By right, we shouldn’t be diving on day 4, but we buey gam wan that we didn’t see the thresher sharks, so we woke up at 4am+ to try our luck again.
Alfie brought us to another spot at Monad Shoal this time, which was deeper and scarier. There was a drop off and we kept thinking we will fall off the cliff.
But I managed to find a spot where I could sit comfortably like a boss to camp for the threshers.
And there it was, up close and personal. I was super excited but had to keep still.
I saw a total of three threshers, but because of my bossy sitting position, I missed out a lot more that were lurking deeper below.
With Alfie our divemaster.
The total cost for six dives per pax was an exotic 11,550 peso. But kudos to Ash’s and Lynn’s haggering skills, we managed to get a discount of 1,200 peso. Still higher than other dive shops but can’t complain. At least we can all leave Malapascua happily saying we saw the thresher sharks.
Last meal at our favourite Ging-Ging’s.
For our return journey, due to our refusal to sit in the 5 hour non-aircon bus with roosters, we hired private transportation from a random guy at the beach.
3,200 peso in total for a private boat and car to our hotel in Cebu!
Private jetty too.
Stopped by the roadside to have their buko (coconut) juice. They’re not as sweet as the Thai ones but still refreshing and the flesh is so ohmygoodness soft!
The car journey took about 3.5 hours. Once we settled down, we began our food hunting.
Some weird bread + noodle thing called palabok.
Philippines is well known for their lechon.
All the bui te bak.
We did some supermarket shopping then headed to Larsian, which is a hawker that specialises in just BBQ food. Tough choice in picking a stall because all of them were touting and selling similar stuffs.
We anyhow whacked one and it was yummeh, especially the Marlin fish.
After our super heavy dinner, that’s when we got complacent. Walked out of Larsian while passing through a dark alley, some kids came up to us and asked for money. Thinking nothing of them, we dismissed them then the next thing we knew, boom! They ripped our plastic bags apart, and all the stuffs we bought scattered on the floor. They attacked Lynn first followed by Ash, and everything happened within seconds. There were like at least ten of them and my first intuition is to escape ‘cos I’m afraid they have weapons and my wallet and phone were in my pocket. I shuttled run to the main street, saving a packet of dried mango on the way out LOL.
Yes, I pungseh-ed my friends but I guess it’s how different people react to crisis. I’m the must get to safe spot first before thinking of what to do next kind (same thing when I see a cockroach); Lynn is the aggressive ready to charge kind (the kid who attacked her almost shat his pants); Ash is the protective kind (she hugged the plastic bag so tightly the kids only managed to rip out a water bottle); and Vincent is the stunned there and access situation kind. At the end of the day, I’m glad no one got hurt and it was just some cheap food and snacks that we lost. Lynn’s aggression and urge to return and beat those kids up was damn funny. This was the first time something like that happened to us overseas, and it really taught us to be vigilant paranoid and not let our guard down.
