Philippines: Island hopping and champorado

The Philippines…the first out of six countries I’m suppose to visit in 2016…my year couldn’t have start any better. It was also the sixth country of the South East Asia trip already and now I really see that all the countries have similarities as well as huge differences. But The Philippines is something completely different. I spend 3 months in Central-America in 2013 and it really felt like I was back in Honduras. The Spanish influence is so visible. The language is full of Spanish words, you can eat chicken afritada at every street corner and basketball is tremendously popular. A lot of guys wearing basketball gear and basketball courts are everywhere to be found. A lot of Filipinos also really look like Hispanics: they have long black hair and their brown skin is covered with tattoos.

Even though I really fell in love with the Philippines the country also has a sad side. I’ve seen a lot of street kids in the capital Manila, with drug-addicted parents, asking for money on the streets. You’ll find these parents sleeping somewhere on a corner of a street all drugged up and not caring where their children are and what they’re doing. On top of that a lot of these homeless young moms walking around with a big belly, waiting for the next baby to pop out.

So we started in the capital of the Philippines, Manila. Because we had only crossed borders over land so far, the flight from Vietnam to Manila really gave me a holiday feeling and magnified the feeling of going to another country. Manila is just another big city but for some reason I really liked it. We had 2 days to spend before taking the boat to the first island we would visit. Several people told us the area we stayed in was kind of a slum and pretty dangerous, which I could imagine when I saw all the homeless people and drug addicts but actually it was not that bad to my opinion. People were very friendly and helpful. The first evening we already found a nice local place to eat on the street. We had the option of fish, pork, fried chicken or sausage with white rice, saffron rice or garlic rice and a fried egg. The food was super nice, we were surrounded by locals and we paid a fair price of 50 peso (€1) per person. We loved the place immediately and went back for dinner the next evening.
The public transportation system in the Philippines is quite hard to figure out. You have tricycles, which are the Filipino tuk-tuks: a BMX-bike attached to a sidecar where passengers can sit in. Instead of public busses so called jeepneys drive all around the city. They are actually some kind of pick-up trucks with seats in the back as we’ve seen in other countries but these ones are really pimped up. Just like the local busses I’ve seen in Panama City the drivers put a lot of effort in painting their rides and make them look as outstanding as they can. After a bit of asking around we decoded the jeepney routes and were not dependent on taxis or metros anymore. So our first jeepney ride without any help took us to the port where we took the sleeping ferry to Coron Island. The ferry was huge. We had 2 beds on a huge deck full of bunk beds. The journey took us 14 hours but I slept most of it so it was quite ok.

We arrived at Coron early in the morning so it was still dark outside. We didn’t really felt like going all around the island to look for accommodation so we decided to stay at the first guesthouse we saw that opened already and we would look for another place later on. First it was time for a nice nap.
Coron Town is al nice place: a lot of small local restaurants and a cute ice cream shop where we ended up eating at least one ice cream a day. Champorado became my new addiction: warm cacao rice pudding with milk and soft ice cream on top topped with chocolate sauce. We found a small local restaurant close to the place we stayed, which became our regular dining place. In front of the restaurant all the different dishes were stalled out in huge pots. I felt so rude doing it for the first time but everyone just lifted the lids by themselves to take a peek at what is in the pots. My favorites were chicken afritada (chicken and veggies in a thick sweet orange sauce), chicken adobo (chicken in sweet soy sauce) and Filipino style spaghetti: so simple and cheap (€0,60 per plate) but so good.
Unfortunately the town didn’t had a nice beach so we booked an island hopping boat tour to see the nicest bounty beaches around the island. The tour was great: about 10 people on the boat so not a huge booze cruise kind of thing, we really visited amazing places with white sand and the clearest water I’d ever seen and the lunch was amazing. Enormous freshly caught tuna and crab, rice, vegetables, salads and fruit.
We paid about €12 per person but the trip was worth every euro. Lucas wanted to try scuba diving around the island. Because I really have some kind of fear of water I didn’t felt like it but the next day he convinced me to try it as well, so he started his PADI course and I did just 1 dive to try. The world down there is amazingly beautiful. My dive instructor Nicole was so patient with me and very calm, which made me feel very comfortable. But it wasn’t enough for me and still a feeling of suffocation came on to me as soon as we got too deep so I’m kind of sure it’s not my thing. I tried, I experienced and I liked this experience but it was enough for me. Because Lucas had to finish his course we ended up staying at Coron for a week.

The next stop was El Nido. The journey would take us 8 hours by boat. People already told us the trip could be kind of uncomfortable if the waves would be a bit rough. When I saw locals saying prayers before departure I wasn’t quite sure what to expect and what I should prepare myself for. The journey was so scary. The waves were crazy and I felt as if the boat could capsize any second. Luckily we arrived safely but I don’t like boat trips anymore as much as I used to do.
El Nido is so much more touristy than Coron so the accommodations, food and tours are way more expensive. We rented a scooter to see more of the island. We found a few amazing beaches and the best thing is that there was no one else on the beach. We couldn’t believe we had this huge gorgeous beach all to ourselves. But after a swim and sitting on the beach for 5 minutes we figured out why… Sandflies were attacking us from allover the place! So we sat there on that empty beach slapping each other like two crazy people hoping they would leave but they kept on coming back. So we accepted we lost the battle, got up and left.
That day some kind of festival was going on and we went to see the parade. It reminded me of Caribbean carnival with colorful outfits, people dancing and drum bands but everyone in the parade was painted black with charcoal from head to toe. It was a funny experience.

The cheapest island hopping boat tour was literally twice as expensive as in Coron so we doubted a lot if we should go on one of these trips or not. But hey… I won’t be back in the Philippines very soon so lets do this! We ended up getting a €6,00 discount because our negotiating skills became top class after 4 months of backpacking so the price wasn’t that bad in the end. The next day we rented a kayak and went around the island, which was super nice. We relaxed on empty and gorgeous beaches (without sandflies this time) and worked on our biceps and triceps at the same time.
Time flew by so we needed to head to Puerto Princesa to catch a flight back to Manila. There was a bus leaving El Nido at 8 PM and would arrive at Puerto at 5 o’clock in the morning. The guy from the booking office assured us we could stay in the bus till sunrise. We wouldn’t have to pay for accommodation for one night so it sounded like a good idea. The bus driver drove like a crazy man and we arrived already at 2 AM. I asked the driver if we could wait in the bus till sunrise but his English wasn’t that good and he told us the bus wasn’t going to stay there all night…or something like that. So, ok…we could sit or nap somewhere at the bus station, which was very dodgy. All benches were already taken by sleeping homeless people and a nasty ass looking guy kept on bothering us about taking a tuk-tuk to town and that he knew where we needed to go. After a few minutes I got so tired of him and the bus where we got off was still there. So I went back to the driver and tried to explain him again that we wanted to wait in the bus till sunrise. This time he said he would drive the bus to the bus garage to leave it there overnight but that we could sleep in the bus if we wanted to. The bus was so crappy and most seats almost fell apart but it was a lot better than spending the night at the bus station. The bus garage wasn’t actually a garage but more of a big field full of busses. We thought the drivers would leave the bus as soon as we got there and would go home and leave us in the bus by ourselves. But they hung their hammocks and went to sleep as well. So it felt like some kind of camping trip, sleeping in a bus with two Filipino bus drivers.

We woke up early in the morning and the bus drivers were gone. In the daylight the “garage” looked completely different than the night before. It was actually some kind of small village with people sleeping and living in and around the busses. We thanked the bus drivers for the slumber party and headed to the center of Puerto Princes to find a place to stay…with an actual bed. The city doesn’t look too exciting and well-known fast food restaurants are everywhere. We didn’t really minded because we would only stay one night and fly back to Manila the next afternoon. We found a descent place to stay and didn’t do much the rest of the day.
As every day (since the second time somebody stole money out of my room) I checked the money I had left in the room the day before. It was the last 10 dollar I had left after the 80 dollar that was taken last time. I almost couldn’t believe it but it was gone! Different from the other times money was missing I was so sure this time that it happened the day before in this accommodation and that somebody of the staff felt the need of coming into our room and going trough our stuff. Upset and angry I went down to the receptionist. She came up with a bullshit story that there were kids in the hotel the day before and that they probably did it (our room was locked and the person clearly had a key) but she gave me the 10 dollar back in peso in the end. Even though I knew she was lying I didn’t feel like making any drama so it was ok for me like that. On our way to the airport I still wanted to pass by the tourist police to report it. Most likely they won’t do anything with it but I just wanted to trash the hotels name a little bit.

Because a flight back to Manila costs as much as taking the boat for about 16 hours, we decided to take a flight. It was nice to be back in Manila and because we knew the way now a bit we were able to take a jeepney for 16 peso in stead of paying 200 peso for a taxi ride to our place. We had a full day in Manila and we have spent it on walking around, a bit of sightseeing and eating the delicious Filipino food for the very last time. Unfortunately I didn’t found any champorado in Manila so I guess I definitely have to go to the Philippines some day to eat it.

The next day we headed back to the airport to fly to Bangkok. Getting to the airport seemed so easy. We would just take the reversed road we took the day before from the airport to town. The jeepney driver asked us which terminal we had to be (Manila Airport has 4 terminals) and since we had a few hours before our flight departure I simply said: just drop us off at terminal 1 and we will see where we need to be exactly. I mean…it couldn’t take hours to get from one terminal to another I thought. So he dropped us off at terminal 1 where all international flights depart from. But little did we know that just all flights from the airline we flew with depart from terminal 3. Ok…no panic…we have time and there is a free shuttle service between the different terminals. So the shuttle didn’t had a fixed timetable so it could take an hour to get to the terminal we needed to be depending on the traffic. Ok…a little panic…time is ticking now so lets not wait for the shuttle and try to get a taxi. The taxi driver kindly told us a ride would cost us 600 peso (€12!!!) and this wasn’t in our backpacker’s budget for sure. Ok…panic…what are we going to do??!! We finally found another driver that was willing to put the taximeter on and he said it would cost us about 100 pesos. That sounded more like it. Sweating, stressed and still not sure if we were able to make it we sat in the back of the taxi. The traffic wasn’t too crazy so in the end we made it! After a rushed check-in and a run to the gate the flight was about an hour delayed so the rushing wasn’t necessary at all but I was so relieved we made it and we were finally on our way to where it all started…Bangkok!