Day 76. Cebu City. Rough seas and Red tape.

A busy day began with a choppy crossing back to Cebu Island. It was low tide so we had to transfer to a flotilla of small boats punted ashore by a ragbag collection of salty seadogs. A difficult task in a 5ft swell, and to a man we ended up with soggy backsides. Poor Marlou received the biggest drenching as she was unlucky enough to be allocated the one-armed punter.

We had to extend our visitors' visas once we reached Cebu City, a task that had plenty of potential to be both time-consuming and extremely dull.

Fortunately we'd had the foresight to put on our best clobber before entering the immigration office, so were cherry-picked from the crowd of fractious tourists and shown to the air conditioned office of the head honcho.

This was like something straight out of a Graham Greene novel.

No ceiling fan, fat cigar or cockroach running up the wall, but he had all the other trappings - the ancient typewriter, the dog-eared calendar and the grubby portrait of Holy Mary behind his desk.

We knew what was coming - an audacious demand for greenbacks to oil the creaking cogs of Philippino bureaucracy - but before the slimeball cut to the chase, we had to endure a protracted and well rehearsed monologue.

But enough about Jan.

The gist of what el supremo had to say was that normally he was involved in the war against terror, and that only last week he'd personally apprehended a deadly mob of muslim extremists at the airport. But today was his day off, so he was processing tourists' visas.

Yeah, right.

Eventually, and believe me this took an age, he informed us that the necessary paperwork usually took 5 hours to complete, but if we were prepared to press 3000 pesos into his greasy palm, things could be hurried along significantly.

To put this into some perspective, the average weekly wage here is about 7000 pesos - or about 18 quid - so he had quite a profitable little day at the office.

Walking back from a restaurant in the evening I couldn't resist a ramshackle barber shop. This time cockroaches were running up the wall, but for my 50p I received a top-notch cut and the guy threw in a complimentary backrub for good measure.

What a place this is. We love it already.