ferries – The Kinetic Canuck

Living abroad, you meet people from everywhere. One of the best things of meeting new people when you’re abroad is that you know that at the very least, you have 1 thing in common: you have an adventurous spirit.

Seen Here: 4 Adventurers on a very small boat on a very wavy ocean.

Occasionally, you end up travelling at the same time, in the same place, as one of your friends. Sometimes it’s on purpose, and sometimes it’s by luck. By luck, 2 of our best friends had booked a holiday in the Philippines at the same time we were set to be there! A little bit of schedule juggling made it possible for us to meet up on the island of Bohol.

bohol-and-cebu-map — When they told us they would be on Bohol Island at the same time we were in Cebu city, we knew we had this make it work and meet up!

We didn’t have a lot of time together but we did a lot with the time we had! I have a special post planned for our time at The Bee Farm, but I wanted to share a little bit about our snorkeling adventure with Dedrick and Deb for yesterday’s recap. It was definitely the most memorable part of our day!

Photos of our morning adventure together

We were on a boat similar to this one

One of several turtles we spotted

The weather was a bit nasty when we woke up, but not nasty enough to cancel the trip, so at 7am, we head down to a little dive shop Dedrick had found, and set off on a boating adventure. The water was choppy and the sky looked like it might unleash rain on us at any moment, but before long, it calmed down and we were able to enjoy some snorkeling! The sun even peeped out before we left, and Dave and I both ended up with nasty sun burns too!

The captain of our first boat. Eventually we had to switch to a second boat. We had to pay for both boats individually. It’s a bit of a racket, but it was still a pretty good deal, so no one complained much

Here’s a short video on our way to the little snorkeling island. I’m actually quite bruised from all the bumping around on this boat. I was happy to get back on land when it was all over!

I’ll be back with another post soon!

Today we went to Lombok.

Lombok is about 20 minutes away by boat. We traveled to Gili T earlier this week from Lombok and it cost us a whopping 350,000 rupiah to get here (over $30 Canadian). They definitely overcharge for that short trip, but when you arrive at 9pm, during a rainstorm and have a bunch of luggage… You don’t have a lot of options!!

Today, though, we had options. The pubic ferry goes from Gili T to Lombok in about the same amount of time as a speedboat, but for a fraction of the cost (less than $3 Canadian).

Now, I realize that taking a ferry isn’t usually a complicated task… But in South East Asia, things don’t always make sense to my Western brain.

After buying tickets for the ferry, we asked when the boat left. The woman replied “no time…40 people”. The boats here don’t leave on a scheduled time… They leave when they’re full.

I asked “where do we find the boat”. She pointed to an unspecified area of the beach (where 10+ boats were floating and loading passengers).

We walked outside and saw that there were about 200 people all standing around… Not getting on any of the 10 boats waiting there…

Nobody seems to really know which boat they should take and nobody really seems to be responsible for sending people in the right direction, either.

After waiting in line for a while to get on the biggest boat we saw (public ferries need to hold a lot of people, right??), we found out it was actually going to Bali…

So, we walked down the beach and just started asking people where to go! Before long, we were on our way, but I have to admit… It was a lot more complicated than I expected!!

Tag: ferries

Day 3 – Friends!

Day 22 – Ferries