Sounds maybe like a new ride at Canada's Wonderland? This is what we dubbed Troy's opportunity to scuba dive with the thresher sharks off the coast of the tiny island of Malapascua.

We travelled from Bantayan to Malapascua using our own perceived skill and strategy, and had a somewhat frustrating journey. After ferrying back to Cebu island, we got on a bus that was supposed to stop at the bus station in the town of Bogo. When we arrived in Bogo, the driver insisted on letting us off somewhere that was clearly not the bus station, thus rendering us clueless. We walked to a spot that seemed like a bus stop, where a waiting family took great interest in our goal to get another bus to the port of Maya. They waited at the bus stop with us for about 45 minutes, clearly not choosing to move on with their own journey, and repeatedly flagged down buses and vans to check to see which one we could get on. It was an extraordinary act of kindness, and they were all so very delighted and excited when they finally found the right bus for us. So with our earlier indignance having now melted away, we boarded the new bus, upon which all the local riders immediately burst out laughing at us (don't know, our amount of stuff which is probably perceived to be excessive?) as we started our journey towards Maya port. At our destination we realised we had also been dropped off at the wrong port, and so we wearily traipsed over to the other port a couple kilometres away, to find our next boat to Malapascua. (More laughing at this point, mostly from children, probably due to the excessive panting and sweatiness?) The point of this whole story is to show that our getting around is definitely not always flawless, even though we have high expectations that it should be. (Hello, ego.) The second point is that people laugh at us quite a bit in southeast Asia, which was a bit unnerving at the beginning, but now we just smile and if we have the energy, laugh back. Yes, we do look, and are ridiculous!

So now on to the threshers. Seeing them requires an early morning dive, so Troy woke up in the middle of the night to join his scuba group for 2 back-to-back dives at the Monad Shoal site: thresher central. He got some great GoPro footage that we will try to upload of the silverly sharks serenely gliding above him as the divers sat watching on the sand. Not to fear; these sharks are not interested in a human meal, although they certainly seem imposing enough. In the evening Troy did a third dive, his first night time dive, and was lucky enough to see a Mandarinfish, a bright, glowy fish that was hiding amongst the hard coral. Another apparent rarity! And that is the end of the diving for a bit as we have now dug deep into our travel budget, and will probably wait until Thailand to shell out again.