Our last passport stamp to gain on the trip was the Philippines. We flew from Singapore to Cebu city and arrived at 4 am. Following our typical large Asian city protocol, we immediately found a way to get out by taking a taxi straight to the ferry terminal and a 3 hour ferry to Ormoc. After a 2 hour bus ride, we arrived at a beautiful island called Biliran with a mountainous palm-tree covered interior and a shallow rocky coastline.
We arrived in Biliran a little disoriented, partially due to our early morning arrival and partially due to being in a new country that we hadn’t researched much. We mostly spent our time before the big trip learning about Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos because we figured we had plenty of time to work on the Philippines. Turns out we spent most of that time watching sunsets and jumping in waterfalls instead of on the internet cruising travel websites. So we only came armed with two pages of handwritten guide written by our local Philippines expert, Teddy, which listed about 6-7 different destinations and a few bullet points about each.
The first thing we discovered about the Philippines (from now on abbreviated PI) was that there are lots of bakeshops which make fresh baked goodies everyday like chocolate crinkles, banana bread, sweet raisin bread, and muffins in lots of flavors except the healthy ones. We also discovered that PI had the cheapest internet of any place we’d ever been at $0.33 per hour. After getting oriented, we found a beach side hostel out of town where we could hang for the evening.
The next day, we hitched a ride on a motorbike to a nearby farming town famous for large rice terraces. We walked around waving at the guy running his water buffalo and trying to figure out the system of irrigating the massive flat steps built into a hillside.
Later that day, we explored further into the island and hiked a little way to a sweet waterfall hidden around the corner from and tucked in between two tall limestones cliffs. Since we had walked about 2 km to get to the falls (filipinos think 5 minutes is too far to walk, “have to take a tricycle”) we knew it was unlikely any filipinos would be there and we hadn’t yet seen another tourist on the island. So we stripped down into our all-purpose Exofficio unds and waded across the stream and around the corner to find a beautiful hidden paradise. The waterfall plunged into a deep greenish-black pool of water which ran into a 3 foot deep stream running into the jungle. A rope ran from the near side of the pool to just next to the falls. There was a raft tied to the rope so you could pull yourself about 10 feet away from the falling water. We stayed for about 3 hours skinny-dipping, jumping off the raft and wearing ourselves out trying to touch the falling water and climbing the cliffs on the side. We never saw another soul and had the whole place to ourselves the entire time.
We found the food situation in PI a little different than every other country we’d been to. Everywhere else there was a grandma selling soup on one corner and noodles with veggies on the next with a fruit stand across the street and sticky rice to-go from the lady walking by. In PI it seemed like fewer locals bought prepared food from other people. In town, there was the occasional grill, but they were most often selling chicken hearts, livers, or intestines instead of chicken meat. Each street had a couple stands outside of houses displaying pots of food, but when you opened the lid it would be mostly or completely empty except sauce, cold, and relatively expensive. A small 5-inch plate of chicken adobo would be a dollar not including rice. Anything you order with pork would be mostly pork fat with a tiny slice of actual meat. Veggie dishes were usually mushy and cold and also contained meat. The most popular food and what everyone recommended we eat was lechon manok (rotisserie whole chicken). It was a good deal and really good, but wherever you could buy it, that was all they sold. No rice and definitely no veggies to go with it. It wasn’t that the food tasted bad, it was just hard to find a balanced meal and when you did find it, it’d been sitting there since 10 am and had since turned to indistinguishable mush.
Our second destination was the island of Camiguin in Mindanao. Southwestern Mindanao is the region of the country where some of the violence and marshall law has been centered. We were far away on the Northeastern corner of the region far away from all the problems. Many locals and foreigners living in Camiguin assured us that the area was completely safe. Camiguin had lots to offer including two natural cold springs, a hot springs, three waterfalls, volcanos, small islands and beaches.
Sunken Cemetery in Camiguin: Philippines is mostly Catholic due to the Spanish occupation in the 1500s thru the 1800s.
We spent two seperate days on this tiny piece of white sand about 10 minutes off the main island.
Lanzones grown in the mountains on the interior of Camiguin. Camiguin claims to have the sweetest and most succulent lanzones. This was the only place we saw them in SE Asia.
From Mindanao, we flew to Palawan, a long skinny island to the West. There is a small town on the Northwest end called El Nido that has some of the most beautiful beaches and scenery in the world. The beach in town is long and sandy, but the real spectacle is the Bacuit archipelago which is a series of limestone islands surrounding the town. The first three days we rented a sea kayak and snorkel gear and paddled to an empty white sand beach where we could soak in the sun and clear blue water all day long. Check that: we spent about 2 minutes in the sun until we had to hide in the shade of the rock overhangs.
On the last day, we splurged for the organized tour of some the islands. Got a chance to check out some of the farther beaches and lagoons.
While we were parked at a small beach, our driver Robert put on a single, short wooden fin, took his spear gun and took Conrad to show him how to spear a fish. He caught two fish, one short fat silver one and a long skinny one in the barracuda family. The boatmen quickly deboned the barracuda and cubed the meat and ate it raw with vinegar and onions. They left the head for us to feel the teeth. Robert said just yesterday he had shot at a much larger barracuda (about 1 meter long) and it had turned and charged him and bit him on the head. He had to go to the doctor for stitches on his hairline above his left eye and about an inch above his right ear.
Our last two days we spent in Sabang hiking to a 7 km underground river and in Puerto Princesa the capitol of Palawan. There wasn’t much to do in PP, so we spent a few hours sitting in a restaurant watching the very unbusy staff memebers practice a Christmas song for an upcoming performance. They gave us a copy of the lyrics and played it non-stop for about 3 hours. Needless to say, it was in my head the entire flight home. The good news is, it’s actually pretty good. The title means, “Jesus You are the Star of Christmas.” (“Bro” is a familiar term for Jesus literally short for Brother.) Here is the YouTube video with lyrics videoke style of course.
Before we flew out of Manila, we stayed up all night instead of getting a hostel. We drank a small bottle of rum at a restaurant for $1. 33 cents of that dollar was the corkage fee the restaurant charged us for bringing in our own booze. As we sat wasting time at 3 am at an outdoor restaurant, we made friends with an 11-year old girl who was out selling roses with her friends. We played thumb wars and sprinkled Conrad with the ice water as he struggled to stay awake. When she told us she’d stay out until 6 am and then travel 4 hours by jeepney and bus before she made it home, we asked if she was hungry. She ordered a plate of white rice and used our sauce from the chicken to season it. She told us she’d give all the money to her mom. Before she left, she gave us both a kiss on the cheek and a necklace she was wearing with a marijuana leaf on it. It was a poignant example of life for probably many little kids in Manila. Lots of other kids passed us that night selling candy, flowers, and trinkets. You could tell as she sat with us that she was happier just being a kid and that she probably doesn’t get much healthy adult attention. It made us grateful for the childhoods we were priviledged to enjoy and sent us home with a sobering memory of a typical SE Asian scene.
26 hours later we arrived in Seattle into the waiting arms of our Moms who drove across Washington State to pick us up. It was a happy reunion, we spent the next 6 hours snacking on fresh vegetables and telling our moms all about the trip. By 2 am on Christmas Eve we were snuggled in between two gloriously cozy layers of down bedding. How lucky we are.
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