious feeling that I would pass out. This has happened to me in the past (like mini panic attacks) and usually I put my head between my legs and I kind of come right but because the seats were tight and my belly is 6 months pregnant 🤰 than it was all just impossible! I even got up to ask a flight attendant if there was an empty row I could just lay down as I felt like fainting and she just said “no sorry” then went back to preparing the meals people had ordered. I wasn’t expecting her to find a row out of nowhere but at least act concerned 🙄

Anyways, it was not an enjoyable flight so I was relieved when we finally arrived in Singapore. As we only had an hour before our connecting flight, we found our gate and I found a little spot on the floor to have a 30 minute nap before we boarded.

Luckily our flight was on time and we got into Cebu exactly at 10:04am, 1 minute earlier than originally scheduled. This flight i actually had a seat that reclined and I got a tiny amount of sleep to make me feel normal again so it was automatically better than the first!

Once we’d collected our suitcase, we headed outside and grabbed a taxi to our hotel. The taxi was about 650 pesos which works out to be around $17-18AUD for the 30-40 minute drive. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the currency here as I’m so used to going to Bali and automatically knowing how much things are in AUD.

One of the first things I noticed here was everyone drives on the right hand side like they do in America. And the cars are all left-wheel drive. The roads are similar to Bali in terms of its infrastructure however I didn’t feel Cebu was as full on as Bali was with the traffic. Plus they have traffic lights that people actually wait at haha!

We had booked 2 nights at Citadines Cebu which was a serviced apartment type accommodation in the city. Check-in was easy and the room was nice. They even decorated the room with some balloons and cupcakes to celebrate Bree getting married which was nice of them. Unfortunately though the ants got into the cupcakes a little but we were so hungry we blew them off and ate them anyways 😂

Once we had both showered and made ourselves look a bit normal after not sleeping for 24 hours, we went downstairs to the corner store and bought a couple of SIM cards for our phones. There was also this cute lemonade stand/store outside our hotel and I got us a couple of lemonades for like AUS$2 each which were yum!

The SIM cards were a bit of a nightmare to figure out how to work but we tried setting them up anyways and Bree ordered a GRAB car for us (like Uber) to somewhere nearby where we could get our nails done. The first place we went to looked super quiet and we weren’t 100% sure on the treatments so we went to another place a couple of doors down that looked a little better and asked if we could get two pedicures.

This was not the finished result, this was when I started haha

It wasn’t until we sat down that they said only one lady could do us so we would have to go one at a time. (Which was weird as I’m not sure what the other 5 ladies who worked there were doing) I went first and it was a terrible Pedicure! 😂 she took my old gel colour off with a nail file and when she was doing my cuticles she made me bleed. Bree and I were messaging each other while we sat there and quickly agreed that she wouldn’t be getting one. The pedicure was only about AUD$24 altogether but I wouldn’t be going back.

My toes didn’t end up looking too bad in the end – even if it wasn’t the most pleasant experience. After the pedicure we took another GRAB to the biggest mall in Cebu, Ayala Center. It was definitely big! I think there were about 4 levels and every time we explored one level there were just more and more corners or shops we hadn’t explored yet. I bought myself a dress, crop jacket and crop shirt (for after pregnancy haha) and Bree bought some pants & a top.

We had barely eaten apart from some lollies when we were boarding the plane to Cebu and the ant cupcakes so we had a semi-early dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant at the mall. For 2x plates of spring rolls, veges, rice, satay chicken and 2x drinks it came to around AUD$50 which wasn’t bad. What was funny were the staff kept yelling out something to the other staff members and they all responded at once with “YES!”. We’re not sure if they were saying something like “Asked customer if they would like desert?” “YES!” And they did it every time they did something customer service-wise but it was so random that we kept laughing through our dinner. Not to mention we were asked about 3 times if we wanted more cutlery. Even a spoon was offered a couple of times when we weren’t eating anything that really required a spoon. As soon as we started the dinner too, they came over and asked us if we wanted to look at the menu for dessert. I felt like saying “can I finish my first meal first and then decide?” Haha. Filipino people are very helpful and kind but also lack a little common sense/need to read the room a little better 😂 (I have more stories regarding this to come)

Once we’d finished dinner we went and had the most delicious gelato’s afterwards – I think we tried about 5 flavours each before settling on 2. I ordered a white chocolate and caramel flavour along with a chocolate Malteser flavour.

We had said we were going to try and get as many massages as we could so we went to a massage place in the mall and paid about AUD$10 each for hour long massages 😅 as I’m pregnant I couldn’t sit in one of those massage chair so they just had me sitting on this stool which if I’m honest probably made my back ache more. The massage wasn’t terrible, she could have gone a little harder but I also don’t want to complain for $10 haha. I nearly fell asleep as I was so tired so it must have relaxed me anyways.

After the massages, we thought we would check out the Metro Supermarket in the mall and it did not disappoint. They had soooo many types of groceries from around the world. Bree was especially impressed as there were heaps of things from Canada that she can’t get in Australia. As we have a night in Cebu before we head home, we said we’d definitely come back for a grocery shop before heading back to Australia 🇦🇺 hopefully we don’t over-do our luggage limit with Scoot Airlines!

A quick GRAB ride back to the hotel and we were asleep by 11pm. To be honest, we were wanting an early night but we spent way too much time at the mall! We decided we wouldn’t set our alarms and wake up at whatever time the next day so we could catch up on some sleep.

Next post: Beauty treatments & yummy bagels 🥯

Nusa Penida – 24th August 2022

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This morning we were up super early to get ready for our day trip to Nusa Penida!
Nathan had to quickly go and get our clothes from the laundry place as we had run out of clean clothes the day before but they had shut before we could collect them again.
Our driver who picked us up was a guy called Agung who arrived around 7:00am (a little later than scheduled as he was confused as to where our hotel was)
Luckily he was a quick driver and we got to the harbor in Sanur a little after 8:00am.

Sanur is a little seaside town on the southeast of Bali. This is where all the boats will depart from if you’re doing any trips out to the islands.
When we got to the harbor, Agung took us to the one of the boat companies to collect our pre-booked tickets and then showed us what boat to take. There were so many people at the harbor! There’s so many different companies that do day-trips so there’s definitely a lot of commotion as people are trying to find their boats or lining up for tickets.

Once our boat was ready for everyone to board, we waddled through the water (just below knee height) and were helped onto the boat by the people working on board.
I have to say though, there was a lot of pushing and cutting in line!! Like we’re all literally going to the same place I wish people would just chill a bit. Not to mention Sanur Harbor hasn’t been developed properly where you can just step onto the boat. You literally have to walk in the water to get on and off so when people are pushing in front just to get on it’s super annoying.

The boat ride to Nusa Penida took about an hour. I read online it’s only meant to take about 42 minutes so maybe it just felt a lot longer as I had assumed it’d be a quick 20 minute ride.
If you get seasick, definitely take some tablets beforehand as there were a few people (mainly children) who were not well on the way over.

Once we got to Nusa Penida, we met our driver who was waiting for us with our name on a sign. We told him in the car where we wanted to go and he recommended we start at Broken Beach as there would be less tourists there at that time of day.

Broken Beach is a scenic coastal formation on the southwestern edge of Nusa Penida. It’s one of the more popular hangout spots for the manta rays however we didn’t see any from where we were.

Next stop was Angels Billabong which is just down from Broken Beach. If you like you can swim in the natural infinity pool which is framed by rock cliffs and hangs out over the ocean overlooking Manta Point Beach.

When we got back to the car, I had a look at the photos our guide had taken and they definitely weren’t as good as what our guide took of us in Ubud! Hahahaha. To get the scenery in the background, he kept adjusting the settings so it had this weird kind of warped or stretched out affect. In other words, I looked massive in all the pictures! I tried to edit them the best I could but if you see my legs look really weird or my ass the size of a watermelon in any of these pictures than now you know why 😀 😀 😀

When we hopped back in the car, our driver took us to Kelingking Beach which is one of the most popular and iconic views in Bali and has the famous ‘T-Rex’ shaped rock sticking out over the ocean. The view was absolutely beautiful! The water was clear and blue and the beach looked absolutely amazing. There’s a 120m high path to go down to the beach but the hike takes about 2 hours to get down and back up and it didn’t look easy! Everyone was sweating when they were returning so we decided to give it a miss. Especially as we had more to see.

I did read online that there’s another spot located very close to Kelingking Beach with its own amazing scenery, called Paluang Cliff. It’s just a 5 minute drive from Kelingking and it gives you views of the Kelingking T-rex from the other side, without the crowds if you didn’t want to wait in line for a photo like I did 😀

I make it seem like these places were super quick and easy to see but it actually takes ages to get around the island. Many of the roads in Nusa Penida are still very rough and narrow so you go slower on some roads due to them being so rocky!
I personally wouldn’t hire a scooter or motorbike, although lots of people seem to do it with no issues, just because it gets so hot and dusty on the roads I’d rather be in an air-conditioned car haha.

Lunch was included as part of our tour package so we stopped off at a local Warung (restaurant) and chose something from a Set menu. I ordered some rice dish and Nathan got Chicken skewers with satay sauce. The portions were small but it was enough to keep us going for the day.

Next stop, Diamond Beach.
The cliff lookout over Diamond Beach has always been popular at Nusa Penida. However, a few years back, local developers carved a stairway straight into the cliff-face, opening up the beach to everyone.
It takes about 15 minutes to reach the bottom and it is pretty steep so I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that doesn’t have a good level of fitness. When you get to the end of the staircase, you actually have to hold onto a rope to get you onto the beach as the stairs don’t take you all the way to the ground. Again – don’t be bringing your 87 year old grandma down here.

While we were waiting for our turn to get down to the beach, we spoke to some people who were climbing back up and they told us to be careful while swimming in the ocean as someone had nearly been swept out there. Apparently it is not really recommended to go into the water at Diamond Beach. If you do, you shouldn’t go out too far as the riptides are very strong and there are some very rocky sections in the water too. Not to mention no one can really help you if you do get swept out as there are no lifeguard’s or anything around. If you are planning on going, just stick to the rock pools or the shallow waters for your instagram snap!

Kind of like I did…

Unfortunately we didn’t get the sun at Diamond Beach as it was shaded by the cliff. Nathan kept saying we should have walked down to Kelingking Beach and enjoyed the sun there but we weren’t to know that Diamond beach would be so shady! If we could do it again, we probably would have made the effort to treck the 120m’s down to Kelingking Beach and stayed there for the day as it really was stunning!

After spending a couple of hours at Diamond Beach, we woke up our driver who was having a little nap in the sand and we headed back up to the car.

By this stage, it was around around 3:30-4:00pm so we made the hour’s drive back to the harbour to get our boat back to Sanur.

There was definitely more places to see on Nusa Penida but as we were limited on time we mainly checked out the main spots that you see on everyone’s Instagram posts.
The boat ride back to Sanur felt a little faster than the way over. The poor guy who was sitting in front of us threw up the whole way back. Thank god Nathan and I don’t really get that seasick!

When we got off the boat, our driver was meant to meet us but my phone died and I was the only one who had his WhatsApp number. There were far too many people to be able to find him (plus I’d kinda forgotten what he looked like) so after walking around for ages we walked back to the place he parked his car when he dropped us off and thankfully he was there waiting for us! He couldn’t get in contact with us either so he walked back too – lucky!

After Agung dropped us off at our accommodation, Nathan and I freshened up a bit and then headed off to Jimbaran Beach to grab some dinner. There were so many restaurants at Jimbaran Beach we were gutted we didn’t find all these places the night before when we were trying to find somewhere to eat!

We ordered Nachos, Pizza and a couple of drinks from this restaurant called Beekini Bowl and sat on the beach to watch the planes lands as you could see the airport in the distance.
Was a nice relaxing way way to end a busy day!

Top Tips for visiting Nusa Penida

  • Bring water in an insulated drink bottle. It gets so hot and you’ll be walking lots so you’ll want your water to be cold when you’re sweating
  • There’s a lot of stairs and walking in the sun, lather on the sunscreen!
  • If you’re doing a day trip, book a driver for the day. Unless you’re a Bali pro, it’s more comfortable to hire a driver and get them to take you around the island. They’ll take you to where you want to go and everything is on your own time so there’s heaps of flexibility!
  • Don’t be on Diamond Beach or Kelingking Beach when the sun goes down as it will be dark when you hike back up
  • If you’re driving yourself around the island, take it slow as the roads have little maintanice and get very narrow
  • All the famous spots will be filled with tourists taking a picture. Get there early to avoid the lines. Luckily, most people just want a photo and will move on so the wait isn’t crazy long.
  • 3 Days is the recommended amount of time to see the WHOLE island however you can tick off the main sites in a day if you’re tight on time
  • There’s a hidden beach called Suwehan Beach which isn’t included in many of the day tours. It’s a 30 minute hike down to the beach but you’ll be greeted with gorgeous white sand and turquoise water. Go before lunchtime so you get the sun.

Birthday in Bali! – 23rd August 2022

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Today was my birthday so Happy Birthdaaaaay to meeeee!!
As I liked to remind Nathan, it was the most important day of the year so I was expecting to wake up to fresh roses, candles and breakfast in bed but instead I just woke up to sheets that were brown from my fake tan – hahahaha!

I’m just kidding anyways, I didn’t expect breakfast in bed – Nathan knows better then to serve me breakfast in bed as I hate when crumbs get in the sheets.

Today we got up around 7:30am and got ready for our day. I had a blow-wave booked at Jet Black Ginger in Bingin at 10:00am so we went downstairs to have the buffet breakfast before we headed out. (Everyone that knows me knows that I love a buffet!)
I must say though, I didn’t rate the breakfast at Royal Tulip Jimbaran. The food choices were a little boring and the quality was mediocre. Everything looked good at first glance but I’ve definitely had better food in my lifetime.

After eating a piece of toast, a little egg and some fruit, Nathan and I ordered Gojek Scooters to head off to Jet Black Ginger. I appreciate that the Gojek drivers will always try and find the quickest way to your destination so this was definitely the most interesting ride I’d had so far.
My driver took me through all the back roads of Jimbaran and then through some military training! We were driving down this long road when I saw this large battle tank and these armoured vehicles on the street with a whole line up of what I think was the Bali Military standing there in uniform with all their guns 😐
My Gojek driver slowed down (so much so that I thought he was going to stop) and I could only assume we were about to get into trouble for coming this way. Suddenly all the military smiled at us and someone waved us through. Phew!!
I got to the hairdressers safe and sound and Nathan wasn’t too far off behind me. His driver wished me a Happy Birthday so they must have had quite the chat on the 25 minute drive down! 😀

This was my third blow wave since I’d been in Bali and I was really hoping it was going to be good as Jet Black Ginger had great reviews online. I was booked in for a Cream Bath hair treatment and a Blow Wave. Cream Bath’s are very popular in Bali so you’ll see them on nearly every spa’s menu. After shampooing, the hairdresser applies this cream-bath cream to your hair and scalp, then massages it in to enhance the cream absorption. It’s meant to soften and strengthen your hair – especially if you use lots of heat tools on it like I do. My hairdresser did this all for me, then while the cream-bath treatment was in she gave me one of the strongest massages I’ve had in my life haha!
She massaged my neck, shoulders & scalp for a good 30 minutes and did a wonderful job! To be honest, her pressure was probably a bit too hard but I felt like my body needed it.

Once she washed the cream treatment out, she spent ages brushing my hair before she blow-dried it. I should have told her to brush my hair before she washed it as it was really tangled from the scooter ride so it was very hard to brush. I actually felt bad because she spent most of the treatment trying to detangle my hair – woops.

At the end though, my hair looked great! I really enjoyed my treatment so highly recommend Jet Black Ginger to anyone in the Canggu or Uluwatu/Bingin area. They also do nails! I actually wanted to get my nails done when I was there but they didn’t have any availability so definitely recommend booking if you want to visit.

With my hair all clean, I went for a little walk to meet Nathan who was off getting probably his 10th massage of the whole trip.
The massage place he was at was about a 10 minute walk away but with the heat and my hair freshly done I didn’t want to be out in the humidity for too long so I stopped at a few little boutique shops along the way to look at some clothes/use their store air conditioning to cool down haha.

Eventually Nathan came and met up with me and we took a Gojek car to Palmilla Beach Club which is a semi-new beach club located at Melasti Beach in Ungasan. The plan for the day was to drink, swim and relax so I could have a chilled out birthday 🙂 🙂

We paid IDR100k (about AUD$10) for entering the club and there was a minimum spend if you wanted to use the sun beds (which we did) however there was a wait as we didn’t arrive until after lunch time and they were all taken from people who had gotten there earlier.
We said we would sit at the bar on the swings until a day bed became available. From memory, the day beds were about AUD$100 however we got that all back in food and drink credit so it’s totally worth it if you’re going to spend all day there. I think we probably spent around AUD$200 for the day and that was with 1L jugs of frozen margaritas, pizzas etc.. more expensive than local places in Bali but normal price for a westernised place.

I just had a look online for their prices but couldn’t find them. However, I found in my WhatsApp messages a message from them explaining the prices so they’re below if you’re planning on going 🙂

Open: 10am – 8pm

Entry: Adults IDR 125k/AUD$12.5 (for cash) or IDR 100k/AUD$10 (paying by card)

Minimum Spend *as of September 2022*: Tables – No minimum spend, Pool Bed – IDR 500k (AUD$50), Double Bed Rest Area max 4 people IDR 750k (AUD$75), Double Bed Sand Area max 4 people IDR 1mill (AUD$100)

First come, first serve basis. You can’t reserve any beds.

Eventually a day bed became free so we lay down for a few hours, ordered more drinks and enjoyed the music. I may or may not have fallen asleep for a little bit… what can I say, I’m 31 now haha!

We stayed until sunset then ordered a car to take us somewhere for dinner. We couldn’t be bothered going back to our hotel and we’d spent most of the day in the pool so didn’t feel like we needed to freshen up to much.
From my little list of ‘Places to eat in Bali’ I chose this cute restaurant called The Loft. They have one in Uluwatu as well as Canggu. As we were South, we went to the Uluwatu one for dinner.

When we got there, we ordered the Buffalo Cauliflower with homemade sambal sauce and maybe a burger. To be honest, I can’t actually remember as it was over a month ago now and I didn’t take a picture of anything but the cauliflower 😦 I did however take one of our dessert!
A yummy Chocolate Lava Cake and some Carrot Cake. (Enjoyed the Lava cake way more, found the carrot cake not up to my fussy carrot cake standard haha)

In the process of having dinner, I WhatsApped messaged a few tour companies to find out their best price for a day tour to one of the islands the next day. We didn’t have anything organised and wanted to take the boat over to Nusa Penida. One company said they could do it for IDR600k per person for the tour + IDR375k for the pick up and drop off (AUD$60pp + $37.5) so I booked with them and organised for them to pick us up at 7:00am the next day.
I suddenly remembered we didn’t get a chance to collect our washing from the laundry place we dropped our clothes off to that morning and they were about to close so I quickly WhatsApped messaged them to see if they could wait around for us and we’d pay them extra as we were literally wearing our last clothes but they had already finished for the day.
As our driver was picking us up at 7:00am and the laundry place didn’t open until 8:00am I was in a bit of a pickle. They were so kind though and said the laundry person would come in earlier for us the next day so we could get our clothes. Honestly, the Balinese people are so nice!

After we’d finished dinner at The Loft, it was off home for our early start the next morning!

Next Post: Nusa Penida Day Trip!

Apologies if this post was a bit all over the show. I’ve been back and forth with writing this and keep loosing my place. It’s been a very busy week with wedding planning but I’m wanting to write all this stuff down before I head to Bali again in 2 weeks!