stnzBlog: Asia 2025

Asia 2025
Winter escape

Bangkok
Posted: 2025-02-07 02:38:05 EET by Eerik ( 13.916030 lat, 100.600800 lng ) | Edit

Urgh. I still don't know how I imagined a 02:25 flight is a good idea...

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Cebu airport
Posted: 2025-02-06 18:14:17 EET by Eerik ( 10.314900 lat, 123.978600 lng ) | Edit

The last two days went by working and not doing much anything, so nothing special about those.

Today in the evening we arranged ourself to Cebu airport, as our flight to Bangkok departs at 02:25. Not sure how I decided that it would be a nice time to fly when booking...

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Sardines
Posted: 2025-02-04 13:38:37 EET by Eerik ( 9.948879 lat, 123.365623 lng ) | Edit

Two dives during the morning, first to see the famous sardine fish clouds of this place and then an another one at a nearby island. The later one was in general much more interesting, with a beautiful wall of corals and good visibility.

The strange flat and transparent jellyfish in the pictures is venus girdle. Never seen those anywhere else.

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Moalboal
Posted: 2025-02-03 16:10:00 EET by Eerik ( 9.948879 lat, 123.365623 lng ) | Edit

Working day, so not much anything happening. Just moved to an another hotel in the morning and checked in to a diving center for a dive or two tomorrow.

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Moalboal
Posted: 2025-02-02 15:06:30 EET by Eerik ( 9.948879 lat, 123.365623 lng ) | Edit

Arrived to our next destination, Moalboal on southern side of Cebu island. Combining two buses to get here felt a bit too long and boring, so we just took a private taxi. Rather expensive but way faster and nicer.

This seems to be a very touristic small coastside town, famous for big clouds of sardine fish in the sea. Let's see how our days here will be spent. The stupid teeth is still annoying me a bit, so might not dive too much. Trying to book a dentist appointment in Thailand on Friday...

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Lazy day
Posted: 2025-02-01 08:42:55 EET by Eerik ( 11.329840 lat, 124.121078 lng ) | Edit

Lazy day at Malapascua. Moved to neighbor, to the dive center rooms for one night as the previous place had no free rooms today, but not doing much anything else.

The stupid teeth was hurting after diving yesterday, so not diving today either. Will try to get it fixed at Koh Samui in Thailand later on, to be able to dive at Tao.

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Sharks
Posted: 2025-01-31 10:29:03 EET by Eerik ( 11.329840 lat, 124.121078 lng ) | Edit

Early morning we woke up at 4am to dive with the local specialty, the endangered thresher sharks. And found them. :)

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Malapascua
Posted: 2025-01-30 12:49:41 EET by Eerik ( 11.329840 lat, 124.121078 lng ) | Edit

After a night in Cebu we continued our journey to Malapascua island. First five hours on a bus and an hour on a boat and we arrived this small tropical island, kind of reminding me of Koh Tao or Phi Phi with much less development and modern infrastructure. The island is mostly known as a diving island, and the biggest reason to dive here are the rare and endangered thresher sharks.

Today was the first dive day here. The thresher shark dives would head out already at 04:45 in the morning, so we decided to skip them on the first day and I just went on a normal dive trip to a nearby island while Iryna stayed home working.

Not much to say about the dives, much colder water than expected (+27C so not really that cold but gets cold in an hour with a thin 1mm wetsuit..) and not that great visibility. The first dive started by passing a cool dark underwater tunnel through the island which was definitely interesting, but after that it was rather bland. Found a large whitetip shark though, in addition to a snake and a seahorse. :)

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Cebu
Posted: 2025-01-28 18:01:40 EET by Eerik ( 10.313900 lat, 123.977997 lng ) | Edit

Another flight done, with midnight arrival.

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Manila airport
Posted: 2025-01-28 15:58:19 EET by Eerik ( 14.521300 lat, 121.011497 lng ) | Edit

Spent the morning in Singapore by visiting a dentist to check why my teeth seem to randomly hurt after diving or in the aircraft in lower pressure. Seems there's a crack in the teeth, but it couldn't be easily fixed here so will have to fix it back in Finland. So far it doesn't cause too much trouble, so can wait.

In the afternoon we took a flight to Manila from Singapore, the four hour flight went easily by watching series and editing photos. Cannot say Manila airport is an entertaining place... More like a horrendous mess and all the reasonable restaurant and lounges are already closed in the evening. Well, luckily it's a relatively short layover and our flight to Cebu departs in a moment.