Still searching for sunny skies...
Trip Start
Jul 06, 2010
1
45
54
Trip End
Jun 28, 2011
Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines
Monday, March 28, 2011
We arrived by plane to the city of Puerto Princesa where we checked into a fabulous little guesthouse called the Dallas Inn which was recommend to us by some other travelers. It's cute small and clean plus reasonably priced. What else could you ask for? And the family that runs it are really nice and accommodating. Lately we are getting tired of the guidebooks recommendations where you need to read between the lines. For example when the guidebook says a place has a lot of "character" what they really mean is a lot of dust and junk. "Rustic" mean basic - likely the kind of basic which means no toilet seat, dirty linen and lots of bugs. We still haven't figured out what the code word for "mold" is yet.
Anyway, the thing to do in Puerto Princesa is island hop around Honda Bay. So we got off our wallets and dished out some cash for the tour. And it was exactly as we expected. Hundreds of tourists all island hopping together. We just don't understand why these tour companies can't mix it up a bit. Why do we all have to snorkel at the same reef at the exact same time? At least the people on our boat were interesting and the lunch was pretty fantastic - tuna steaks, prawns, roasted eggplant etc. Here we were expecting sandwiches and we got a first class meal. As for the beaches...they were OK...but we are spoiled these days and it takes a pretty nice beach to impress us.
The other thing to see in Puerto Princesa is a subterranean river system. However, after speaking to several other people we decided to take a pass on this tour. Apparently 700 to 1000 tourists visit that river a day! We don't care how nice it is - the tourist circus would spoil it for us.
We are surprised at how few Western tourists we meet in the Philippines. Most of the tourists are actually from the Philippines which is a nice surprise. And most of them speak excellent English, making life pretty easy for us. You can definitely see the American influence. One of our guesthouse owners said that the Philippines had 300 years of religion from the Spanish and 50 years of Hollywood from the American's! Given the number of Catholic churches around and the number of American TV channels, we see his point. The people here also love basketball and all their fast food chains serve fried chicken, pizza and spaghetti. So much so, that MacDonald's added spaghetti and fried chicken to their menu in an effort to compete. Who knew MacD's was into serving pasta? Oh, and did we mention that they seem to love their guns? Every security guard is packing heavy heat and we are constantly being patted down every time we enter a mall, bank or airport. A bit unnerving to say the least. Although we did witness a girl have her purse stolen resulting in every security guard within a mile radius chasing after the thief with guns out at the ready - needless to say we did not stick around to see what happened.
We are off to northern Palawan next, where there are suppose to be some beautiful beaches and great snorkeling. We will keep you posted.
Comments
They are gun happy and love fast food? You don't have to go half way round the world to get that.....just come home....