Philippines, Shangri La Resort

We had 6 nights at the Shangri La.  We stayed on the first floor on the Ocean View wing.  Our room was a bit bigger since we put all five of us in it.  In China we have been 'forced' to book 2 rooms each time we stay at a hotel so with 1 room we upgraded a bit.  It ended up being about a few hundred bucks a night - oh well, we were on vacation so just don't think about it, right?

This was a our Christmas morning.  We made a deal with Santa
to only give the small presents and save the big ones for Shanghai.
He obeyed.

BBQ on sticks and milk shakes after a day at the pool/beach.  And
a show!

Fire twirlers.  It was a show of 'tropical' dancing from around
the pacific.

Hawaiian dancing girls. 

The limbo for the kids.

Mark, Dagny and Dad did it.

The grand finale.

Fire breathing!

Fire!

3 kids on the hammock, a great week!

Happy hour for apple juice and sprite!

Our friends from Jinqiao showed up for the last couple days.
Dagny's friend Addy.

Fireworks for us on Friday night, not sure why?

Nice gym facility.  We are all stretching or at least pretending.

Mini golf on the monuments of the Philippines.  It was a
ridiculously hard course but fun nonetheless. 

The boys had a great time in the water balls.  You ran in them
like gerbils.  You only had 10 minutes until your air ran out but
they had quite the workout.

Dagny made friends with another 6 year old from Hong Kong.
Tabitha, Cypress and little brother.

The snorkeling off the beach was great.  They called it a marine sanctuary since there was a bunch of coral reefs in less than 10 feet of water.  We saw 1000s of fish, giant clams, eels, sea snake, big blue star fish and crabs.  We were out there hours each day.  
I bought a plastic bag for my iPhone and it said it was waterproof to 6m.  It worked great for videos but not as good for photos, except for a few like the one below.  A great $30 investment.  

A cool blue starfish!

A Nemo fish.

Giant Clam that Mama wanted to bring home...

Great snorkeling right off the beach! 

The beach was crushed coral, very nice.

Philippines Whale Sharks

I'll let Yangmei write this blog since it was a life-long dream of hers to swim with whale sharks.

Mark isn't as thrilled with his breakfast of fresh mango and sticky rice with beans
 as Mike and I were.  It was served a tiny cup of strong chocolate to pour over the rice.

Look at that fabulous shape in the water next to me! Look at the size of him!  

Most of the whale sharks were approximately 9 meters long.  I did get to meet one even larger after he bumped into my back.  I turned around, thinking that I'd drifted into a boat hull, but found myself looking down the mouth of one that was at least 10 meters.  He was huge!

Mike and a friend.

Will didn't want to get out of the water.

The canoe that took us out to the whales.  Dagny was afraid of the waves, since it was a little choppy on the water.  She watched from the boat.

It looks as though I'm touching it, but I'm not.  

We weren't allowed to touch the sharks.   They didn't get the same instructions, though, so occasionally they bumped into us or gently pushed us with their fins.

During the "pre-whale shark viewing training," we were told to stay at least 4 meters away at all times.

During our dives, our guide, who was in the water with us to take photos, kept saying, "Go down!  Get closer!  Go!  Go!  Get right next to the sharks!"

Sounds good!

Will said he could feel the current of water rushing into the shark's mouth.

Will

Mike

Did Mark just get slurped inside?

Nope, there he is!  Phew!

And did I mention that we saw mermaids, also?

Taking a moment to rest on the outrigger.

Don't get sucked in, Will!  Will the Krill!

There's our guide/photographer.  Two sharks with us.  Two happy swimmers.

An amazing lunch which we had after the shark swim and waterfall visit.  Our table sat on a beach of worn coral, under a bamboo pergola overlooking the sea.

Fish Ceviche
Grilled Fish
Fried Chicken
Spicey Chicken Soup
Rice
San Miguel Beer
Heaven.

A gorgous, chilly waterfall.  The kids are standing on the stump of a tree that they found under the water.

Christmas in the Philippines

This year we decided to do something different than open presents in the comfort of our home.  We packed up an went to Cebu, Philippines to stay at the very kid-friendly Shangri-La Mactan.  Like usual the flight to the Philippines was nasty.  We left Shanghai at 1:30, made it to Manila by 8:30 and had a 5:00 am flight the next morning (our original flight was cancelled).  To get some sleep we decided to get a hotel.  The 'hotel lounge' booking office at the airport had us talk to a 'local' hotel.  We agreed on a price and off we went for the 10 minute, $9 shuttle ride.  When we got there the price was not the same and we were in the middle of a war zone, not feeling safe.  So we got back into a real taxi, yelled at the cabby in order to put down the meter (changed price from $7 to $1.50) and we were back at the hotel to sleep in the lobby for the night...

Kids sleeping on metal benches at Manila Airport

Mama trying to get some shut-eye.

When we got to the hotel it was still before 7 am so we had breakfast and played at the resort.   The first day felt like 3 days since we did so much.

We get our Chinese Mangos from Cebu, where we were.
The mangoes for breakfast each day were like candy!

On day 2 we played around the resort and made a poor mistake to take the hotel shuttle into the mall.  It ended up being about 3 hours in the shuttle for a 5 mile ride with about 1 hour in the mall.  The traffic was really bad.

We traveled through the real city on the way to the mall.

The local bus system.  Packed into these privately owned buses.

Happy Hour drinks on the water

Sunset at the beach.  

There were a bunch of ghost crabs at night.

I'll keep this blog about the trip getting to the resort, the resort and other stuff.  The Christmas Eve with the Whale Sharks will be the next episode.