Let’s start off with the good. The
Pinoy (Filipino) people are probably the nicest culture I’ve encountered so
far. Everyone says Pinoy’s are friendlier, and they are telling you the truth.
A minor, and sometimes major caveat to that impressive quality depends on how
often you use cabs. Unfortunately, Manila is NOT a walking city and therefore
there are times where you are forced to use a cab, and the cabbies are
shitheads. It’s developed to the point where cabbies won’t use the meter if
there happens to be a lot of traffic, which happens to be about 99 percent of
the time in Manila. We worked pretty hard to try and get normal cab prices haggling
with cabbies, telling them to turn on the meter, getting out of cabs and
finding others, and we still got screwed a handful of times. The only thing
that will make you feel better about these exasperating experiences are that
cab fares are exceedingly cheap here in Manila, so if you do manage to get a
cabbie to run the meter, you can pay 2-4 dollars for up to an hour cab ride
(which would take you 10 km tops in about an hour. On the way to the airport,
the cabbie dropped us off at the terminal for an absolute steal of 3 dollars
(we got blasted for a 25 dollar ride on the way from the airport. I was so
happy I gave him my only cab ride tip in Manila (I thought the Buddhist karma
wouldn’t be so strong in this HEAVILY catholic country, but now I’m not sure).
Anyways, after 3 minutes the police officer said we were 3 km from the correct
terminal; and I started cursing out Juan Rodrigo in my head, that’s right, I
won’t forget you Juan Rodrigo, you cheeky bastard. And so we were at the wrong
terminal stranded like sitting ducks ready to fly straight overhead the cabbies
with their loaded shotguns. Thankfully getting screwed cost us around five
dollars so you just sort of need to brush that thing under the rug and try and
close your ears as Libby starts erupting. I know you should walk up to the
departures gate to grab a taxi on the way back to town or ideally grab public
transportation (hardly exists here in Manila), but our first leg of the
expedition we showed up starry eyed and in an excited daze and were subsequently
taken to town by those damn duckhunters…You live and learn.
Back to the other goods of Manila.
Music, I know there is supposed to be amazing live music here in Manila, we saw
a few good bands in Saigon, but again, there is no Frenchman street, no Beale
street, no whatever that street in Nashville is called, no cluster of really
anything in Manila so it’s just about finding the diamonds in the rough. In a
lot of ways, Manila reminded me of Memphis, with the additional 11 million
people. More parts of Manila are run down than nice and it’s not a great
walking city. Anyways, you can tell the music scene is superior here to the
rest of SE Asia because music is being played everywhere and more times than
not it’s exceptionally good. The one live band we saw was playing fine Beatles
covers which suited us just fine. Also, besides the elevated rail system which
the majority of people don’t seem to know where it goes, the primary form of public
transportation is FANTASTIC-Jeepney’s (20 cents for a whole route). I don’t
think a map of the jeepney routes even exists but since most people speak
excellent English here if you ask enough times you will slowly get an idea of
the jeepney network. Honestly, I think an awesome thing to do (UPDATE: and
beginning to think only awesome thing to do) in Manila would be to find a
jeepney playing music, bring on a cooler of San Miguel light to share and just
cruise through town.
The bad. There simply isn’t a whole
lot to see in Manila, with the exception of the cathedrals. There are a handful
of cathedrals worth seeing in Manila, and the possibility one or two museums,
but we missed out on the museums. The waterfront hasn’t been developed fully in
Manila and like the rest of city relies upon an excess of corporatized chains.
It seems to me that Manila is somewhat stuck in the 80’s/90’s mall culture of
America. Malls are considered the highlights of Manila and while they are very
nice malls, they are still malls, with foodcourts, and chains. That idea seems
to resonate throughout the whole city. We did eat at some EXCELLENT chains
ironically enough-ChiChop and BonChon. The restaurants and bars view on the
waterfront are blocked by the seawall and none of the restaurants have wizened
up by installing decks on which customers could drink/eat AND see the water. Maybe there is such a preponderance of
beautiful sea views on the 7000 islands of the Philippines that they don’t even
bother here in Manila.
Everyone and their mother has a gun
here in Manila (also similar to Memphis, but even more extreme). Your average
bank will have something like 2 guards posted with pistol grip shotguns, cops
abound everywhere with their .45 colt revolvers, and drug/bomb/attack? Dogs,
metal detectors and car-bomb mirrors are the norm at the upscale malls. Even
the McDonalds has its own armed guard. It definitely gives Manila a “hard” vibe
to it. I joked with Libby that she
booked us a room in the barrio (only kind of joking), but for the most part we
tailored our explorations to the daylight hours when the barrios simply seem
colorful and authentic and not scary.
That was written on our first three
days in Manila. We are back in Manila for another 3 days after our journey
through Palawan. It turns out the Pinoy people are EXCEPTIONALLY nice in the
provinces which makes the Manila Pinoy people pale in comparison. And I know
why. Living in Manila would depress the hell out of anyone and make anyone a
bitter, hard person. I’ve been to quite a few humid locations and Manila seems
to take the cake. The result? Every building, and I mean every building outside
of a few square blocks called “Makati Greenbelt” has that mildewed look that
must set in moments after a fresh coat of paint has been applied giving it a
really, and I mean REALLY worn down, crumbling look to the city. Anyways, Libby
and I are still quite young and quite susceptible to learning moments. But
really these are important for travelling of any sort of length. One, try not
to fly out of the same place you flew into. Two, we saved 20 dollars each on a
flight coming back a day or two early, sometimes it’s worth it to shell out the
extra 20,30,40,50,60, hell I would have paid 100 dollars to shorten my stay in
Manila for a second time and line up our connecting flights. We tried changing
our flights to no avail as all of our flights on this trip are promotional super
deals and therefore mostly non-refundable ect, ect, ect, as the Philippines Air
guy told us. If we would have lined up
the perfect Palawan Philippines trip we would have come into Manila (let’s face
it, it never hurts to see any new
place for the first time), flew to Puerto Princesa, travelled up Palawan with a
stop in Port Barton, El Nido and the northern tip of Palawan mainland, then
caught the 7 hour ferry from the northern tip of Palawan to Coron, proceeding
to fly out of Coron to Cebu and from Cebu out of the Philippines. We
learned these routes from the numerous people we met along the way who did more
prior research than we did. Honestly
though, those flights from Coron and Cebu, while not pricey (so I’ve heard),
would have probably blown our shoestring budget so I can make myself feel a bit
better by thinking that wasn’t an option. Anyways, if any of my 15 or so
readers ever has the desire to see Palawan, that’s what you should do, although
you could also do it vice versa and try and never have to leave the Manila
airport with a nicely lined up connection.
But let’s get back to reality. We
arrived in Puerto Princesa only to come to the sad realization that the idea of
a quaint city seemed to never make its way over to this wayward island chain.
Anyways, it wasn’t big enough to completely engulf us in it’s “barrio-ness” and
so was much less depressing. We stayed in the number #1 rated TripAdvisor
B&B-Tres Pensiones- and it really didn’t disappoint… So, many kudos to
TripAdvisor. Anyways, the next day we went on the Underground River tour. The
Underground River is billed as the second longest underground river in the
world and a newly designated Natural Wonder of the world. After seeing Angkor
Wat and hearing it billed as a wonder of the world, the 8th wonder
of the world, blah blah blah, I did some google research on these “wonders of the
world.” Unfortunately there is no definitive list, as they are all
reinterpretations of the first, the
seven wonders of antiquity, of which only the Pyramid of Giza still survives.
Today, there are only feeble attempts to update these lists. Unfortunately, I
think the only solution is to come up with your own list. For instance, in the
list in which the Puerto Princesa Underground River was a part of included Jeju
Island in South Korea which was clearly
the result of over-connected Koreans voting way way way too much. Needless to
say I’ve learned to take these lists with a grain, OK, a lot of grains of salt.
That being said, Puerto Princesa is the (second as Libby corrects me; the first
being in Mexico? I don’t believe her but there is no wifi to check) longest
underground river in the world and anything with the designation of longest,
tallest, highest, largest, should be worth seeing, right? Unfortunately our 1
or 2 km tour of the river didn’t gave us any sort of sense of the scale of this
so-called longest underground river. I feel so apathetic in regards to this
tour. Were the stalactites and stalagmites amazing? Yes. Were some of the caverns
enormous? Definitely. Numerous bats? For sure. Was it awe-inspiring? Probably not. Maybe I’m
just jaded or something. It didn’t help that Ferguson was endlessly spouting
out how this stalagmite looked like a bear, and this one like the virgin-Mary.
You know what Ferguson? I could care less about what the formations looked
like, I just wanted to look at them. Libby and I of course got the front seat
that controlled the spot light so it was a delicate task trying to ignore
everything Ferguson was saying save for the, “now point it blah blah blah.” We
made a nice point(with light) and shoot (with our camera) of most everything,
for some reason the rest of the tour group didn’t thank us for what I thought
to be a splendid spotlighting job… Also I may hit the next person that tries to
tell me the difference between stalagtites and stalagmites. I DON’T CARE. One
grows up and the other grows down, and if the time comes where I’m struck with
an instance of curiosity, I’ll google it. Was the tour worth it, 8 hours or so
for 45 minutes in the actual underground river? Probably, I don’t regret it but
for some reason I’d rather not think about it… One last thing, there is a 3
hour ***special*** tour you can take that would of course been out of our
budget so if you’re a cave enthusiast there’s that option. Here are some
pictures, I’ll let you decide.
Anyways, we were off the next day
to El Nido, the true promise land of Palawan. It’s a 7 hour bus ride through
beautiful green filled hills, so it wasn’t so bad. El Nido is certainly,
different, from what people say it was like just a couple of years ago. The
accommodation prices are kept at inflated prices due to insane demand from what
mostly felt like German tourists (and everywhere else honestly). We were kind
of disappointed in El Nido at first because we were expecting (at least I was),
a small town of palm thatched roofs on a beautiful beach. After I while, for we
were in or around El Nido for 10 days I learned to enjoy it, but El Nido is a
proper tourist town now. That being said, I came to the conclusion that life is
too short to eat bad Filipino food when there are Italian and French expats and
town. Filipino food consists of rice and pork, rice and chicken, and rice and
fish. I prefer rice and chicken because they have the unfortunate habit of
cooking their delicious and freshly caught fish whole (head, skin, guts
everything) with no sorts of seasoning or anything. Let me just say, have you ever seen a Filipino restaurant anywhere outside of the Philippines.
Enough said. Back to El Nido, after
getting in around sunset, we somehow manage to find Mezzanine, a French guy’s
restaurant who makes incredible Italian food, freshly made pasta, nice cheeses
the whole 9 yards, backed by well-balanced cocktails right over the water…I
mean they literally ate up the beach in El Nido so that establishments could be
literally on the water, and hey, when
you’re in the establishment, it is pretty dang sweet. The first thing we did
the next morning was rent a motorbike and get out of El Nido to explore the
island. I somehow met a Filipino guy who had lived in Detroit for 15 years and
with a “support the D, man!” I was
back renting a Vespa from him for the extra four dollars it cost as opposed to
a Honda motorbike which were ****made*** for the roads we were about to go on. Anyways,
within minutes we were on the road in Northern Palawan, jamming to the only
music fitting for an Island paradise, Bob Marley. We were in paradise, Palawan is the number
one voted island in the world and will probably stay that way because there are
simply miles and miles and miles of untouched coast that resorts can and are
spilling over into now that El Nido is totally consumed. It’s beautiful,
rolling elevation changes, scenic overlooks, jagged limestone Islands and
Islets hanging out in the distance every which way you look. I think northern
Palawan is the par excellence of
Karst geography, but we’ll see come Halong Bay. Anyways, the roads are just
being paved in northern Palawan so it still had a rustic getaway feel to it
that El Nido has lost (even though El Nido still
doesn’t have an ATM).
Interlude
I was writing this post in the
sanctuary of our hotel room (yes we got a proper hotel room to hide away in) while
Libby was at church. She turned up early
as she accidentally mistook the church across the street for a Catholic
church. After being ushered out of
sitting on the men’s side, she listened to a man in a suit go on about how
great their church was. Their church
being The Church of Christ. She left and
forced us to move to one of the coffee shops in the Makati Greenbelt district,
and my oh my it’s like we are transported to a different world. The Philippines
is like that, we are in a coffee shop that positively belongs in the likes of
New York, San Francisco, Seattle or Chicago. I even think their espresso
machine outdoes anything I’ve seen in the States. The walk here of course was
quite depressing during which I was thinking the future of these
semi-democratic corruption riddled states (Central and South America come to
mind as siblings), with a hyper concentration of wealth that makes the “1 percent”
in the States seem like child’s play. Anyways, the future seems bleak, it seems
utterly naïve to think any of the poverty or corruption will be fixed in
anywhere close to our lifetime and makes you want to crawl back to the nicest
city you can think of back in the United States and be thankful. It’s totally
at odds with the instantaneous and globalized outlook we were raised on and is
frankly quite confusing in an introspective sense.
Back to Moto Ride in El Nido.
Anyways, I’m convinced motorbike travel is simply the best way to
travel in these parts of the world. In most of these places, talk of
“touristy” and “overcrowded” disappear mere minutes down the road and such is
the case in El Nido. Yeah the roads were gnarly, and yeah, I did feel like a
badass handling those roads like a champ on a Vespa… Really I’ll just insert photos which will do a thousand
times more justice than me rambling about just how beautiful this place is. It
was a great day, the suspension on a vespa simply wasn’t high enough for some
portions of the dirt/rock, I can’t explain it, but let’s just say even the
Filipino’s were impressed when we told them the route we took. I was thankful
they couldn’t examine the underbody of that poor Vespa that was getting
absolutely scourged in some parts and
grabbed my passport(deposit) as quickly as possible. In some parts, I cheesily
enough was thinking I’m getting to ride my Alaskan spines albeit with a
motorbike on dirt instead of skis on snow. Anyways, we scouted out some amazing
places to stay on the beach for like 17 dollars a night, which is what we were
paying for a box room back in El Nido.
The next day we went on our first Island Hopping tour for which El Nido
practically built its reputation on.
Literally every single place (from convenient stores to restaurants and
the smallest guesthouses) offer island tours. We saw the infamous Small and Big Lagoons and
spent most of the time situating the cameras so that the dozens of other
tourists were out of the frame giving the sense of isolated beauty. Yeah the
places were crawling with tourists and yeah it was worth seeing in spite of the LOADS of other island
hopping boats. The only way around it is to stay at the luxury resort on the
Island on which the Big and Small Lagoon is located and take a kayak and go at
sunrise before the boats make it there. It’s around 600-800 dollars a night to
make that happen but to really kick my poor ass in the balls there’s a 4 night
minimum stay so to make your dream a reality will put you out 2,000 plus
dollars. Better to look elsewhere, say in Indonesia, which is the next plan. We did Tour A and figured it was enough to
do only that Island Hopping tour of the 4 available in El Nido. That night
the guy who sold me on the Vespas and the Island hopping tour took us to the Reggae bar called Pukka Bar in which a
Filipino band sang pitch-perfect Bob Marley covers which was a good time and
worth returning to. The local rum, less than 2 dollars for a 5th,
is quite good, and we finally met some nice German girls under 40 to drink with
and so had a merry night of drinking which was a first for our old souls.
Seriously though, Libby is concerned and I am beginning to become a little
concerned as well that the average age of people I have nice conversations with
has to be hovering in the mid to late 40’s, with the occasional 30 year old and
the more occasional 60 year old……But in my defense my favorite guy was giving
me India tips. He was this super Brit
who did a 5 ½ month motorbike trip through India, talk about badass. I probably
liked him though because he was in the end asking me for Vietnam tips and casually mentioned that I looked like I
knew what I was doing as an experienced traveler as he was preparing me for the
India shock we’re surely going be experiencing (lol). I wish I could have
somehow recorded that and played it over and over again in my brother’s face. Back to the Reggae bar, we woke up feeling
less than perfect and delayed our activities till the afternoon which was
kayaking. I’m convinced Kayaking is now the best way to explore around El Nido
now that the Island hopping tours are becoming oversaturated. It was a good
idea to only do a half day of kayaking because until you’re actually kayaking
in open water for more than an hour at a time, the idea of kayaking sounds much
more fun. Anyways, you can kayak much of the same route as Island Hopping Tour
D and we got more views of the desolate white sand beaches with palm trees
surrounded by the limestone cliffs, the epitome of Palawan. We ended our
kayaking expedition at the same place Tour A ends- 7 Commando Beach, home of maybe my favorite bar in the world, the bar
at the Vellago Resort. The View-BILLION DOLLARS. The seats-VERY COMFORTABLE
LOUNGERS. The Music-EXCELLENT BORDERING ON SUPERB. Cocktails-EXCELLENTLY MIXED.
Needless to say we met some jolly old 50 year olds from Ann Arbor who also knew
what the hell was up.
And really if I could sum up the
charm of El Nido it was the good music, good cocktails and good food that
happened to be located in extraordinary natural beauty. Anyways, the next day
we rented our proper Honda motorbike for 5 days and headed off for a proper
Palawan experience. On our way to, after our brief stop at the postcard beach
of Palawan-Nacpan Beach. Babe’s
beachfront cottages (which we discovered on our scouting mission and had a
coconut at), we stumbled across Santeria! We met one of the owners of Santeria
on the bus from Puerto Princesa to El Nido, who had come down to pick up his friends
who were visiting form the UK. Anyways, we had wanted to stay a night at Santeria, figuring if someone had
decided to build a guesthouse away from electricity and really anything there
had to be good reason. And on our way enough to Babe’s we found Santeria.
Anyways, we walked up the hill and stumbled upon Paradise! This couple was
living the dream. The 29 year old British couple had excellent food, excellent
music, excellent views, the company was great as it was the 6 of us with
absolutely nothing to do except, drink, eat, listen to music and converse. The
place was three weeks old, they had excellent taste in most everything, and it
was close to a perfect experience. It was really quite amazing as their
location simply had endless possibilities for growth as it was located in a
cashew forest (the honey roasted nuts were great), the vegetable/herb garden
had been planted, the banana trees planted, the flock of chickens that
literally just roamed around the grounds and an endless supply of cheap labor
to make all their wildest construction dreams become a reality for close to
little work done on their part. Two things were needed to make their dream a
reality, one, I think the girl must’ve had dual Filipino/English citizenship as
she could speak Tagalog and was obviously Filipino. 2nd, the guy had
such a slovenly demeanor/exterior and sense of not really having done much of
anything in his 29 years of existence which in combination with his good tastes
meant he must have been born into money. Our Landlord in Memphis was exactly
like this guy. Cheers to him for living the dream.
Tapik Villages.
After our two days of bliss, we
moved on to a beach front place just down the road. For 800 pesos a night we
had our own bungalow just a couple of feet from the water’s edge. The Island
Hopping tour was worth it as we were
the only tourist boat/tourists around. More unbeatable beaches, more amazing
coral. I’m quite inexperienced when it comes to snorkeling, and so it was
amazing to see real reefs. I had seen
nice reefs before but never such vibrant biodiversity. I must have seen 20-30
different species of fish on these reefs and needless to say, I’m hooked. The
thing about this whole snorkeling, diving thing is that it doesn’t seem to be
like skiing where there are many different types of skiing that are just as
enjoyable. You go to a reef, see a bunch of awesome things, then you go to a
bigger reef and see even more awesome things. Now I’m at the point where I just
want to go to the biggest baddest reefs, and thankfully we’re planning on it in
Indonesia (Guinea). Yes there’s niche snorkeling/diving with wrecks, specific
type of animals(thrasher sharks, whale sharks) but really I think bigger is
better; I want to see sea turtles, manta rays, sharks damnit! Anyways, Tapik
was just a continuation of paradise, candlelight dinner set on the beach (but
not the kind in Cambodia where the whole beach is lined with restaurants),
millions of stars, amazing sunrises, again, pictures do it more justice. By the
time we got back to El Nido, it honestly did feel nice to have a fan or aircon
in our rooms, if it’s not cool enough at night, I have a hard time going to
sleep in the complete silence of a stuffy bungalow when the mosquito net seems
more like a prison than a rustic retreat.
Those 5 days seemed to encapsulate everything amazing about Palawan.
There was Libby, the amazing natural beauty, my book, and my 5th of
Maker’s Mark to keep me company. Yes, there is a random 70 year old Kentucky
native who set up shop in El Nido and has quite a bourbon selection in his
liquor store. Bourbon is literally the only thing I could possibly think of
drinking warm and straight and as it was the first bourbon in over a year, so
it was quite delicious (I drink scotch in Vietnam). Being out in wilderness and
drinking seem to go hand in hand with me and with warm bourbon and some of the
local lime juice I had tried my best Hemingway. I wrote exactly zero words, but
I did succeed in drinking the whole thing straight as Libby refused to touch it
for some lame reason. Some people would catch me taking pulls of it at very
strange hours of the day and give me odd looks, but I just shrugged it off.
Hey, not here for a long time, here for a good time as
they say. Don’t worry Mom and Dad the imbibing has stopped.
Back to
El Nido
Back in El Nido we did one last
activity. We climbed one of the cliffs that essentially encase El Nido, Taraw
Peak. My goodness, I’m only writing about this because we survived and I have
no intention of ever doing it again. When they say “cliff climbing” they
actually mean more climbing than hiking. Honestly, it’s only a matter of time
before someone slips, falls and dies. The same jagged limestone that makes it
possible to do this sort of ropeless climbing that is honestly a step of above
scrambling (full of handholds and footholds) would also kill you if you fell
the 6 or 10 feet of exposure you regularly have on this climb...Since I’m
scared of heights and am naturally a worse-case scenario thinker (sometimes
called a “worrier”) I was scared shitless and climbed up and down that thing as
fast as possible. Boy if you like adventure, this is for you, but it honestly
seemed quite irresponsible to take people on.
While I struggled in the back, Libby was happy to flaunt how the guide
(you need a guide, there is no path or logical route) complimented her on her
quick climbing skills.
Libby had been steadily finding us
cheaper and cheaper accommodations in El Nido till she finally found us the
cheapest one in El Nido-500 pesos a night for our two nights before heading
back down to Puerto Princesa. For 500 pesos a night, you don’t get much, in
fact, you don’t get a toilet that flushes, you get a public squatter toilet.
I’m here to tell you ladies and gentlemen just how much I’m willing to pay for
a toilet with a seat that you can sit on and flush-it’s 300 pesos. Roughly 7
dollars was what we saved in exchange for a downgraded toilet. You know what,
I’m willing to pay to that 7 dollars. Any day of the week. Instead I just had to
tell my bowels to SUCK IT UP, and just push through the discomfort until we
made our way to some café or restaurant with enough decency to provide a real toilet.
You learn to make the best of it,
we’re back in Manila, which isn’t ideal. But if we wouldn’t have had this
uncomfortably long layover I wouldn’t have written this BEHEMOUTH of a blog post. Maybe you didn’t even want this long of a
post, oh well. Overall, I would rate Vietnam a better country to visit than the
Philippines though the Philippines is certainly worthy of a lengthy expedition
(there’s a reason why we chose to live in Vietnam). I really like food, a lot,
so having bad native food is a bit of disappointment, but the Island beauty I’m
sure is par to none, and there is an endless amount of it in the 7,000 islands.
I can say that confidently. There is quite a bit of abject poverty that is
quite visible and you will have to
rub elbows with it, but it’s better to acknowledge its existence before
inevitably forgetting about it. As Jay-Z said, ON TO THE NEXT ONE. Time for
some Burmese Days, baby!!
