Philippines Tour 24

Day 1

The Perth Scuba 2024 Philippines tour has officially begun. A nice early 3am meeting at the airport made much easier by the fresh 6 degree air temperature felt like nature squeezed in the one final laugh at us before we headed for warmer climates.

We had a little bit of air time this time around with a flight from Perth to Singapore and then on to Manila meant we were pretty much flying all day. 

The stopover in Singapore was just long enough to do a bit of exploring and grab a bite to eat. I naturally managed to find the donuts and may (or may not have) indulged in one while fellow passenger and youngest Traveller Ryan doubled my contribution. Well my excuse… when in Rome… I’m not sure that works really but I’ll take it. 

The flights were very good. Our only female “Touree” Emily was disappointed that there was no turbulence… weirdo! and fellow touree Justin took one for the team and sat amongst the kindergarten section of the plane and had 4.1 surround sound of crying in VERY high definition. (Sorry mate, we just provided the plane.)

I amused myself playing with the cool window tinting button that lets you set the tint to a level that you can look directly at the sun. I know… small things… Well it was either that or watch Taylor Swift music videos on the inflight “entertainment”. Yeah nah! 

We arrived in Manila pretty much on time and watched our Apple tagged luggage make its way from the plane to the arrivals luggage collection hall. We waited quite a while so we were pretty thankful while we were waiting that we knew our dive gear had made it to our final destination (probably not a couple of words I should put together while we are all flying and traveling all over the place really). 

The trip from the airport to the hotel (just 3 km away took around 50 minutes in typical Manila traffic style. Thankfully the air conditioning on the bus was working hard to keep us steadily acclimatizing to the 31 degree humidity that slapped us in the face as we walked out of the airport. 

We checked in to our hotel in Manila where we will stay until our pick up and transfer to El Galleon resort in the morning. 

The hotel is nice enough. The check in girl must have been on the tail end of a bad day because even my fantastic jokes and humor couldn’t get her to smile… or even acknowledge our existence really

Oh the generations of today… you’ve gotta love em’!

Everyone shot off to bed after a few of us had dinner and left me to do what your leaders do while everyone relaxes… explore! Manila by night is an interesting place and someone “forgot” to tell me that at around 11pm every night, it buckets down and dumps the equivalent of 15 full Perth winters of rain in as many minutes. No thank you Mr security man, the umbrella suggestion and offer would have been useful on my way OUT of the hotel… not when I got back looking like a drowned rat. But hey, thanks for your concern. 

Warm rain is good rain though right?

Well gotta go and put my head on the pillow. Big day ahead tomorrow. Looking forward to enjoying the next 9 days with this fantastic bunch of people, some cool diving and of course… completing my refresher course with the guys at ElGalleon. Yep… it’s been a while. 

Enjoy Winter Perthies! 

We’re going divin’ in boardies and tshirts!

See you

Tour Leader Lee

Trip #26 - Still can’t believe Joey has led twice as many trips as me!!