It's a good thing I guess that Manny Pacquiao lost his bid for re-election to the Senate last week. He'll have more time to train for his fight on July 19th - against Mario Barrios for the WBC welterweight championship. 46 years old...

Countryside Gardens Ride, #2: Although the Buwakan Ni Alejandra garden in Balamban still had the obligatory photo ops like the "Sirao Flower Garden", it's location has more rain, etc than Sirao. Also, as it often happens, my eyes always drift over to the surrounding mountain landscapes and those wonderful greens...

We hired a taxi in March for an all day excursion to "the countryside", getting out of the city and up into the mountains. The mountains are the view we have from our place in Cebu City. We paid p4000 for the day of exploring, around $72. We went on a "gardens tour", where we visited the different gardens and restaurants created for garden lovers and "photo ops" visitors. Selfie picture takers are popular here, and the "Sirao Flower Garden" people chose that theme as their focus. Also, they must have gotten a good deal on life size horse sculptures. I liked the shot of the guy in the last photo, taking a break in a nest like seat. My number one favorite Garden is the "Lakeview Le Jardin". I'll share my Lakeview photos soon.

a few more photos from our Mactan Island Resort Hopping with Andrea a few weeks ago...

Random Thoughts: In a country where "why hurry" is a kind of unspoken mantra, aka Filipino Time, I think it's interesting how many people push the Close Door button right after pushing the Floor number in elevators. The doors start closing fairly fast anyway, often within a second or two. from a FB post 5 years ago -  My Dad told me two things when I went off to the Army: "Hurry up and wait!" I can't remember number two. In the Philippines, I was told "why hurry?" Two thoughts I had this morning when I was watching my coffee maker do it's thing.

Our Bantayan Island trip was wonderful, with it's white sand beaches, island hopping to Virgin, Hilantagaan.and Sillon Islands..., and sunsets.

Bantayan and Virgin Island Trip #1: We travelled to the smaller island of Bantayan Island off the northern tip of Cebu Island this weekend. We also did some bangka boat island hopping to even smaller islands. But first, there was a 3 hour+ bus ride from Cebu City. I took a bunch of photos from my window seat. The Berna and Marie's "Web of Desire" tour bus was parked at the Bus terminal, but we didn't take the "Web of Desire". Our bus was one of the larger white and yellow buses like the one on the right in the first photo. I really enjoyed going through the many small towns as we travelled up Cebu's eastern coast line.

Andrea just returned home from her visit with us here in Cebu last week. She decided to stay at the Crimson Resort and Spa on Mactan Island for her first night. Mactan is the island where Cebu's airport is located, a 30-40 minute ride from Cebu. Looking at the map, the Crimson is one of the 5 resorts we visited as a group after picking up Andrea at the Crimson. Besides the Crimson, Shangri-La and Dusit Thani, we checked out the Tambuli, the Sheraton and J-Park on Friday with the family. The first 2 hotel photos are from the Crimson, and the last 2 are from the Tambuli.

I just added the following to my blog description: 9May2025 - I decided to leave FB, and just share my photos etc here. Thank you to the special people who check in here...

From our Resort Hopping withn the family. Only had time to crop a few shots...