Liempo Archives - Escapes From The Little Red Dot

I awoke at 515 to find the room illuminated by daylight. Peeking out I saw the skies in an orange hue, sun was about to rise. The clouds were blocking so I chose to return to bed without the sunrise shot.

Woke up again at 8 and surfed some net before baby K woke. Changed his diapers which was slightly leaking and concluded that the pants diapers were not as high capacity as the tape ones for overnight usage. Then we proceeded to breakfast at The Abalone.

Baby K had his own baby seat at breakfast. Baby K had some bread and cereal with milk and was satisfied while his parents chose from a wider variety of food. As baby K became bored and fussy, wife brought him out of the crowded restaurant for a stroll and back to the room to change to swimwear while I waited forever for my cappuccino which never came.

Went back to the room without my caffeine boost and found baby K all ready. He was not impressed that I have to change and became fussy again until we both stepped out of the room. Couldn’t waterproof my camera in time and so had to make do with the iPhone.

We first got out towels from one of the towel exchange huts then we proceeded to the “shore” that we saw yesterday. It was in fact a shore for people sitting in their inflated donut float to come out from the moving stream to disembark. It wasn’t a good place for toddlers since it got deeper so I brought him to the basic toddler pool where there was a rain mushroom and a small slide.

Played there for a while and we went to the bigger kids pool where there was a pirate ship, a big structure with slides and a rain mushroom. It was easier in the day when not many people were around but as it got crowded, I had to bring baby K out the pool. Furthermore the slides could only be taken by kids under 12 and so I couldn’t slide down with baby K. I had to leave the iPhone before entering the area to prevent it from drowning but that meant that I had to go back to the towel hut to put it into the locker which had a password lock.

Toddler pool with a kids Pirates ship theme. — Toddler pool and a kids Pirates ship theme pool in the background.

After all the fun in the sun, I returned to the room with baby K and gave him a bath before we again tried to get him to nap. Wife cooked lunch but baby K refused to nap. So we left the room to buy some drinks from the Metro supermarket and called room service to carry out housekeeping.

We bought more bottled water, a beer, fresh milk (limited variety) and some drinks before returning and baby K fell asleep in mommy’s arms.

Returned to the room and lay baby K on the bed while we ate the other packet of pork, microwaved, with a bottle of not-so-cold beer, upon returning from the supermarket. Thankfully baby K napped a lot longer.

Baby K woke up after 2 hrs whereas both daddy and mommy had a quick shut eye too. Things didn’t go too well as baby K became very cranky, wanted to play with water from the kitchen tap. After some scolding from mommy and trying to feed him porridge which he only had some, we decided to bring him out for a walk to the beach.

First we went to the Jlounge to pick up our welcome drinks with the vouchers, and it turned out to be tropical mixed fruits drink. It was too sweet to taste like real fruits though.

After that we proceeded to the towel hut to exchange for towels again and went to the beach. On first look it was pretty disappointing. The available sand near the water was a small space and the one where the sun decks were had a large space reserved for a company event. Baby K had to settle for the sand, which wasn’t smooth sand but a mixture of other stones, to play with.

The sea water wasn’t turquoise like Boracay but was clear and only mostly knee deep for quite a distance. There wasn’t much to see though except for a couple of silver fishes which was very hard to see sometimes. Baby K was fascinated by the water parachute in the distance and the low water level as he squats to splash the water.

A view of the beach standing in the waters.

We left after some time and proceeded to the arcade to utilize whatever tokens he had left to take the train and boat rides while I bought a frappe (Jlounge) to cool down from the heat. After that we got back to the room until dinner time.

We went to the Korean restaurant Maru just at the ground floor of our block. We ordered grilled chicken which was not too bad and they had quite a couple of sides. However the waitress misunderstood with out orders and didn’t send the pancake. Luckily the main dishes was filling enough and they made up by giving us another pancake side dish and some tropical juices.

Back at the room, I bathed the baby and soon enough he was calling for nap time. That was nice as it gave us some rest time for this trip. Got to catch some TV (managed to catch Antman on HBO) before going to bed.

Woke up at the same time as a normal working day on Saturday to prepare for the trip to Cebu. Just some more follow up packing such as bottles, milk powder dispenser and toddler’s home cooked food, electrical stuff like bottle warmers, electric chargers and extension cables, daily necessities like shavers.

Baby K really slept till the 11th hour and I had to gently wake him up with some Pororo music before rushing him to change out without getting him frustrated.

We arrived at T2 for the SilkAir flight and was surprised by the lack of counters as all had bag drops only and there were automatic stations to do check ins. However we skipped those and proceeded straight to the counter since there wasn’t really a queue and was checked in quickly. Had a quick brekkie at the Arrival hall and packet some bread for baby K to munch on before going thru immigrations.

Changed his diapers at the convenient nursing room and proceeded to the gates, baby K was terribly excited to see the planes along the way, as he became aware of aeroplanes and how they would fly in the skies.

The flight to Cebu was long, with a technical stop of 45mins at Kalibo, only arriving at Mactan Island at 300pm, on a 10am flight. It was a small plane and therefore didn’t had screens per passenger and relied on passengers’ own electronic devices for entertainment content. Our seats were booked on ones just behind the bassinet ones as those were fully booked out and it was not very comfortable with a hyper toddler on our laps and with the aisle seat taken up by a huge Caucasian. Baby K napped only an hour and we managed to keep him happy with books and toys and him moving about and food till we arrived, thankfully earlier than expected.

Islands, from the view enroute. — Islands, the view enroute.

At the arrivals we had to submit a handful of forms – a health declaration, the usual immigration form and finally a customs form at 3 different stations. But the line moved quickly before we picked up the luggage already on the belt and exited the small airport. Walking out, a representative from JPark resort was waiting and confirmed our names before a medium size bus came and picked us up, the only customers.

It was about a 20mins ride to the resort with slow traffic on a single line road. Again baby K was walking around on the bus when it stopped and just messing around with the curtains all the way. Nothing much on the roads interest him, he couldn’t see the difference yet between Cebu’s developing towns compared to the modern Singapore that we came from.

Modern looking new town, so different from the rest. — Modern looking new town, so different from the rest of the area.

As we arrived and got off the bus, our luggage was taken care by the bellboy and we just went to the very busy check in counter. As mommy did the check in, I brought baby K for a walk. The weather was as warm and humid and baby K seemed excited to see the pool.

We were given a spa room, which meant a room that had additional 2 beds within the shower room that had a non working jacuzzi and a separate shower and a toilet. The room was big with a separate space for sofa and daybed and a pantry. The pantry had adequate space for food preparations, and also came with a microwave.

Pantry with enough space for food preparations.

On first thought, it seemed like an upgrade but the arrangements of the only sink in the pantry meant that all the washing of hands and brushing of teeth had to be done in the pantry.

Gave baby K a bath where he pooped into the tub and got him ready for nap time as it was almost 530pm. However, the lack of a sarong, loud music from the outside and probably the excitement of overseas trip made him unable to do so. We brought him out instead as we wanted to buy fish for his meal.

We walked to the main street not too far from the resort and went to the Metro supermarket, in a Korean “biased” Shangs Island Town center mall (this island/resort was especially popular with Koreans, literally thought I was in Jeju). There was no fish there and so we decided to walk down the street where baby K dozed off. 15mins of walking in the super congested street, we arrived at Savemore supermarket, a much bigger one.

Shangs mall opposite the entrance of the resort.

Crazy crowded single lane street. — Single lane street.

We looked around but there weren’t much fish for sale, ended up buying pork. As we exited the place, we were approached to take a ride on a small motortricycle back to the resort. The quote was 40 per head which was 80 total so we got on. The tout was a different person from the rider and he followed us on the trip. Along the way, we stopped by a roast pork stall to buy some Lechon as it was recommended to try by my colleague. However the last bit was “reserved” and so we went on to another stall. It was not stated specifically and we thought it was just roast pork and so we bought it. However, the tout had asked the stall seller to give us 2 portions instead of 1 and my wife not knowing had to fork out 600 pesos for them. I thought we had overpaid as we saw 150pesos written on the front of the stall though. The stall was also just in front of our hotel entrance and so we just paid 200pesos to the rider and the tout as tips and left for the hotel, now the sky had already turned dark.

Motor tricycle that we took to return back.

Back at the room, my wife started cooking for baby K who had woken up from his nap at the pork store and I gave him a quick bath. Then we spent the rest of the night on TV and eating the roast pork and feeding baby K, occasionally looking out of the window with the fireworks up the in skies, though we don’t know what’s the celebration about. There were some music blasting below with some dancing going on but that didn’t last very late.

After his meal, I brought baby K out to check out what’s around. There was a kids club that included a indoor playground and games arcade beside it where baby K spent some tokens riding the static rides. There were some shops available for shopping but we weren’t interested.

On the ground floor out in the open, there was a main pool with a center pool bar. As we walked around, we also saw a mini golf and other pools. It was already 10plus at night so everything was closed. We went back to the room.

The day was concluded with washing of all the utensils and boiling some hot water to store in the flask for baby K’s middle of the night feeding and then lights out. Knocked out easily with so much being done for the day.

Mactan Island, Cebu 2016 Day 2 – JPark pool and beach

Mactan Island, Cebu 2016 Day 1 – Arrival in JPark Island Resort and Waterpark