Sounds like a great vacation, Kyndo. I hope your young fella enjoyed the plane bit better than the last adventure. What kind of food did you try?

... enjoyed the lechon, especially the sort where they go super heavy on the star anise... The little gremlin is a noodle aficionado, so the different pancits were all a big hit, even more so when paired with globs...

*time out*

What is pancits? lechon?...

Isn't "a·fi·ci·o·na·do" a person?!

I gotta google all this.

EDIT (20 minutes later): lechon is a Filipino eat-baby-pig dish (like veal? *shrug*), pancit (no 's') is one of several Filipino noodle dishes and the little gremlin refers to his child not the young pig he is eating, my mistake!

Van, Kyndos son is a noodle aficionado. His son is a person.

The little gremlin is not the young pig eaten. Got.it.

I never had a son. I get the reference now. Thanks.

lechon is a Filipino eat-baby-pig dish (*shrug*)
pancit (no 's') is one of several Filipino noodle dishes

Just like the plural of "one kind of fruit" can be "several kinds of fruits" (fruits and vegetables!), I assume that the plural of "a kind of pancit" would be "several kinds of pancits" (pancits and vegetables!)
The Anglicization of other languages can lead to very interesting conflicts of conjugational suffixes!   

Also, lechon is prepared with very distinctive blends of spices, and slow roasted. YMMV, of course, but I thought it was very tasty. I do try to avoid eating a lot of meat, but when on vacation and trying new foods, I do make an exception: it's hard to really experience local food culture without trying what traditionally would be the centrepieces of the meal!

And everybody in Cebu assures me that Cebu lechon is the best lechon in the Philippines, so I guess I really lucked out there. 

Glad you had a good time in Cebu, Kyndo.  My house is on Panglao Island which is next to Bohol which in turn is a two hour ferry ride from Cebu City. I was there till February 6th.  Sadly, the weather was not great for the 16 days I was there, lots of rain.

By the way, swimming with the Whale Sharks is highly overrated. I did it in Bohol and basically I would not do it again as the only reason they hang around is that they are fed.  There are laws in the Philippines prohibiting it and I thought where I went they didn't do it but much to my disgust I found them doing it. Definitely not good for them.

Next time you visit the Philippines, take a trip to Bohol and Panglao, it is a good place too.

I can also recommend Bantayan Island which is off the north coast of Cebu. I actually would have loved to have lived there instead of Panglao but it is a little remote for retirement.

Next time you are there, try the food called Bicol Express, lesser known in the Cebu area but it is really great.

Oh wow, ships passing in the night!

Considering the ever accelerating extinction crises we're currently experiencing, I figured it might be good to put whale sharks near the front of my bucket list before the opportunity is no longer available to me. It's one of the reasons why we were so gung-ho for visiting the sanctuaries and did the nature tours.

I'm not surprised that you mentioned Bohol and Bantayan because a *lot* of other people made the same recommendation while we were there. The problem was that they were all 4 hours or more out, which is a pain to do with toddlers. We'll be coming back in a few years, I'm sure, and we'll be sure to visit those places when we do!