Actually, it was four years ago...

Back in February 2008, AirAsia had their "free airtickets" campaign and I wanted to travel somewhere. Thus, knowing a friend who had travelled abroad before, I asked if he had any plans to travel then. Ask and ye shall receive! He called me up and told me that there were plans to go to the Philippines. I immediately bought tickets in the following days. But before anything else, let's first meet the travel bunch… 

The following took place on Wednesday, 15th October 2008:-

This is us in Kuching waiting for our flight to Kota Kinabalu. (I arrived from Brunei the day before.)

(B-F): Fabian (Fab), Mar (yours truly), Teddy (Ted), Lindsay (Say) and Rimie (Mie)

Yes, we only travelled half a year after purchasing our airtixs and between the long gap of buying the tickets and the travelling itself, anything could have prevented the trip from materialising - fortunately, nothing did. 

Arrived at Kota Kinabalu International Airport Terminal 2. 

Our flight landed at around midnight (that's why the date on the photo above is already 16th) and our friends Ben, Young and Michele (Chel) came to fetch us. The latter also joined us for our Philippines trip.   We stayed at Ben’s house in Putatan, about half-an-hour from the airport. It was a kind of a reunion since we all haven’t seen each other for quite awhile so we had supper first before settling for the night.

The following day, 16th October, the 6 of us (including Chel) went to Centrepoint KK to“acquire” some Pinoy currency. For the record, the exchange rate then was 100PHP (pesos) = RM7.50 or RM1 = 13.3333PHP.

And soon, it was time to board our flight to Clark, Manila…

Me, Say, Chel, Mie at KKIA…and the guys (not in the picture obviously) departing to Manila. 

All of us brought about at least 10,000 pesos (RM750) each…

We would eventually find out that this was NOT enough…

The Road Once Taken (to be continued)...