Cebu City Adventure Itinerary – Backpacking Series

Half a day after the Cebu City’s historical and cultural landmarks, it’s now time for some adventure.

Cebu Sky Walk Adventure
Cebu Sky Walk Adventure

From Colon street, we got off the jeepney ride in front of Crown Regency Hotel. More than just a hotel, Crown Regency is known for two of the city’s most thrilling and crazy adventure rides – the Edge Coaster and Sky Walk.

We decided to have the Edge Coaster and Sky Walk at this time because this is the most efficient route we came up with, albeit in bad timing (12nn). It’s good that our research for the Cebu Pacific Backpacking Challenge was not completely correct. The info we got indicated that the rides open as early as 10am. It failed to state that this is for the weekends and holidays only. 🙂

It was a Monday and thrills start at 2pm.

So we decided to watch a 4D movie instead in a small AIR-CONDITIONED theater. It’s also at its cheapest rate during off-peak hours at P100 pax. 🙂

To save on time, we decided to switch some routes and go to nearby Larsians after the 4D movie.

Along the way, we came accross a buko juice vendor and tried out their Pungko-pungko as well. It’s a banana leaf covered scoop of rice pretty much the size of our regular half-rice. Saving on money, Teammate Vince and I bought just one and shared. Well, it tasted like cooked rice, and we were not able to finish it. I guess we were at the wrong place to try it and should have paired it with a viand (ulam).

Some more street crossings and we were at Larsians. It is a roofed, open air collection of food stall vendors with dining areas similar to a food court. It is not for the weak of stomach but haven for an adventurous foodie. One can order a variety of skewers of raw meat and have them cooked which includes pork, beef, chicken and its different parts including feet, and head. *ahem.

We tried three varieties and another pungko-pungko to give it a chance. This time it was a little better. 🙂 All for only P30; we managed to beg ask for a P4 discount. This was lunch part one.

Food adventure number two is in another food court, albeit an air-conditioned one. We found ourselves at the Robinson Cybergate building that has a mall on the first and second floor. So to have the activity counted, we had to look for something unique or originating from the province; in this case, Cebu. We found “Tiktilaok.” I’m not telling what they serve. Guess. 🙂 Tiktilaok meal for two – P58 (what!?).

With one more hour left to spare, we proceeded to the nearby Cebu Museum and City Public Library. Took some photos and a video and dashed off. Why? beacuse we wanted to take the oppotunity to have the cheapest massage ever – a P50 one hour massage in a decent massage center. There were choices of back, foot or head massage. Vince had his back massaged while I had the foot massage.

While circumventing the plaza circle on our way back to Crown Regency, it started to rain a bit.

Oh boy, there’s no slowing down for us as our itenarary did not leave room for stalling. So we asked if we could still do the Sky Walk and Edge Coaster and got their nod.

The Sky Walk was awesome with glass floors and strong ghastly winds care of the rainy weather which feels like you’re about to get flown off the building to the next just like your friendly neighborhood hero. But I wasn’t feeling marvel-superheroey that day, thanks to the harness attached on our back. The glass walking tour with some acrobats and picture-taking continued.

Crown Regency Edge Coaster Ride
Crown Regency Edge Coaster Ride

The Edge Costaer was the less proactive part as you only had to seat the rest of the time with occassional shouting at the top of your lungs while smiling, and vomiting (again, while smiling), well, almost.

More detailed story on these two adventures in a future post.

It’s good that we met team Eagle Creek before the Edge Coaster so we had some extra photos during the ride. We took turns and gave back the favor after.

It’s almost time to call it a day so we headed on to our planned hotel accomodations.

If there was anything we took the most risk on this backpacking challenge, it’s the accomodations part. We left Manila without booking a single room for us in all four provinces of Cebu, CDO, Davao, and Iloilo.

We first checked inns which had the cheapest rate from our internet research. As expected, their websites were not as updated and the rates were a bit higher. We decided to go to Sugbutel instead after considering that our next self-imposed pit stops would be nearby the hotel.

All these best-rate-hotel searching cost us time. Moreover, we were wrong. It turned out that venue for the zipline and Arnis lessons are about one and a half more hours away from Sugbutel. So we had to give up the possibility of having a zipline adventure and Arnis lessons in Cebu. I haven’t tried both of them in Cebu. It would been an awesome experience.

We left our bags and checked-in Sugbutel with their cheapest package of dormitory type accomodation at P250 per head. I should say that the website photos did justice and indeed, although it is dorm-type, the accomodations were clean and the comfort rooms were surprisingly just as tidy.

As daylight bade goodbye and darkness loomed, we got on the cheapest mode of transportation known to mankind – walking. Yes, we unfoundedly decided to walk our way to SM Cebu. Please don’t ask why. 🙂

In the mall, we visited sponsor stores The Travel Club, Sanuk, and Columbia for extra points. we also bought CDO and Davao EZ maps from National Bookstore as there weren’t any in Manila.

Just outside the mall, Cebu’s infamous CNT Lechon was our dinner. Yum! The diet dinner cost P109.

The night is young and we are not leaving Cebu the following morning without experiencing their night life. We decided to go to the IT Park and passed by The Waterfront Hotel prior. And yes, we considered playing the casino of PAGCOR with our backpacking budget in hopes of ‘growing‘ it which will make us sure winners. :p

At the IT park, we had dinner in Cebu’s very own Casa Verde Back Ribs, dessert at La Maria Desserts, and Chicharon bulaklak at Moon Cafe. Here, we splurged a little with a total of about P500 food consumption.

Before heading back to Sugbutel, we had to try the night-only side street food areas. It’s like the mobile and mini version of Larsians. It’s for the streetfood connoisseur. *wink

It’s almost 12 midnight so we took a taxi back to Sugbutel. With 5 hours remaining before our flight to Cagayan De Oro, we had 3 hours of sleep since we have to leave the hotel by 3am. Yes, we also tried to find time to take a bath. 🙂

Here is our Cebu City Adventure Itinerary:
12nn  – 4D Movie (Crown Regency)
0100p – Larsians & Pungko-punko
0130p – Tiktilaok @ Robinsons Cybergate Mall
0200p – Massage
0230p – Sky Walk (Crown Regency)
0300p – Edge Coaster (Crown Regency)
0330p – Merienda Break
0400p – Look for Inn/Accomodations
0500p – Check-in Sugbutel
0600p – SM Cebu (Travel Club, Sanuk, Columbia)
0700p – CNT Lechon
0800p – Waterfront Hotel & Pagcor
0830p – Cebu IT Park (Casa Verde Back Ribs, La Maria Desserts, Moon Cafe)
1200mn- Back @ Sugbutel

* Time spent on each location may vary

I’m missing the Cebu photos! The two small photos above are from http://www.skyexperienceadventure.com 🙁 I’ll change and upload our photos later in the week.

This is our Cebu City adventure itinerary. Up next, hello CDO!

9 thoughts on “Cebu City Adventure Itinerary – Backpacking Series

Leave a Reply to Sago Cancel reply

Previous post Esvimin Faelnar Wins LetsGoSago.net 2nd Anniversary Contest – Part 1
Next post Manila Hostage Crisis Ends, Philippine Tourism Suffers