our Ondoy story in Bohol

we were so ecstatic that the sun was up when our plane landed in Cebu, morning of Sept26... we were very thankful that our flight was not cancelled despite the heavy rains the night before and the coming typhoon... we found out later that the flights from Manila after ours were cancelled... this was our first dodge of Ondoy...




we head straight to the port area of cebu for our ferry to tagbilaran...




just look at how calm the water was and how sunny it was outside...




nobody ever thought that it's gonna a bumpy ride... we were all on a high because despite the typhoon we were finally on our Cebu-Bohol trip which was planned months ago...


....imagine riding Enchanted Kingdom's Space Shuttle and Anchor's Away combined and a million times over.... that's how it felt throughout our 2hour boat ride from Cebu to Tagbilaran... we were on that boat between 8am-10am... the same time that Ondoy was already lashing Metro Manila...

i usually am the toughy in our group, but i was the only one who really gave in and vomitted... i wasn't able to bear the sound of people vomitting at the same time plus the smell of all their excretions inside the boat (mostly from Koreans who seemed to have a really hearty breakfast before the ride)...

all the scheduled ferry trips after ours were also cancelled because of the big waves near bohol... we were able to dodge Ondoy again... although this time he had a good one on us....




but nothing can ever dampen our excitement... the beach of Dumaluan (in Panglao Island) was mad with waves during the entire time we stayed... we still pushed through with our tour of Bohol....

It was only sometime after lunch that we got text messages from friends in Manila checking on us that we found out what happened there... we spend the rest of the night in silence, trying to find news online... we saw photos and videos of the flooding... we cant help but just stay quiet... some families of the group were gravely affected as well...

We are all thankful that despite that, we were still able to experience and enjoy the trip... although we felt guilt also... so out of respect to all the things that happened in luzon that time, we opted to postpone posting our photos and sharing it online...until today... :-)

the rest of the group head back to Manila 2 days after (i went straight to Zamboanga already)... they were able to appreciate that they were spared from the agony of that day in the metro...


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SuperCat Ferry
Cebu-Tagbilaran
Philippines
26September2009