Immi

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Today's task was to extend our Philippines visa at the immigration office. We ate breakfast at the accommodation but it started to rain. We decided to stay put and spoke to another guest about diving at Balicasag island. Eventually the rain stopped and we hit the road. The immigration center was approximately 3 km away - a 45 minute walk and on the way we grabbed lunch for a beach picnic. We also stopped to visit Saint Augustin's church and there was a wedding. The inside of the church was beautiful and there was a nice park beside it.

The immigration center was busy and people were waiting two hours for their passports to be returned. We gave our passports in, paid the fee and waited for a short while and then were told to return in the afternoon to pick them up.

Next we walked to the pier where the boats go to Balicasag. We watched people collecting seaweed amongst the mangroves. Next place we were heading for was Doljo point. It was a little too far to walk because we had to be back to collect our passports. We took a tricycle for about 20 minutes. To reach the point we entered through a fancy resort. The beach was deserted apart from the resort staff, a horse and  some dogs. We swam beyond the fishing nets that lined the beach. There was some great coral and plenty fish. The dogs wanted to share lunch but that didn't happen!

We walked back to immigration for 3:00 pm. We collected our passports but noticed we had been charged for an express service. We asked if this was normal and was assured it was. We explained we were in no rush as our first visa waiver doesn't expire for a month but we still had to pay it.

On our way back we stopped for a sweet 5 peso coffee from a machine. They needed to turn it on to heat the water. This is something we had a lot of last time we were in the Philippines and we could not believe it still existed. The world wide coffee culture means fancy filter coffee generally costs 70 pesos now - a slight difference! Budget backpacking is being replaced by glampacking!

No partying tonight ...

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