Our holiday in Bohol

We decided to take a trip to the neighboring island of Bohol to spend our long Thanksgiving break. It was wonderful! We ate fresh seafood and ice cream instead of turkey and pie, relaxed on warm white sand instead of snuggling on the couch with a blanket, and watched wildlife instead of football. It was definitely different - but it was awesome! Jam (short for Jamaica) helps us with the kids during the workweek, and she is so good with them. We invited her to come along with us. The children were so excited to have their beloved Ate Jam, and having a third adult along made going on vacation with kids actually feel vacation-like. We traveled by speedboat to Bohol and back, about a 100-minute ride. We left Thursday morning, and returned Saturday evening. Here is what we packed into three days:

Day 1
Arrived in Bohol, checked into motel.
Visited Bohol Bee Farm - ate their delicious food and toured their farming and livelihood areas. Got to do some fun things like hold bees and pretend to eat worms.
Visited a small wildlife sanctuary, where a monkey reached out of his cage and grabbed Jaya's hand. Jaya first freaked out, then sternly but kindly reprimanded the monkey.
Went to Hinagdanan Cave. Jaya thought we were going to swim in the cave lagoon.
Went to the mall arcade to eat pizza and let the kids get some run around time.
Sleep!!

Day 2
Beach day!!!!!! Fine white sand, gorgeous palm trees, lunch overlooking the ocean, clear turquoise sea....
Went to a playroom for a while (these are at all the malls here, they are large rooms full of toys and fun to take your kids to play for a fee)
More sleep!

Day 3
Chocolate Hills - Jaya climbed the 214 steps to the viewing area without being carried, not once, but twice. We were impressed with that as well as the gorgeous view.
The Hanging Bridge - made out of bamboo. Rickety. Supposed to only have ten people on it at once. (that was totally ignored). We watched a guy strip a coconut of its husk with his teeth, which Raja immediately tried to do himself.
Drifted down the Loboc River in a floating restaurant, ate a buffet lunch while being serenaded and we even got to see a dance performance.
Tarsiers! Cute little primates, like ours. But even smaller - they could fit on your palm. This was Jaya's favorite place.

We also got to see a lot of beautiful countryside while we drove from place to place. It was a great trip, and we hope to go back to Bohol before we leave the Philippines. Now that we have seen the sights, we'd love to just go and spend a weekend on the beach....none of us can seem to get enough. There are lovely beaches in Cebu as well, but the sand at Panglao was so fine and white, the water so clear, and the beach so not crowded. Marei and I kept saying to each other, I can't believe we're really at a tropical paradise like this.

(It's a long video, feel free to skip it, we just couldn't bear to cut out any more of our great little adventure).