It only took about 45 minutes on the ferry to get to Dumaguete, the biggest city in the south of the island of Negros. It was back to manic traffic, tricycle drivers and noise, Siquijor seemed a million miles away.

With Carmen we managed to find a cheap pension house for the night. Our tricycle driver said that there was a bus to Sipilay the next morning at 6am which we were pleased about as it was going to take quite a few a hours to get there. We dumped our bags and then went to Robinsons mall and had something to eat, as they had a cinema too we watched the wizard of oz film! Lonely Planet described Dumaguete as a vibrant city and recommended spending a few days there, I think we had had enough in one afternoon, the boulevard was quite attractive but apart from that it was just traffic. We thought we would double check the bus times at the bus station before going to bed. No one seemed to know what time the buses left for Sipilay but we established that there was none until at least 11am.

So the next morning we made our way to the bus station, again no one really knew when the buses were leaving! We walked round the back of the station and there was a ceres bus that said Sipilay on the front so we got on and about half an hour later it left. So off we went to Sipilay, it was a long journey the scenery was lovely driving up the west coast. We made a few stops on the way, about an hour away from Sipilay the driver suddenly put the brakes on extra hard and we skidded and then there was a sickening thud. Everyone gasped, we didn't know what we had hit. The men got off first and all the locals outside had gathered around - we had hit and killed a calf which was very upsetting but at least it wasn't a human. We hung around for ages, the driver was paying the owner of the calf off - I don't know how much he had to pay!

So about 6 hours after leaving Dumaguete we reached Sipilay and had to get to Sugar Beach which is only accesible by boat, luckily while we were on the bus we met Alex who was the managing assistant of one of the resorts on the beach called Big Bamboo. He had a boat picking him up so we got on it too. About 10 minutes later we got to Sugar Beach as the sun was setting, it was very pretty and quiet just a few resorts dotted along the beach. We decided to stay at Big Bamboo, they had the cheapest accomo - we got a dorm with Carmen and paid 250 pesos for both of us. The dorm was very basic, just a big bamboo hut with bunk beds in - no windows or anything. The toilets and shower were outside. It was ok though! There was a french guy staying in a nipa hut next to our dorm and said that we had kittens in with us and surely enough under one of the mattresses there were three tiny kittens, outside the dorm were puppies with their mum. The mum dog was very protective over her pups from the mum cat so the french guy had been helping the cat get in to her kittens every night - he had been there for a few months and said he had seen other kittens attacked by the dogs so he wanted to make sure they were OK. Because the cat needed to get in and out all night it meant we had to keep the dorm door open, in the middle of the night I woke up with a sense of being watched - I opened my eyes and a dog was just staring at me gormlessly with its tongue out!!!

The next day the weather was a bit rubbish and it rained alot, we walked along the beach and found a lovely place called Tatanuka and it was decorated very uniquely with lots of recycled materials and in the toilets the light switches were hidden, in the girls it was in an epilator and the mens was a drill. The sink was an old BBQ! We somehow managed to spend the whole day there with Carmen, they had really good food and had an epic 6 hour game of monopoly - there wasn't much else to do because of the rain.

The following day the weather was much better, Carmen went diving and me and Kam lazed in the hammocks outside Big Bamboo listening to Alex's dire music choice blaring out. We went for a swim which was lovely and refreshing until a jellyfish bobbed up to us and we legged it out of there quickly! We watched another sunset and then ate some more amazing food at Tatanuka.

Our last night we had operation kitty with the french guy where we moved the kittens out of the dorm and into a safe place where the dogs couldn't get to them. We arranged for the boat to take us to Sipilay the next morning at 6am as we had a very long journey ahead of us!!