Trip to Cebu

On Friday, February 20th, I finally got off Luzon island (the main island) and ventured out to Cebu. I was the "control officer" for the trip to Cebu. This means that I was the point man for all the planning for the Ambassador to take a trip to Cebu. This is something they have all new folks do to get them used to it. It is a bit of a headache trying to figure it all out, but a good experience when it is all said and done. I didn't bring my camera with me on the trip since I was busy with other things, but I will try to tell the Cebu story with publicly available photos.

First, to understand where Cebu is, you should look at a map. The Philippines has three regions, basically north (Luzon), middle (Visayas) and south (Mindinao). Cebu is kind of the capital of the middle region. Their main language is Visayan, but they all pretty much understand Tagalog too, since it is the national language.



We actually flew into Mactan Island, then drove over the bridge to Lapu-Lapu and then to Cebu City.



We got in to the city about 9 am and visited an American business down there that makes automated self-service machines, like ATMs, gas station things, those automated check out things at grocery stores or the airport. They had tons of engineers in one building, and put some of their stuff on display. It was pretty cool.



From there, we did not go to a beach like the one pictured above, but rather headed to an environmental rally where doves were released. I was just happy the birds didn't do any damage.



If we were tourists, we may have hit the cathedral above, which is one of the oldest in the Philippines. It was actually first build in the late 1500s, when Magellan landed here and claimed the Philippines for Spain. It has burned down a couple times though and the latest iteration was built in 1790. That's still pretty old.

But we aren't tourists, so we headed to a radio station for an interview and I got my first airtime since winning several radio call-in contests living in Tallahassee two decades ago. I said good morning in Visayan and Tagalog and said how happy I was to be here (in Tagalog).



From there we were off to lunch and then an orphanage, where a Peace Corps volunteer works. That particular volunteer just had her appendix out unexpectedly, so we met with other Peace Corps volunteers and took a little tour of the orphanage. It was very nice.



Speaking of religious buildings, the LDS church is building a temple in Cebu (artist rendering above). It is expected to be completed in 2010 - we might still be here for it!

After that we zipped on over to Central Command for the Philippines for a chat with a general and some of his troops. I learned an important lesson. When they "give honors" or something like that and form two lines and have the general escort the Ambassador through, you aren't supposed to tag along. Luckily, I did not learn this the hard way, as my traveling companions held me back.



From there we hopped back on board Philippine Airlines and flew back to Manila. Cebu is a beautiful city. It is green, has clean air and does not have the crushing amount of people Manila does. We had a great time.