Last week I covered our long journey from Mauritania to the Philippines, and our first week in country spent at the lovely Kandaya Resort. Following that week, we headed back to Cebu City, where we took another week to enjoy being back in a level of civilization that we aren’t really accustomed to in Mauritania.

Cebu City, seen dead center of the map below is the second largest metro area outside the national capital region of Manila, and is home to roughly 3 million people. It was one of the first cities founded in the country and interestingly is near where Ferdinand Magellan was killed on his voyage around the world by Philippine chief, Lapu Lapu. Just a short 5 minute drive from Cebu City’s airport is a shrine dedicated to Lapu Lapu, which I absolutely love. It represents a proud warrior that didn’t blink in the face of foreign aggression.

Once back in the city, I checked the family into a nice Airbnb located in the heart of Cebu City’s IT Park business district. This created a great launching off point to walk to restaurants, malls, and fun activities for the kids. Speaking of malls, the Philippines LOVES a good shopping mall, and Cebu City features several malls that are listed in the top 25 largest malls in the world. As the U.S. seems to culturally drift from the shopping mall experience we loved in the 80’s and 90’s, it is still alive and booming in the Philippines and Asia as a whole. A few reasons for this is that they are community focal points where just about everything you need or want can be done in a single location that has excellent security. Grocery shopping, movies, fast food, fine dining, luxury purchases, brand name, furniture, medical care, cheap local goods, you name it, malls here offer it. In a place like the Philippines the shopping mall is THE social meeting place where people from all walks of life can get together and enjoy a break from the crushing Philippine heat/humidity.

So naturally what did we do with our time? We went to the mall! I am not sure why I enjoyed spending so much time in malls while we were there this go around, but I think my time in Mauritania, which can’t offer anything that compares, has something to do with it. As I write this, the per capita GDP income of Mauritania is $2400. For the Philippines it is $3900. Not really that far apart, yet the two couldn’t be anymore different in terms of investment and development. Make no mistake, the Philippines is still by all accounts a developing economy, but it is also a society that isn’t too far off from what we have created in the U.S. where just about anything you could need or want is at your fingertips. Unlike Mauritania, they also develop and produce a lot of their own consumer goods, so they aren’t nearly as reliant on the outside world as most of Africa is.

We closed out our trip to Cebu City with a stay at a different resort called Plantation Bay, a nice final cap on a lovely trip to the Philippines. It was a wonderful trip back, and I really hope in the future we find ourselves posted closer as a family so we can really take advantage of the proximity to a wonderful place to visit. –Nick