Before we came to the Philippines, the only things I knew about Cebu were that a) it was known for its delicious lechon (roasted suckling pig!), b) it has gorgeous beaches and is good for swimming, snorkeling/diving, and c) one of the Filipino nannies in our building is originally from here. When Kaia had a nanny, this nanny and I got acquainted, and so we’re friendly and have small talk when we see each other. When Chris booked this trip, I told her about it, and she immediately got excited that we were going to her homeland.
“There’s such good food in Cebu!” she exclaimed. “You will eat very well there!”
Before I started researching Cebu, I just imagined it being like Boracay, that it was some small island where you’d have water activities and the related to do. But this baseless assumption (that I… just made up in my head for no good reason) was quickly squashed once I looked at it on the map: Boracay is about 3.985 square miles; Cebu is 121.6 square miles. Boracay’s total population is about 38,000 people; Cebu province’s total population is over 5.1 million people, with about 1 million of those residents living in Cebu City, a very urbanized city (and where our hotel for this leg of the trip is). The Cebu metropolitan area or Metro Cebu is the second largest metropolitan area in the Philippines (after Metro Manila). So in Cebu, you could have a mixed holiday with both urban fun and sun, beaches, and water. You could also do nature activities like hikes to see some famous waterfalls. You could easily just spend your entire time here exploring the metro area for all its urban glory, or you could forgo the city completely and hang out at the beaches, maybe even go to Mactan Island to visit some of the most famous beaches in Cebu. The strangest thing, though, that we were not expecting is that Ayala Center Cebu Mall would be listed as the number one place to visit while in Cebu City.
After we got situated at our hotel in Cebu City yesterday, we walked a couple blocks to Ayala Center Cebu to see what the hype was about. It was an interesting experience for us not only because we live in New York City and rarely go to malls, but also because of the types of stores they had. I had no idea Garmin brick and mortar stores existed? I saw a Sperry shoe store (when I always thought they were sold only online or at major department stores?). Individual brands had their own little shops throughout the mall. We also noticed that there were apartments/condos built on top of the malls, so I suppose that’s just very easy shopping access for the residents in this relatively wealthy area? A fun thing we saw for Kaia (that she immediately made a beeline for) was a huge outdoor play area that was covered. It had several large slides, plenty of areas for tactile climbing, plus spinny rides that the kids were getting very feisty over. They also had parents/caregivers in mind when they designed this space, as there was plenty of seating and benches for us to comfortably watch over our kids.
The mall has several floors of individual restaurants, so we randomly picked a spot called Gerry’s Grill yesterday. There, we had a sizzling plate of kang kong (morning glory/water spinach – another thing I learned is that this vegetable is also very popular here!) with shrimpy sambal, pork sisig, inihaw bangus (grilled milkfish), and garlic rice, with a pitcher of sagot gulaman. Sagot gulaman was also new to us: it’s a sweet Filipino beverage made from brown sugar syrup, with tapioca pearls and almond jelly. Everything we had was so delicious and absurdly cheap for the quality of food. Kaia also enjoyed all the food, and she’s been really loving her morning glory while here (another bonus is that we don’t have to worry about her not getting enough vegetables, as in some destinations, it can be challenging to find decent vegetable dishes to regularly order).
Today, we visited Carbon Market, which is considered the main market for all of Cebu and where most of the food and goods comes through. I quickly realized why it wasn’t really listed on most tourist guides – it’s very much a local, locals market. There’s little about it that would scream out to tourists that they should come visit: it’s not pretty or flashy, nor does it have beautiful displays of produce or products. Everything there just has practical value in that it needs to be bought and sold – no frills here whatsoever. I loved seeing the endless piles of teeny tiny calamansis, all priced the same at 80 PHP/kilo ($1.35 USD/2.2 lb). The pineapples are also so small here, just like we saw in Manila Chinatown: the largest of the tiny pineapples were just a tad bigger than my fist!
I usually don’t mind this and enjoy the locals’ markets, but I will be honest and say that of all the markets we’ve visited thus far around the world, Carbon Market was likely the least pleasant. There were many sections of this market we walked through where the smells were a combination of rotting fish to heated rubbish. Kaia, who over the last six months, has become increasingly aware and knowledgable of unpleasant odors, immediately started yelling out, “It smells! It smells!”, indicating that she wanted to leave as soon as possible to be free of said foul odors. Her face looked so distressed. And frankly, I couldn’t really blame her. She yelled this out several times, and at one moment, it was right when Chris identified where the fish market was. This was also when we noticed how wet the floors were in there, and thought the fish market smells would likely not be too fun for any of us. So we decided not to go in and instead to wander around the streets of the market instead.
The one big win of going to the market, other than seeing some nice views of the city through the top floors, was running into some jackfruit vendors along the streets. We’re lucky in that we are visiting during jackfruit season (though it seems we were five months off from peak durian season, unfortunately), so I asked a vendor how much she charged for hers. She said 150 PHP/kilo (that’s about $2.54 USD for 2.2 pounds of fruit!). I chose a pre-cut chunk of jackfruit that was about 250 PHP, and she agreed to slice all the jackfruit pockets out for me (there was no way I was going to do this work on my own!). We ate some right away, and even Kaia got into it and kept asking for more. I love watching her really get into our favorite foods. Unfortunately, she did not have the same reaction to trying the mangosteen I bought in Manila Chinatown. But given that we already had so little flesh in those, it was fine that just Chris and I ate it.
We’re all sleeping early tonight despite it being New Year’s Eve so that we can wake up bright and early for an island hopping and snorkeling adventure tomorrow. Chris said it reminded him of our New Year’s Eve in Indonesia in 2019, when we were in Yogyakarta and had to wake up before sunrise to see Borobudur Temple. I have a feeling this will be even more exciting because this will involve not only a boat, but being in deep water (which will be Pookster’s first time!).