Northern Adventure - First Day High!

Christmas day came and after a ton of events attended the night before, we needed to wake up for our flight to the north.

We went straight to the airport to catch our flight and arrived there 3 hours early! Excited??

We boarded a PAL flight to Laoag and was surprised to seat on a fiesta class but! with the leg room of a business class seat! (we were seated at the exit doors -- first time ever out of my many journeys!). The food was below fiesta class standards - we were just given tea/coffee and crackers though. Not bad for a 50 minute air time.

Getting our luggage after landing was a bit of a challenge because of the unorganized structure of the small local airport -- but nothing we can't deal with. Fort Ilocandia bus was already waiting to pick us up.

When we arrived at Fort Ilocandia, welcome drinks welcomed us. This was around 11 to 1130 lunch time already so we were a bit hungry. We went to our rooms first to leave our luggages.

Rooms were ok. It was clean enough. Some downsides though -- key cards to the room were defective. It was so hard to open and gain access. There has to be a certain timing and touch. Hair dryer is a bit sucky and the saftey vault wasn't working. Oh! We also got our television changed because the channels won't change. Enough of the bad sides. It wasn't bad enough to change the mood. Just a little inconvenience and that's all.

We tried the All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) and it was the best! If you've watched 'Amazing Race Asia' they went to a place near the middle east were they drove 4x4's and got stuck in the sand. I experienced that in my ATV while cruising on a desert like smooth sand! Learned a few techniques though on how to react when such thing happens again. :)

Ended the day with a few drinks at the sports bar inside Fort Ilocandia.

(photos will follow because I am using my mobile phone to blog while on the tour bus now. Going to Vigan!)