Yesterday and today.
25 July 2013 | Oceanview Marina
cloudy and cool.
Yesterday, we headed in to Immigrations to get our Visa extension. When you come into the Philippines, you get an automatic 21 day Visa for free. After that, you pay. Well, we didn't want to wait till the last day to do it(next Monday) so we headed in on a Thursday. We took plenty of money and our passports.
We arrived at the office about 1010 and got two of the forms to fill out. What we didn't know was that we needed a copy of the page in our passports that showed the stamp where when we arrived. So off to another shop to get it for the official. Back to Immigration and by 1030, we had handed in our papers. We were smart enough to bring books and stitching along for the wait. About 1115, Tracy's name was called out(lucky to hear it above to noise in the office) and she went to the counter and paid $6030 pesos(about $143 US) to the official. She then returned and sat and waited with me. About 1150(just before lunch break) the officials started calling out names and everyone went to the counter and got their forms. They wanted everyone gone by lunch time. Simple and easy and now we are set till September 9th.
We then jumped on a bus and headed for "G" mall. We hadn't been there yet so we wanted to see what it was like. As I've written before, every mall has a big grocery store attached and this one was no different. The nice thing is that it had more American goods on it's shelves than the rest. It will make it easier to get any US provisions once we start that chore before we leave here.
We were back on the ferry and back at Zephyr and out of the long hot pants we have to wear when we go to government offices. No shorts allowed and believe me, it gets hot in long pants. I don't know how the locals do it every day. we fired up the generator and let her run for a couple of hours as we hadn't had the chance before we left for town other than to run it for about 45 minutes. sure would like to use the marina's power. It would be cheaper.
Today, I'm headed for town again to buy a 220 volt battery charger. We will simply plug into the marina system and by pass the entire circuit board. We will see how that works. Wish us luck.