So our Philippines adventure continues, today we have left Bohol and are doing the walk+ferry+taxi+bus+tricycle+ferry+walk to get to Malapasqua, for the last 4 nights in this lovely corner of the world.

In Bohol we went to Panglao and dived at Balicasag Is for a day, and then rented a couple of motorbikes for 3 more days to explore the main island of Bohol. 

It’s always fun trying to work out what we should be paying for things, for example someone tried to charge us 500 pesos for a bus ride to Panglao that we later  got for 50 pesos! 

Jeepni travel, 25pesos a trip.

Sally making friends

So we shopped around to get a good deal on the bikes, which were eventually brought to our hotel in a strange slightly dodgy situation. 

Three guys brought the bikes, with a used disclaimer/waiver, and went to great pains to point out what little damage was already on them.  They also had three helmets thinking there must be another guy in our group, but we gave them one back saying one bike was for Sal…  This initially confused them, but then they were super impressed that a foreign girl could ride a real motorbike.  They were less impressed when I drew pictures of both the bikes on the agreement, showing all  the existing damage 🙂

The impressed men was to be a bit of a theme for the next three days, with teenage boys often blowing kisses to Sal along the road, as you could imagine she hated the attention 😉

So we visited the Tarsier sanctuary, home to one of the oldest creatures on the planet, these little primates branched off from the primate evolutionary process something like 55 million years ago, and one variant has lived in isolation in Bohol ever since. 

They’re tiny little things, that would fit in your palm, with huge eyes that don’t articulate, and a neck that rotates 360 deg instead. Of course they’re on the endangered list, loss of habitat and poaching… Very sad.  Such little curious animals that have survived for so long, hopefully the Fillipino’s take better care of them than the orangutans in Indo.

Then we rode to the Chocolate mountains, which are a cluster of small hills that go brown in summer… Wow.

From there we rode about 300km around Bohol, stopping a night at a lovely little beach where a local band played mostly covers but with some cool Fillipino songs thrown in.

The bad news for us in this, is that Sal seems to have contracted dengue fever – red rash, a very high temperature, bad aches and pains and cold sweats.  She’s soldiering on with paracetamol for the aches as there is no other treatment available, just stay hydrated and wait for it to pass.

Now we’re on the aforementioned bus going north in Cebu.  It’s a strange vehicle, 3 seats each side of the aisle, fasten your seatbelt signs everywhere but no seatbelts, one driver who constantly sounds the air horns, one man who hangs out the centre door continuously shouting at people on the street to see if they need a ride, and one ticket collector who still hasn’t given me my 700 pesos change ($20).

Very slow going with all the starting and stopping, 6 hours to travel a bit more than 100km!

Hopefully we make the last ferry when we arrive!

…
We missed the ferry 🙁

The pic doesn’t really do it justice, but Sal made friends with some lovely critters a couple of nights ago… 
VERY ITCHY!!

This is the street food place across from our hotel today, 26 different dishes available!
They range from sardines in vinegar and chilli, to smoked eggplant with coconut and ginger, chicken hotpot with tomato and soy beans, stewed pork belly, it’s all delicious, and at only one dollar a plate it’s amazing value.

This is our breakfast, greens, rice, eggplant and sardines…
Loving it here!

The sign just outside our room

Toledo to Cebu city today on the scooter, we took the road over some ‘mountains’, up to almost 1000m!  Nice to feel some cool fresh air for the first time in months.
It’s always nice to find some altitude anywhere in the world, for whatever reason it’s usually cleaner, better kept and people take more pride in their houses and surroundings.  Lots of flowers, bullocks lazing in water flooded terraces, dogs sleeping on the road, smiling people. Really nice ride.
Then Cebu city… Horrible. Where we went shopping for some bits and pieces in a couple of mega malls. Christmas decorations are in full swing over here, the street kids begging for food are even singing carols to try to make money!
Anyway we eventually got the bike back to the hire place, then took a mini van thingy half way to the pier, and a taxi the rest of the way, 2 hrs on the boat and a 20min walk to find somewhere to stay in the town we landed in called Tagbilaran.
So now we have a lovely clean room, walls painted pink? and green, two single beds and a shared bathroom.  Sal is asleep, time I did the same.

Last couple of days have been making miles on the little hired scooter, from Dauin to Binalbagan last night, then to Toledo tonight which we opted to stay in rather than push on into the night to cross the island to return the bike in Cebu city.

Today’s ride was really pretty, we crossed Negros island, west to east over some little mountains. The road was lined with sugar cane most of the way, but in all the little towns there were nurseries set up on the roadside selling flowering plants, very colourful.

It can be hard work on such a little bike though, sharing the road with lots of sugar cane trucks, buses, motorised tricycles and in the towns the pedal powered tricycles are everywhere.

I’ve never seen these type of tricycle before, they’re an old bmx bike, with a sidecar welded to the side. People use them to go to get around town with, I guess it’s like a budget taxi.

The next step up is a little motorbike with sidecar welded to it, 7 pesos for a 5 min ride, (20c). 

Then it’s the jeepinos, imagine a stretch jeep, with people crammed in like sardines.  And finally the mini van, which is usually only carrying twice as many people as seats, and may even be air conditioned!

Over dinner last night we got to talking to the owner of the resto about the Philippines, life in Manila and the people in these little towns.  He explained that life in Manila is comparatively hard, so he and his wife had moved to the country where food is much cheaper to buy, and so here they can exist without so much of a struggle.

He went on to tell us that the ten year old boy hanging out across the street was actually homeless, pointing to a bench seat across the road, ‘that’s where he sleep’.  Pretty hard going to be only ten and homeless.

In the same breath he asked whether we’d had any problems with people here, which of course we haven’t, and he told us that it’s quite dangerous in some parts, that it’s not uncommon for someone to be carrying a gun!

Then he lowered his voice and told us that many people still believe in vampires, or not really vampires, but people who can change form into animals at night time. It was a full moon too…

Then he told us that one night his wife and her friends were in their house, when they heard some noise from outside, like a man breathing, deep heavy breaths.  Then out of nowhere a cat jumped through the window and ran through the kitchen, and they had to chase it out of the house.  He leaned forward in his chair and whispered

‘before I did not believe, but now I not sure’

‘Ok… There are cats everywhere here, why couldn’t it have just been some random cat?’ We asked.

He nodded wisely and agreed that maybe that’s how it would seem to us…

We’re still not sure if he was having us on 🙂

Tomorrow we drop off the hunk of junk scooter and get a bus to Bohol Island.

So after lots of days on buses and then lots of hours on a crappy hired scooter we finally made it to some recommended dive sites!

First stop was Moal Boal, on the west coast of Cebu. Macro dives which were made more interesting with a fantastic dive master who pointed out animals we had never seen before. Apart from losing Dean on one of the dives it was pretty easy diving…. Luckily he was waiting on the boat for us when we surfaced 😁

After a few days we caught a ferry over to the next island, Negros and headed straight down to Apo Island. 

We ended up diving with a Korean dive shop named Crazy Bubble and it was one of our  best days yet ☺️. It was one of those days where everything just flowed and we didn’t want the day to end. We ended up spending about 15 hours with the manager Gemma, dive master Blue and fellow diver Joon (no doubt incorrect spellings!) and left wanting Korea to be our next travel destination!

The diving was good, made better by Blue and his attempts to communicate with us in Korean but the company was even better.
We were lavished with Korean food and culture and ended the night with white wine (the first since I left home 😁) and a sad good bye 😔 but I have no doubt we will see Gemma back in Australia one day!☺️

Back on the road today we had to negotiate about 30kms of unmade road which was pretty hard going on the scooter which already sounds like it’s about to break in half! Not so much fun… We may need to revise our plan of travelling around the islands and just head to the next dive spot!  

Today… Another moto taxi, a boat, another mini bus, a plane, a mini van, another mini van, 7km walking, more mini vans and a hired scooter… Eventually brought us to Minglanilla.

Never heard of it?  Neither have we!

I was in high spirits this afternoon getting on the plane. Cebu was supposed to be the land of milk and honey where we’d no longer need mini vans to get around and we might even get in the water at some stage!

There was a strange quiz on the plane, where they gave prizes for the first person to hold up a…

Pair of sunglasses. BAM! Dean wins a crappy toiletries bag

Then…

The safety card.  DOUBLE BAM!! Dean gets told off by the hosties

“that’s enough for you sir, please give the other passengers a chance…”

Anyhow. It turns out winning the toiletries bag is the highlight of today.

We eventually hired the world’s worst scooter, overpriced Chinese junk that makes my ebike feel fast, and rode from the airport down the island we landed on, in choking traffic, dust, heavy vehicles and tricycles jamming the streets.  Eventually we arrived in shitsville, paid too much for a terrible hotel room with a shower that literally  feels like someone is standing there urinating on you.

Next!

The fine white sands of Boracay now a distant memory, we’re back on the road again, the beer we drank over dinner has never tasted so good 🙂

DM.

It’s Sally here now, writing an update to our forever changing plans here in the Philippines!So we arrived in Sablayan after a very bumpy ride on unmade roads, not the kind of roads you expect leading to a top dive/tourist area! I was starting to have my doubts and getting off the bus in a quite dusty town confirmed them – this wasn’t the dive place we were hoping for!  

We asked around for a cheap hotel and where the scuba shops were only to be met with confused looks. Apparently there were two hotels in town and no one seemed to understand scuba or dive – awesome!

So we found a hotel and thankfully a helpful lady who did know about diving. After about two hours on the internet searching and some hard to understand Skype calls we seemed to have a vague plan for the next day to go diving or at least some people we could call. It was adding up to be very expensive to dive in the Apo reef but since we had travelled so long to get here we thought we would swallow the cost and at least make all the buses worth while!

The next day we seemed to have a plan. After some brief emails with a guy who had some huts and a dive operation on a small island not far from the mainland, we got on a small boat to take us across to Pandan Island.

It was really beautiful approaching and we started to feel excited! We went to the reception to meet the man I’d been emailing. A fat topless stereotypically arrogant Frenchman came out, barely saying hello and told us with a shrug that there were no boats going to Apo reef and if we wanted to go we would have to hire a boat on top of the already expensive costs. 

There had been a miscommunication in our emails and he thought we had just wanted to dive locally, despite my emails specifically asking if there was a park entrance fee. He didn’t seem to care at all and was very dismissive, where as we were totally deflated. It was way to expensive to consider doing the local dives where we were told we may see a turtle… so we got the boat man to take us back to the mainland.  

We asked in the one other place that dived in Apo reef and were met with the same response- we would have to hire the boat to get there and the cost would end up being about $500.

So we finally admitted defeat and with our heads hung we got on the next bus to take us back to San Jose where we had left the previous day. Once there we then got another bus to take us to Bulacalcao where we could get a fast boat to Boracay at 10pm.

The bus from San Jose started with an hour ride through farm land and dirt roads in search of 11 people who also wanted to get on the already full bus. We finally found them and crammed them in the van as well as on the roof and headed off… Think about 25 people in total on a 12 seat bus!

We arrived in Bulacalcao pretty tired and groggy and went straight to the boat terminal. 

Tickets bought, we had a couple of beers whilst waiting to board the boat only to be told after waiting for an hour and a half that the boat had a problem and wouldn’t be leaving tonight but it should leave tomorrow morning… Deep breaths.

Dean and I have been scarred a little by Indonesia and are reluctant to believe anything we are told. If this had been in Indonesia and this had happened, it would have meant that they hoped it will go tomorrow but in reality, it could still go tonight but it probably won’t go for at least two days.

We found a hotel room which had a view of the boat and sat up watching in case there was any movement and the boat was going to take off. It didn’t and today it left just half an hour late. 

It’s so refreshing to be clear about things and for people to be straight with you – we are really loving the people here.

The boat is clean, ordered, it is environmentally friendly and despite the prayer that was played on the flatscreen before we left (and that they are screening titanic) we think it’s great!

Let’s hope things start going our way from here on!

  
…. And we have made it to Boracay 🙂

We’re sitting on the back seat of a mini van headed to San Jose, there are seats for 9 people, but we’re 17 on board, including two on the roof!
This is bus no. 4 for today, and if all goes well the last one. Sally is predictably asleep on my shoulder, somehow she is leaning on me through one of her sunglass lenses, which while a bit uncomfortable for me seems to be working for her.
Bon Jovi’s ‘Slippery when Wet’ is playing on the stereo, and every now and then the other passengers join in with ‘it’s my life’…
There’s a steel bar pushing into my bum, and I have to leave my right arm and shoulder out the window as it’s too narrow for 4 of us across the seat, (from which fatigued metal creaks and groans as we bump along), sometimes I put my head outside and imagine I’m a dog with the wind running around my face 🙂
It’s getting dark now, but for most of the day we’ve had rice fields or a jungle view, scattered with small towns, really pretty.
That steel bar is really digging in, I hope some people get off soon!
We arrived here (Manilla) without much of a plan except to see some islands and get some diving in where possible… Turns out that wasn’t such a good plan as its not an easy place to get around. Especially when the Manilla airport is closed due to the ASEAN Summit for 5 days… What luck!
Hence the 4 buses, 2-3 hrs each, and then a 7hr boat trip tomorrow, assuming there is actually a boat.
This is going to be quite a statement given the trip we’re on, but I feel this is likely to be the most dangerous thing we do on our trip, an overloaded mini bus on mountain roads in the remote Philippines, if you’re reading this then we’re OK though. No WiFi here so will post later.

… Later same night
Arrived last night around 8, no boat today, hopefully tomorrow.

…next day now
3pm – Just found out that the boat tomorrow is now the next day… Maybe.
So we’ve decided instead to take a mini van to Seblayan, (2hrs away), and try to get a dive on Appo reef from there instead.  Then return back here again and further back up the road an hour (direction we came from yesterday) and then get a fast Cat (boat) to Boracay. 
Getting a mini van here is pretty easy, they park at the local bus station with a sign on the front window saying where they’re going, so you find a van and then wait until they have enough passengers to leave, and off you go. That could take ten minutes, or two hours.  We’ve been here half hour now, and while we’ve been told we leave at 4.30 we’re not holding our breath.
Doing things this way means that we’ll no longer get to Palawan, which is disappointing but that’s life.
Times like this, it feels like we’re in an episode of Race Around the World, it’s quite chaotic! Half hour ago we were supposed to be staying the night here (in the hotel we already paid for) then getting a 7hr boat to an Island south of here and spending a week or ten days in that region. Then in the space of ten mins we changed plans and now I’m sitting in a mini van headed in the opposite direction, with no plan to go to Palawan at all any more. 
But these are the joys of travelling in these countries.  Just because there is a boat schedule, it doesn’t mean there’s actually going to be a boat.  When a man tells you to hurry because the bus is leaving, you may then need to wait for two hours. Taps on walls of the shower don’t mean there is running water, and the half eaten pork chop in the fry pan on the sink, surrounded by someone’s dirty laundry, next to the toilet with a broken off seat that you need to move to get under the shower (which is all in the same room as the pork chop!), but isn’t actually a shower because there is no water… Should not be surprising.
Good times.
We spent today walking around this little town, trying to find a bank that doesn’t charge ATM fees (equivalent to the cost of a room for the night!), talking to a travel agent to get some tips on what to see and do, going down to the port to find out if our boat was still leaving in the morning, and now waiting in a hot mini van for departure.
First thoughts on the Philippines… I like it here, the people are really warm, the food is OK, and the scenery is beautiful.  The people seem to be more honest than we’ve gotten accustomed to as well, the change is always right, and the tricycle (tuk tuk) riders don’t try to charge you 3x the going rate because you’re a tourist.
The prostitution is really in your face though, lots of old men with young girls in Puerto Galleria, and groups of girls who looked as young as 14 or 15 were walking the streets in Manila when we arrived at 4am the other night. 
Cheat hotels cost from $9-25 a night, and meals are $1-5ea. A beer costs a dollar.  The internet is terrible.

Hey it’s 4.26 and  we’re moving!

4.37 and we’re back where we were ten mins ago, seemed too good to be true. We just went out to fill up with diesel.

This Appo reef better be good!

4.47 and we’re off again…