Palawan

Last weekend Ben and I were able to go on a really short, but great trip to a place called Palawan. The Philippines has so many beautiful beaches and natural places to visit it's hard to choose. I actually have to thank my sister Rachelle and her fiance Bret for suggesting this place to us. I think they read about it online or something and told us we should go. The draw is the natural underground river, but it ended up being a lot more than that. So, we booked the trip. It was only 48 hours and if we were going to do it again we would make sure it was longer, but it was a lot of fun and we are glad we got it in.

Look behind me....it's so clean.  Palawan has an anti-littering law that is obviously VERY effective.  In my opinion, the reason it works is the citizen that catches you littering gets 50% of the fine paid to them!  Smart!

The other reason it was SO nice, clean, calm.....NO TAXIS and NO JEEPNIES allowed!!!  SO AMAZING!

We went to this Wild Life conservation place that was mostly crocodiles, but had some other animals as well.  Ben quite enjoyed posing with the baby croc.

I did not love it so much

I look a little more confident in this 

ya, they are pretty dang scary

This place was pretty awesome.  It was this great park, playground, just beautiful place.  

The beach in Sabang.  We got to hang out here for a few hours, it was gorgeous.

At the entrance to the underground river there were monkeys just hanging out, right next to people, it was pretty amazing.

Oh and these huge like 3ft long lizards

Us starting our little trip to the Underground River

The entrance.  It really was gorgeous and such a cool place.  It really is a huge cave with a river through it.

bats and bat droppings (the guide thought it was pretty funny to make bat poo jokes but didn't use the word poo....ya, the tour wasn't really for kids

My goofy husband inside the cave

Another gorgeous beach right by the entrance of the underground river.

We are very grateful for the chance to visit these types of places, seriously...such a blessing.

The Philippines isn't always just sunshine and beaches and I will do my best to share some of both with you in my upcoming posts.

My Late Philippines Friday Post: Cebu-Taoist Temple and Tops

We have our own little "To Do in Cebu" list that we have put together.  We want to take advantage of this city that we live in while we have the chance.  I think in every town or city in the world there are those "must do" things that all the tourists do, but the some times us "locals" miss out on because life gets in the way.  We don't want to miss those things while we are here in Cebu.  So, Monday morning, after spending the entire weekend home sick, we wanted to get out of the house and decided this was the perfect chance to knock two things off of our to-do list.
Our first stop was the Taoist Temple.  This was built in 1972 in the very posh neighborhood of Beverly Hills of Cebu (not the 90210 one).  There was not a lot to do there, but it was fun to hike up the stairs to see the Chinese architecture and decor.  I got a lot of fun pictures too.  (click on image to view larger)

Next on our list was Tops.  This is a "park" located literally at the highest spot you can reach in Cebu.  I felt like we were driving uphill FOREVER.  Anyone who knows me knows I HATE driving up high mountains and on small roads where the sides just drop off.  It makes me so sick to my stomach.  With our awesome 1999 Toyota Corolla  I was seriously worried for our safety.  But, we made it ok.  We originally stopped at the place that I thought was Tops, but it ended up being a cemetary.  Oops.  The view was pretty cool, but when we actually made it to Tops the view was ridiculous.  We were so high above the city it was almost hard to see it.  We got some great pictures and got to overhear quite an entertaining conversation between some old white married guy and his Filipina girlfriend (blog post to come).  It was worth the little trip and we are glad we are out seeing what Cebu has to offer.

Click here to see more pictures of our fun day.