The Philippines
Trip Start
Mar 10, 2011
1
22
23
Trip End
Ongoing
Manila, National Capital Region, Philippines
Monday, August 1, 2011
We flew from Beijing to Manila on an early morning flight. Once arrived in Manila we caught another flight to Palawan, one if the Philippines less touristy islands. We stayed a night in Puerto Princessa by the airport before heading to El Nido the next day. El Nido is considered the most beautiful town on the island of Palawan, and is also home to the famous Bacuit bay, dotted with small islands, surrounded by limestone cliffs.
El Nido was so nice that we ended up staying there for a while. Our hostel was a small bamboo shack, with it's front door opening right onto the beach. It was run by a nice little family that offered us rum every night!
Apart from drinking rum, we did a bit of scuba diving and visited the nearby islands. Some of the islands hold these amazing lagoons with crystal clear waters, which we went snorkeling in. The marine life in El Nido is abundant, we saw many creatures including manta rays, octopus, lobsters and lots of tropical fish - all on an amazing back drop of tropical coral reef.
Our next destination was Coron, a six hour boat ride away. People specifically visit Coron, to go diving in the famous Japanese World War 2 ship wrecks. We were only planning on staying here a couple of nights before heading to Mindoro but we got stuck in a typhoon and no boats were aloud to leave the island. So we ended up doing a lot of wreck diving. The wrecks were really amazing! We penetrated into them with torches, seeing all sorts of eerie things (see photos on my Coron post).
The weather didn't improve so to kill a bit of time (and to stay out of the rain) we ended up doing our Advanced PADI course. We are now "Advanced" divers!
One of the days we rented out motorbikes for only £8 and zoomed round the island, it was great fun! As the weather didn't improve any further, the only way out of Coron, was to catch a flight to Manila.
There's not much I can say about Manila except it's a really sad place, full of beggars and prostitutes. We stayed here 2 nights which was more then enough. On one of the nights some kids tried to pick- pocket us, we jumped into a taxi and they wouldn't let us close the doors unless we gave them money. We gave them a few coins and the taxi drove off. These kids were only about 12! Very sad...
Despite the bad whether I really enjoyed the Philippines. The people are super friendly and always happy to help. I'd definitely come here again, but next time during the dry season...
From today I'll be flying solo. Jamie's returning back to the U.K. and James is meeting his friend Nick in Thailand for 2 weeks whist I fly to Vietnam. The reason why I'm not going with James is because I'll be seeing Thailand at a later date with my girlfriend, Leanne. I'm a bit nervous about travelling alone, but excited at the same time... I'll let you know how it goes!
