February 18th 2015 Bacolod to iloilo city journey

At 5:30am I grabbed a bicycle cab ride as the guys normally just sleep in their passenger cart until a customer comes out of the hotel. I couldn't even fit in the passenger cart as I had to slouch down a lot and wasn't exactly comfortable but it was just a 5 minute ride to McDonalds.

I got to McDonalds and was surprised they were closed until 7am (as they are normally open 24 hours a day) and an older Filipino man saw it was closed and told me to go to Jollibees as they have coffee over there so I went next door to Jollibees and ordered 2 coffees and 2 pancake sandwiches (Pancake, bacon, egg, & Cheese) which was surprisingly really good and the whole order cost 120 pesos ($3 cdn) as the coffees were free with the pancake sandwiches. This will be my new breakfast place to get my coffees and pancake sandwiches. I notice most of the filipinos eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It is the main staple here.

I went with WEESAM EXPRESS ferry for 220 pesos ($6 cdn) which was economy class with a fan. This is the waiting area after you purchase your ticket you head into here and wait for the ferry. My ferry was for 7:50am but we ended up leaving at 8am and got to iloilo at 9:20am.

This was our boat. It looked like the fuselage of an old jet that had been transformed into a boat. I was surprised how fast it went. It was about 12 feet wide and 100 feet long with economy seating and air conditioning areas.

Coming into the iloilo harbour.

A view from the back of the boat.

Our boat pulled up just behind the boat on the right.

Staying at the HIGHWAY21 hotel for 800 pesos per night ($21.50 cdn).

The boat ride from Bacolod to iloilo was pretty fast and just an hour and 20 minutes. I grabbed a taxi and my taxi drivers name was Alex and he told me he was retired from the Philippine government and gets a pension and now drives taxi. I went to Sarabia charter pension house but they were full so Alex took me to another place that was just around the corner called HIGHWAY21 hotel. I had 4 hours to wait before check in time of 2pm so left my suitcase at the hotel and decided to walk around a bit to kill some time.