Cebu 2011 Part 1 – The Trip

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The airline tickets for this trip was purchased about six months ago in August 2010, during a seat sale.

It cost us about this much for two round trip tickets (MNL-CEB-MNL):

  • Base Fare: PHP 2,796.00
  • VAT: PHP 339.12
  • Aviation Security Fee: PHP 30.00
  • Web Admin Fee Fee: PHP 224.00
  • World Wide Fund: PHP 240.00
  • Total: PHP 3,629.12

The World Wide Fund item is to offset the carbon footprints for the plane ride 🙂

I know of some people who have gotten their fare for a much lower price – 17 pesos! – but I don’t have their luck and speed when it comes to making online reservations. I also remember regular local airfare costing no lower than 6k roundtrip per person a few years ago, so I know that I’m not getting a bad deal with this price.

A Cord Taxi took us to the airport (this is the name of the new World taxis), and cost only 200 pesos from QC to Pasay. We arrived with a lot of time to spare for our 1515 flight. This despite the fact that I came at noon time from work when I planned to have been home by 10AM. The line at the check-in counters was quite long but we found ways to entertain ourselves ;). We didn’t have much money on us so we decided not to grab any snacks before the flight. I took a few photos with my BB and tweeted them too!

V for Vera!

And the sign pointing to Gate 133

As well as Alfred while waiting to board

NAIA Terminal 3 is a huge place and the waiting areas are spacious and normally very cold. The Gate for our flight was at the ground floor where people from three or four other flights were waiting to board. The place was packed, most of the seats were taken! I guess that’s a good sign for local tourism. The boyfriend played a game on the iPad while I started reading one of the books I brought with me for the trip – Can You Keep a Secret?. I didn’t get too far with reading though – I ended up taking a nap until boarding time 🙂

Since we were at the ground floor, I’d already expected to walk to the plane on the ground rather than through a tube. We actually had to board a shuttle that took us to where our plane was:

While waiting for the rest of the passengers to board the back bus, I snapped a few more photos 🙂

And this was the plane that took us to Mactan, safely:

Although boarding was on time, takeoff was delayed a bit. There was a lot of traffic at the runway. I wasn’t surprised, seeing that our flight was rescheduled a week or two earlier. It was supposed to be the noon flight but was pushed back by three hours.

It was a full flight and all seats were taken. There were a few babies too although I didn’t notice them cry so much because of the pressure on my ears. I thought I was going to endure the pain and get a migraine on my first night in Cebu, until I remembered I could always do the diver’s equalizing trick to relieve my ears of that pressure! I had to do it a few times until after arriving in Cebu, but it was well worth it.

It was a smooth flight, except for the boyfriend spilling his orange juice all over both our legs (yes it was Minute Maid, no I did not win the blog contest :(). Oh, a tip when you’re taking Cebu Pacific on budget airfare – bring your own drinks. The drinks that normally cost 20 pesos at your corner grocery store is sold at 50 pesos! Since it’s a short flight anyway, just drink lots of water before the flight and you’ll be packed until touchdown.

I’ve always commented how we don’t have a lot of photos together, so while on the plane, we took a few goofy ones! haha 🙂

From Mactan International Airport, we took a metered taxi to the hotel. It probably took 15-20 minutes and the fare was about 300 pesos, I felt that that was too high compared to what we had to pay from QC to Pasay, but what the heck.

So that’s part 1 of our Cebu trip. Stay tuned for the next one 🙂