Malapascua 2012, Day 1

April 4, 2012

The trip to Malapascua, Philippines begins. We left Phoenix around 7:45 a.m. for our flight to San Francisco. We had a couple hour layover in San Francisco before our approximately 12 hour flight to Inchon, South Korea.

We flew business class on Asiana Airlines and boy what an experience. We had the lay flat seats and in theory could have gotten a good amount of sleep, but I think both of us only got a couple hours. The electric multiposition seats in this plane put the seats in Jody’s Lexus to shame.

Right after take off we started the journey through our two-hour, six-course meal. I actually skipped the main course and am glad I did. By the time I got to the end I was about to explode anyway. We started off with an appetizer of artichoke, kalamata olives, grape tomatoes and cheese, then moved on to salad with shrimp, then potato leek soup, the main course, a cheese and fruit platter, then tiramisu cake for dessert.

I have never had a meal on a plane where they come around and put a table cloth out for your meal, put individual salt and pepper shakers out on your table cloth and a porcelain plate and dish for every little thing, and used real silver-plated silverware. Pretty high class. I think there were about six flight attendants just taking care of business class alone.

The plane also had to have had the cleanest airplane bathroom I have ever seen. After every couple people used it one of the flight attendants would go in and clean it. They also had L’Occitane body spray and lotion for use and complimentary combs, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. We also got complimentary slippers and a complimentary toiletries bag.

About two hours before the end of the flight the second meal time came around. This meal only consisted of a salad, the main course (Eric and I chose the spicy chicken with rice) and then a fruit plate for dessert.

I watched a couple movies on the flight, Despicable Me and Eat, Pray, Love, and the time actually went by pretty fast. We made it to South Korea where we had another couple hour layover before our flight to Cebu, Philippines. The Inchon airport is an amazing place. We walked around a little bit, but will do more exploring on the way home when we have about a 10-hour layer and have reservations at the transit hotel inside the airport.

Our flight to Cebu was delayed about half an hour as the plane coming into Inchon was late. We made the four hour flight to Cebu without any problems and collected up all our bags which made it successfully. We had reservations to stay at a hotel very near the airport as it was 1 a.m. and we did not want to make the rest of the three hour trip by car to the end of Cebu in the dark. The hotel had a car waiting for us at the airport to pick us up and take us to the hotel. We were both exhausted and slept pretty well.

We got up about 7:30 a.m. in the morning to get cleaned up and eat breakfast before our driver was to pick us up at 9:30 a.m. and drive us to the end of Cebu. Our driver picked us up and managed to deliver us to the end of the island in only 2-1/2 hours instead of the usual 3-4 hours. He actually arrived before our boat had gotten to the dock. It was just a short wait for our boat to arrive and then we were on our way for the approximately 1/2 hour boat ride to Malapascua.

We got off the boat in Malapascua and since it was lunch time Eric had a Thai Red Chicken wrap with peanut sauce and I had a mango shake at the Craic House at Evolution before we got settled into our room. Our plan was to get settled in and then do a dive in the afternoon to get our equipment and weighting all figured out.