『えいごで読む物語』シリーズでは、ランカル英会話に所属するメイトの日常や思い出をえいごでお届けします。

今回はアメリカ出身のGrewが体験したフィリピン旅行についてを紹介してくれました！

綺麗な自然や景色、現地で食べた料理は忘れられない思い出ですよね。
また、現地の人々との出会いも旅の醍醐味。

旅行が大好きなあなたも、これから行きたいと思っているあなたも参考にしてみてくださいね:)

初心者の方は「インテンシブ・リーディング（精読）」の読み物として、こちらのシリーズを読んでみることをオススメします。
コラムになっているため、文章量が少なく、また単語・表現も日常的に使われるものが中心となっています。

そのため、じっくりと読むインテンシブ・リーディングで文章の組み立て方に注目してみてくださいね！
詳しくは下にまとめてみたのでチェックしてくださいね。

詳しい練習方法は以下を参考にしてくださいね♪

 

Intro

To say that I like to travel would be a bit of an understatement. I’ve taken two long vacations since becoming an adult.

One was a two week trip to Italy to visit my friend and she had it all planned out, places to see and Airbnbs to stay at. The second, that was different.

My friend, his girlfriend, and I spent a week in the Philippines with no more plans than a list of things that sounded cool, a plane ticket there(and back), and a place to sleep on the first night.

We’d talked about going during the week-long national holiday in October, and when we bought the tickets we were all set. We met once to book a place to stay for the night we landed, a hostel about 10-15 minutes from the airport, and to think of things to do.

After about fifteen minutes of looking through websites and joking we decided it was best to just go there and see how we felt. That was it. When we met up at the airport we were slightly hungover, but super excited for the next week of adventure.

Let’s go adventure!

Now, I’ll say this first. This type of trip is not for everyone. But, for me and my friend it was a trip we’ll never forget. We landed in Cebu at night and headed straight for our hostel. After we checked in we dropped our stuff off and went out to look for a place to have a drink and soak in the night air.

We called it a night early with the plan of getting on a ferry the next morning to Bohol, our next destination, which we decided on that night while talking about what to do next.

When we woke up I brought out the trusty iPad and we booked a place to stay for the night as well as reservering some beds at this hostel for our last night before our flight.  We figured that was the one night we wanted planned out.

Welcome to our tour

As we were eating our breakfast one of the other travelers(guests) asked to join us and we started chatting about our plans. He was a nice guy and after a bit of chatting he asked if he could join us. With no reason to say no, he tagged along.

He canceled his room and came with us to hang out in Bohol. He didn’t even have a room booked, but we figured there’d be space where we were going so we didn’t worry about it.

In Bohol we checked in and took a look around. I had reserved a dorm room bed for myself, but when I saw it I instantly changed my mind. The place we were staying was just wood and straw bungalows and as adventurous as I am.

I wasn’t about to spend the night in a building laid out like a military barracks, just rows of beds and nothing else. I’m not even sure it had windows. So I turned to the new guy and said, “Hey, you want to split a room?” He happily agreed and so we made the switch.

At this point we also decided to make this part of the trip a two-nighter as we liked the feel of the place and wanted more time to explore.

We hopped on an electric tricycle twenty minutes later and headed off to the ‘downtown’ area of this very small town. Once there we went into a few places, had a few drinks and chatted a bit with random people, but at one point I heard the ocean.

Now, the place I lived in China, Xi’an city, is incredibly land locked. So other than on the Airplane and the ferry ride I hadn’t seen the ocean in about a year and a half. I handed my wallet and phone to my friend as I said, “I’ll be right back” and walked into the ocean.

My friends found it hilarious, but we spent a good two hours just floating in the water and watching a thunderstorm off in the distance. To this day it was one of the most relaxing and random things I’ve ever done.

Beautiful Bohol

The next day we rented scooters and headed off to the chocolate hills that are one of the famous places to see in Bohol. It was beautiful and riding through the man-made forest of giant Mahogany trees was breathtaking. Then on the way back we stopped at a random shack, and this is where we had our dinner.

Sat on the side of the road eating some delicious chicken and just enjoying the atmosphere. When we got back we had to decide what our next step was. Now, there were two things we really wanted to do while on this trip.

Snorkeling with whale sharks and canyoneering. How and when we did them was all up in the air. But, as luck would have it, or not so much luck but good business sense from the owners of the hostel there was a boat ride and whale shark snorkel package at the hostel we were at. They had a one way and round trip option. We opted for the one way.

Bright and early the next morning we were on a pontoon boat with a bunch of other people on our way back to Cebu. It was the perfect day for it. We even got to see some dolphins as we went.

The whale shark diving was not exactly what I expected, but damn was it fun. These creatures are the size of buses and their mouths were quite honestly far too big for any kind of comfort.

It was amazing, wild and a bit scary. After we finished we grabbed a hired van to our next hostel that we had booked the night before just like the one we had just stayed at.  Sadly enough this was also where we parted ways with our new friend.

Canyoneering

Our next location was on the other side of the island. We stayed at this next place for two nights as well. When we got there we looked into how to do the canyoneering and signed up for the next available tour, which was the next morning.

If you’ve never been or never heard of canyoneering it’s basically walking down a canyon following a river and jumping off every waterfall that you come across into the river.

It’s not for the faint of heart as some of the jumps are around ten to twenty meters. I think the tallest one I jumped off of was 23 meters and that was only because the guid liked me. The other guides got mad at him for letting me do it.

We went out that night for food with some of the other travelers that were staying at this hostel. We had some good chats, some met some more really nice people as well as a few annoying ones. But, the next day was sadly our last and we had to figure out how we were going to get back to Cebu city.

Like an interesting coincidence

Amazingly enough when we woke up and were having our breakfast the girl working at the hostel asked if we wanted to ride to Cebu city with the people across the road.  They were headed that way and offered to take us.

Once again the randomness of not having a plan allowed us to meet a really nice family and have some really fun conversation as we drove the one or two hours back to Cebu city. And so our last day was also planned spur of the moment.

We dropped off our stuff and started making calls. We wanted to try going parasailing.  We had found out we could do it that afternoon. But, I guess our luck had run out at this point because everything was fully booked. So, what did we do? Just chill at the hostel? Go out for food? Explore the city? Nope, we went and got tattoos.

My friend and I each had a tattoo we’d been wanting so we found a shop on google and head over. The guy didn’t have any clients that day so we got right into it.

Conclusion

That was how the whirlwind trip ended.  We made plans as we went. Met some really fun people, did some awesome activities, and made wonderful memories. Plans are great, and going somewhere you’ve never been without one can be scary, but when you get the chance to do something random go for it.

Try that new thing. Meet that new person. Go on an adventure. Take a random vacation and plan each day the night before. It’s amazing what can happen and who you might meet.

 

=====

今回はグルーの体験したフィリピン旅をお届けしました。

旅行気分を味わっていただけたのではないでしょうか？
ぜひ次の旅のご参考にどうぞ♪

LanCul英会話ではリーディングはもちろん、スピーキング、コミュニケーションにも役立つ学習動画を取り扱っており、教科書では学ぶことの出来ない、日常的でより実践的な多様な会話を学ぶことができます。
気になる方は下のプレビュー動画をチェックしてみてくださいね。

自己表現力＜プレビュー＞

LanCul英会話とは…？