Cebu, Manila and Hong Kong - Coronavirus, Altar Bread and Toothaches



Our flight to Hong Kong with Cebu Pacific was cancelled beacuase of the coronavirus, which meant we had to book a new flight with Cathay Pacific. This ended up being a painful process as Cebu Pacific wouldn’t give us a refund and Cathay changed our flight from, direct to Hong Kong, to Cebu - Manila - Manila to Hong Kong (more info on these problems soon)

Mum had to have an operation on her teeth, so we had 2 nights in Cebu. This wasn’t our original plan but, as Cebu had cancelled our flight, we saw this as an opportunity to get her teeth fixed (also the pain was getting unbearable). We stayed at the Quest Serviced Apartments, which when Mum first said the name of, I thought she said Quest Service Departments, easy mistake.

The room at the hotel had a kitchen with a stove but nothing to cook with. Sadly, that meant that Dad didn’t get to cook for us. The hotel was across the road from a big mall. In the mall was a big supermarket, in the supermarket were big isles, in the big isles there was (da da da daaaaaa) unleavened altar bread🤣, right next to the altar bread was the red wine 🤣🤣🤣.
Funny!


Like I said before, Mum had to have a root canal. We had to go to the ‘Perpetual Heart Hospital’ for her treatment. Em and I waited out side playing on our devices, listening to the sound of a drill! Mum had to keep her mouth wide open for TWO HOURS. The good thing was, Mum felt much better afterwards.

Our last day in Cebu was very busy. We started by getting up at 8 in the morning and walking to the Cathay Pacific office (which fortunately, was not far from where we were staying) to sort out our flight to Hong Kong, that had been changed to stopping for four hours in Manila and getting into Hong Kong at 11 o’clock at night. We arrived 30 minutes before opening because we thought there would be a long queue (there wasn’t). When the office finally opened, we went in and were served first. After what felt like hours, Mum and Dad said
“We’re done” and we left the office.

The new plan was, instead of having one more night in Cebu and flying to Manila and Hong Kong tomorrow, we would fly to Manila that day, have a night in Manila, and then fly to Hong Kong the next day. Before doing that, there was another pesky airline we had to pay a visit.

The reason that Cebu Pacific wouldn’t give us a refund, is that Mum and Dad had closed the credit card account that they paid with. We hassled them for two hours. In the end they said they were giving us a “wired transfer” (I didn’t think the refund was going to happen)

When we arrived at the airport, we went to the Cebu Pacific office there. They told us that they were just going to transfer the money to the closed account and we were just going to have to contact the credit card company and somehow get the money. (Almost certainly not getting the refund)

The flight was uneventful (as most flights are), but the hotel in Manila was very nice. We stayed at the Savoy. It had a very nice shower but the beds were amazing (Dad got really excited about staying in a posh hotel and he took photos of the towels🙃). We were right next to the Airport, and as the stop was really only a transit, nothing much happened. The next day we were off to Hong Kong. 


The airport in Hong Kong was extremely busy (not). We were the only people in the foreign passport lane, we were also the only people not wearing surgical mask (which technically means that we were safe, because no one can spread germs if they’re wearing a mask). We were the only people on the shuttle to the Novotel, the whole city looked like a ghost town.
There was nice view from the hotel in Hong Kong as we were on a high floor. Once again we only had one night. The next day we were off to London.

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