Considering that phillipines worked out of 700 different island, it's a totally different experience travelling around than what I'm use too. Instead of hitting any travel agency to book the next best bus to the place you're looking to go to you actually have to book flight tickets to get around. And that is not only more expensive but also takes a bit more of planning. Which I'm not good at despite the fact that I'm living out of the quote 'the best plan is to make no plan'. This was not really working for me travelling the phillipines. I'm also really indecisive and during my time traveling alone the thing I missed most was to have someone to help me make decisions. Turns out that Alice and Louise are both worse than me and since I've done a lot of travels already they kinda relied on me to make the decisions for us. Which I did, with their approval.
Manilla
3am was suddenly 4 am when we arrived to Manilla airport. I had organized a couchsurfer who happily would let us stay for the night. We took a cab to her place in the city where we got about 5.30. Just before she headed for work. Rica lived on the 37th floor, and we all stood on her balcony chatting as we watched the sun rise. As we barely got any sleep yet we went back to bed where we stay'd until early afternoon before we headed for the mall. We needed to fix this phone Louise bought secon hand in Siem reap, that wasn't working anymore thanks to Alice's idea of resetting it. Well, the people who say that MBK in Bangkok is big has obviously never been to Mall Asia in Manilla. It is huge. We got lost countless of times before we found the rig shop to help us. This mission took us all day. We got back to Rica's place and hit the Internet cafe to book us a ticket out of Manilla. This city is not a place where you want to stay for too long. With the hectic city traffic hitting you straight int he face I felt like leaving straight away. After a lot of hassle getting this ticked booked and me having an emotinal breakdown that Alice had to save me from, we managed to book a ticket to Borocay the next morning. My mood improved a lot having that done and I could happily enjoy a good Mexican dinner and a couple of beers with Rica that night before heading to bed.
Boracay
I'm not gonna lie. Borocay is an amazing place but I'm sure we could all agree that our time there is a bit blurry. We met a lot of people at 'Frendz' hostel, and created our own little drunken family during this time. And we did have the best time together. I felt really sorry for Australian Jason who ended up having all his valuables stolen. Creditcard, passport, money -everything. Cause I'm traveling with my Australian credit card I happily helped him out with having him transfer money to me so that I could give it back in local cash. I sure know how it feels to have your things stolen, you appreciate all the help you can get.
There was a crazy Swedish guy who created what he named a 'Swedish breakfast'. This basically means one beer, and would be the way everybody started the day. I 'accidentally' tricked Alice into having one one morning, before she was aware of the concept. That was fun. Later that day our hostel organized a free pasta night, where everyone gathers together in the common area for dinner, drinks and with live music. When the hostelbar closed we headed for a local bar where we ended the night with bongo drums, dancing and tons of new local friends.
The next morning we went on a boat trip to 'magic island'. A day full of cliff jumping - one of my favourite activities. There was probably about 15 of us, jumping, drinking and socializing. So much fun. I went again the next day to 'Ariel's point' where you able to jump of 15 meters. I'm prod to say that I was one of the few- and the first, to achieve this. That nigh we created a party in the tattoo shop, where the Swedish guy was getting a tattoo of Kenny's face on his ass. Don't ask. They're absolutely mental. But everyone wanted to witness this happen.
Our last day we spent on the beach before heading to spiderhouse for a beautiful sunset view. A few beers later we headed back in time for another free pasta night at the hostel together with live music. It was quite sad having our last night together with everyone and we were tempted to stay a few days longer. This was also Australian Luke's birthday night which everyone came out to celebrate. A fun night that brought us back way to late to be able to function at 8 in the morning.
One of Borocay's amazing sunsets
t's easy to get stuck at a place where you meet amazing people at an amazing place, specially when you're never sober enough to make a decision to leave. After beeing there 6 days, we finally found ourselves on he road again. To save some money we travelled the local way across the ocean and to Cebu. 6 hours in a minivan took us to Iloilo, from where they luckily enough had a ferry leaving for Cebu the same night. The night ferry was an experience itself. Several floors covered with bunk beds, shared by only locals except from three of us. Despite that we was houndereds of people sharing this journey someone thought it was a great idea to bring their roosters. On a night ferry. I know that cockfights are a big thing in the phillipines and that some people care more for their roosters than their children. But on a night ferry ..
Bohol
Having no plans or no idea what direction to head when getting ourselves to Cebu city we simply caught a taxi to somewhere in the centre, after getting the driver well confused. As Cebu city itself seemed to be similar to Manilla we decided not to stay. Catching a taxi back to the pier we headed over to Bohol, the big island next door. After being on land travelling for 35 hours straight we finally found ourselves in a hostel called 'nut huts' next to a river, In the middle of the forest, 267 steps downhill and isolated from the civilization. Living it back to basics.
After a well needed amazing 12 hour sleep we woke up to the sound of nature. Ah. Such a contrast to our life in Boracay. So beautifully quiet. We walked the 267 steps uphill, and 800 meters through the forest to get to the main road where we hired motorbikes for the day. As it was the first time driving for Alice and Louise we got one each. We spend the day driving around Bohol, which turned out to be so much smaller than I thought. But with an amazing nature. And what a freedom to be one with the nature, just driving around enjoying its quietness. We started of heading to the chocolate hills that we've heard so much about. It was cool, sure, but I wouldn't brag to much about it. We continued with heading down the tiniest road to a spectacular waterfall. Definitely my favourite one in the phillipines. And we got it all to ourselves. We enjoyd our take-away lunch next to it's scenery. Went for a swim before we were back on the road. Next thing we headed for the national park and the Tasiers- tiny monkeys with big big eyes. So damn cute. Before heading back we drove for another hour along the coastline as the sun was about to set.
Alice and I by the waterfall
Panglao
Next morning we headed to the tiny island south of Bohol, Panglao. We decided to get a jeepney there. The local's way of public transportation. This turned out to be a mistake. A journey that shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes took us 4 hours in this thing. Seriously.
As panglao is famous for their diving, I booked us one for the next day. This turned out to be the worst tour in my life. The diving itself was amazing. But the company we manage too book with had no idea what they're doing and handled everything extremely unprofessional. Stared of with having us wait for an hour before getting on the boat. With our dive master and our gear already on the sea. The left us at an island where we waited another hour not knowing if this dive was actually going to happen. When we met the dive master out on the sea he started bragging over having us to pay money, that we already paid. The gear we got was way to big and had already been used by someone else. But in the end, while in the water, we looked past all that cause this was actually truly amazing. And we got the sight of not less than 12 turtles.
That night I ran into Thor on the beach. Just randomly. One of the guys Carro and I traveled with in Thailand about 16 months back. The world must be smaller than we think. We didn't get to spend much time together as we was leaving ridiculously early the next morning.
Cebu
That day we got up at 5am, to travel by boat across to Cebu and Oslob, south of Cebu city. We had our moods on top and was well excited to swim with the whalesharks. This is definitely one of the best experiences. Around ten meters big creatures surrounding you under the water. Amazing! From there we headed north with a couple of local busses and got ourselves to Moalboal. The tiniest little beach town on cebu's west cost. The following day we hired scooters to drive to the Kazan waterfalls. This was a quite cool experience as we got to go on a bamboo under the waterfall. It was a quite big one as well and fell so heavily is hurted getting it onto your shoulders.
The next day we booked ourselves into diving again. With a more serious company this time which turned out to be the best experience. And we got it all pictured as well. The same afternoon we took a taxi to Cebu city. We was planning to take the local bus but the taxi driver was going to the city anyway and gave us an extremely good price. We checked into a hostel just for the night before catching an early flight.
El nido, Palawan
Our last week in the Philipines we spent together with our favourite Borocay friend, Luke from Sydney. Leaving Boracay he simply lost the ability of making decisions and ended up stuck in Manilla. As we love eachothers company we invited him to come with us to Palawan. Flying into puerto princesa we met our friend at the airport. Together we caught the minivan down to El Nido, a 6 hour drive and not a single second was spend in silence. Luke has the best personality and are super easy to talk to. By this point he know every single thing about the three of us. Getting to El Nido we checked in to a hostel before heading for dinner. We've heard that they have an amazing pizza bar, with life changily good pizzas. I'm not sure if I understand what all this fuzz comes from but Alice sure fell in love. Matti should know he's up for some serious competition. Waiting for a table we ran into another of our lovely Borocay friends, Jaimie, and who we ended up spending the night in the bar with. And who ended up getting hit in the face by one of the locals for joking around a bit. Poor guy.
Luke, Jaime and I our first night in El Nido
The next day we rented scooters to go to waterfalls and beautiful beaches. Luke and I shared one and Alice and Louise another. On the tiniest roads close to the waterfalls we happened to run in to more of our Borocayfriends. Canadian Jeremy and Greham (that's not how you spell his name, but it makes more sense), and Sabine from holland. One of their scooters just broke down so they're waiting for someone to fix it. We left them to it and headed into the bush for the waterfall. It was a small one but allright still. We swam and jumped off cliffs for quite a while before heading back. After 20 minutes walking and having Louise describing all the different ways she could kill us, we got back to our bescooters. From there we headed for a magical beach. It was a hell of a road to get there. Dirty tracks and pools covering the whole pathway was not easy to get through. And with Luke on the back as well. Needless to say that he had to drive back. The beach was impressive still, even if we would have enjoyed it more with better weather. It was getting cloudy by the time we went. Sunset would have been amazing, but those roads in the dark? I don't think so.
Jeremy and Greham met us at our hostel so that we could head for full moon party together. We bought drinks and headed for their place where we played rounds of 'ring of fire' before getting a tricycle to the full moon party. We met Jaimie as well who was doing some sort of lightshow. Alice somehow disappeared into a serious deeptalk with a local guy, as Louise went for a beach walk with Greham leaving Luke and I to think that they all went home without us. We soon realized that they'd never do that and we soon met up to head home together. The next day I felt terribly, terrible. Not only did I woke up with a hangover, but with a massive cold and fever. Good thing we had no plans for this day. We hung around at the beach, I had a afternoon nap before dinner, and fell back asleep as soon as we got back. I was not the best company this day.
Island hopping, Palawan
We got ourselves booked into a wonderful island hopping tour. With snorkeling, islands, BBQ lunch, secret beach and hidden beach where you have to swim between and under the rocks to reach. It was ridicously beautiful. It's too bad it's getting into such a touristy thing which means we had to share the experience with tons of other people. The four of us still had the most fun together with our beers and silliness. Getting back to el nido we ran into a German friend of ours and ended up joining his friends for a few drinks at the dive center they're staying at. After a well needed shower and Alice's favorite dinner we went for games of pool before hitting the bars. After a long, intense but great day we finally found ourself walking back home, ready for bed. Louise and I was doing push-ups on the street, don't ask me why, but got told by Luke that we were doing it wrong. As he showed us how to do them correctly Alice stepped back to take a picture and accidently fell, up to her waist, right into the sewer. The toiletwater from the houses that's running next to the streets. We found this extremely funny and of course - we laughed. Louise and I who was already on the ground couldn't stand up for at least 20 minutes just laughing our asses off. We finally god ourself home, carrying Louise as she still laughed to hard to walk or talk. This didn't stop for over an hour. Never in my life have I seen someone laugh this hard. So hard that we stopped laughing at Alice and started laughing at Louise insteead.
The four of us and three random locals we just met at the island
One day of a long sleep in, and a trek to another waterfall brought us to an early night before spending our last day in el Nido diving. We booked it throught a new open dive center, and the friends of the German guy we've been hanging out with lately. It was again, amazing experience. During our first dive Luke, Alice, Louise and I dove together and our German friend joined us during the second one. It was a lot of fun and Alice and I had a session of pretty impressive dancemoves before heading up to the surface. After diving we headed to a deserted island for lunch.
We realized that none of us had enough cash left to pay for the diving. El nido doesn't have any ATM's, and no card readers. We tried everything. Australian banks are also stupid that way that you can't transfer any money whithout having a phone to receive a security code on SMS. After hours of struggling we managed to get it work through paypal, which would refuse to work at first.
As we got back I spent hours and hours trying to book us a flightticket to Bankok the following day. We simply decided to skip our flight to Borneo and head to Laos instead. Mainly because it's redicously much cheaper to travel there, and it'd give me more time in Philippines. I frustrated myself with poor internet connection and Asian websites doing this. The prices raised and when I finally found a resonable ticket I got kicked out from the website four times just before purchasing my payment. I was just about giving up when Luke got his computer and booked it for me. One last night in el nido brought us back at 5 in the morning. After 3 hours sleep we had an emotional goodbye to our Australian friend before getting not the bus back to puerto princesa. Our phillipino adventures had come to an end.
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