i just came home from our "piso fare" trip to the visayas and mindanao. agatha, bert, niza, mike, and i spent 4 days (bert, niza, and mike stayed for another day) touring bohol, cagayan de oro and camiguin island. may and ninette were supposed to join us as well but had to back out at the last moment. mike joined us at the last minute and had to pay 3x as much for the plane ticket. the trip went ok except for aga's and my trip back to manila that felt like being in the "amazing race." more on that later.
march 2006
cebu pacific came out with their piso fare promo where the airfare costs just Php1.00 without the taxes and everything. may told the group that there is a fast-track ferry ride of about 2 hours from tagbilaran, bohol to cagayan de oro, so we decided to take the roundtrip flight first from manila to tagbilaran and cagayan de oro to manila to maximize the trip. it was only after we had purchased the air tickets that we found out that they have stopped that said ferry service and the only available ride was a 12-, actually, 13-hour ferry from tagbilaran, bohol to cagayan de oro. fine.
fyi
the trip was planned by our office team/ barkada/ drinking buddies but solely for recreational purposes. we scheduled the trip on the dates that we knew our boss would also be on leave. *wink *wink
june 2006
it was near the end of june and our boss was aware of our trip/summary vacation leave. it turned out that there were several missions he had to go before going on leave as well so we had to prepare several presentations at super speed. he was hinting of postponing our trip but since the tickets were restricted, re-scheduling was out of the question. oh yeah, our boss did not come with us. eheheheh
3-5 july 2006
in 3 days we were able to (1) sit through a well-publicized, well-attended, but awfully bad lecture; (2) attend 9 meetings ranging from 10 minutes to 3 hours; prepare a briefing note on a 'project' that lasted for almost a year; and of course (3) prepare 2 presentations with a preliminary draft in 3 hours. all these and i still had no backpack to place my things nor have i at least prepared what to bring on the following day. after having dinner with our bosses, aga and i went to the mall to buy stuff for the trip. we went back to the office to finish the two presentations and got out at around 10.30 pm. i dropped by my amy and che's pad to borrow the bag and snorkeling gear, pick up my bikinis (yes, i have a pair of bikinis and change of undies at their place for spur-of-the-moment swimming trips) and had some updated chitchat. i had a quick shower at their place and left their pad at 12midnight. i hailed a cab just as i stepped on the street, had a small chat with the cab driver, picked up a complement or two (manong said i could well be featured on FHM. heheheh. charos!), and got home at around 12.30 am. vis-min here we come.
