Mubahay from the Philippines - 8/2/2026

Good afternoon readers and welcome to our 2026 travel blog!

For those of you who don’t know, my name is Brett, and my wife, Jen and I are both teachers from Australia who are taking the year off and travelling around the world. We have rented our house out, have said goodbye to the family, packed our (numerous) bags and then headed off to Sydney.

We then jumped on the Cebu Pacific flight on Friday 6th Feb 2026. 8 hours later we landed in the Philippines, and after getting mightily ripped off on the cab ride, we battled an hour of Friday night peak traffic and made it the 12kms to the Z Hostel in the Makati region of the mega metropolis known as Manila.

We lugged our suitcases to our room and hotfooted it to the rooftop bar for a free rocket fuel cocktail.

The cool breeze and even cooler cocktails revived us, and we had an amazing half hour at the Tiki roof bar. Ahh, the serenity!

Dinner across the road saw us pull up stumps for the night and we crashed out. 

A pre-breakfast walk saw us wandering the already hot, grimy streets of Manila - ah how we’d missed the sights and smells of SE Asia!!

Breaky at the hostel, cab ride (proper fare) to the airport and an hour later we were in the Cebu International Airport on the beautiful island of - you guessed it - Cebu. 

Our private driver picked us up and we escaped the heat to the A/C of his wee Nissan and settled in for the 100km drive over the heart of the island to the West coast hamlet of Moalboal. 

The 100kms was hampered by Manila-style traffic, and it took us nearly 5 hours to get there. Needless to say, after two days of travel, we were road weary, hot and grumpy when we got to Seascape Homestay at 6pm. All we wanted was a beer, a shower, some noodles and a bed!!

What we got was a lot more - and straight away we were reminded of the spontaneity and unpredictability of travel. 

Our hosts at Seascape are Clive - a retired London geezer - and his Filipino wife, Gia. It was Clive’s birthday, and after they showed us to our cool room - complete with twin queen beds - they invited us to join them and their friends in a sumptuous birthday feast in the bar!!

Well, we could hardly refuse this level of hospitality. 

The next two hours saw us gorging on prawns, crabs, salads, beef stew and two Filipino specialties - pork adobo (a delicious dish of pork, black bean, onion, pineapple, and rice) and lechon (roast suckling pig - not unlike the Italian porchetta.) They even had Aussie wine, French cheese and meats, sourdough and two birthday cakes!! Washed down with San Miguel Pilsen and Yellowtail shiraz and we were literally in hog heaven!!

We walked off the meal before cranking the A/C and crashing for around 9 hours.

What a great start to this little beach town, surrounded by wonderful people.

The next morning I went for a traditional breakfast (if you haven’t guessed by now, this blog has a food and drink focus) called longsilog - which is rice, eggs and the most AMAZING sausages called longganisa. These tiny bad boys are filled with pork, garlic, and sweet spices and are the bomb. After coffee and SE Asian fruit - mango, pineapple, pomello -  we went snorkelling straight out the front and straight into the sardine run. Sardines are protected in Moalboal and the sardine run is a famous thing that happens off the beach, and we fluked it on swim number one!! So cool.

The rest of the day saw us doing what we do best. Walking, swimming, getting massaged and eating. BTW, this is the afternoon view from our balcony as the storm brewed in the background!! Very cool!

That’s about it. Were off Canyoneering tomorrow - so I’ll blog about that.

Ciao for now.