We took our flight from Davao City to Manila on May 6 to begin yet another chapter in our Philippine adventure.

On June 23, the day of the EU referendum, we said our goodbyes to the resident builders who had been doing the major works in the renovation of our house.
There's still a lot of detail work yet to be done, but nothing that we cannot achieve between the both of us step by step.
The house had been empty for quite a long time and we have structurally transformed the interior significantly reducing the bedrooms from 6 to 3 and adding a completely new dirty kitchen downstairs and a new laundry room on the 3rd floor

We headed off to Marikina on Thursday for the first of our scheduled delivery of fridge and mattress. Friday was delivery of bed and dining table with chairs.
We've started the huge task of a complete cleaning exercise now that all the building debris has finally been cleared. I've also make a good start unpacking all the shipping boxes and crates that we sent from Davao City and now we see nice progress in the process of making the house into our home.

We've been lucky with our timing in that there's very little major expense left at the current low RoE
However, as it stands now we'll need to delay the planned updating of our Cubao Condo until later. Maybe even next year.

We've been living in our Condo in Cubao since May 6 and honestly enjoyed our life here. We'll be staying in Cubao regularly as it's only 15 minute journey away.
What a contrast Cubao is to our life in the sleepy sub-division where we stayed in Davao City.
Don't get me wrong. Life in Davao City was wonderful and given the opportunity we will make more visits to our beloved close family members are living in Mindanao.
We may consider buying a small holiday home there sometime in the future.

I foolishly envisaged a retirement life here in the Philippines doing all those long lost but still loved hobbies, relaxing on beaches, enjoying good food and plenty of cold beers.
Mostly, we've been busy. Sometimes we've gotten stressed. But always found time to chill out with cold beers and good food.
Hopefully we'll be able to settle down and enjoy the fruits of our labour in our own house before Christmas.