Its been a while since I last blogged. This has been mostly due to my traveling and midterms, however here are the long due stories and pictures of my trip to the Philippines.
Our trip started Thursday the 24th after Chinese class. We left Hong Kong and landed in Manila around 3am. We checked in at a hostel close to a famous Chinese cemetery, slept for a couple hours and headed into it to explore it. All of us were very impressed by the sights, since instead of the common graves they had built big mausoleums for each individual tombstone. Some of them looked like churches and others even looked like houses. After a while of touristing around we headed back to the street to find some food. We ended up finding a street shop that sold sizzling beef platters. Our entire lunch (4 beef platters and a jug of iced tea) ended up costing approximately $4. From there we headed to the 7-eleven to buy sim cards and then back to the hostel to wake Chasen up and go back to the airport to fly to El Nido.
We where flying with a small airline called ITI. Our flight was only 15 people in a small double engine plane. The flight took about 1:30 hours and then we landed in El Nido Airport. We were welcomed by a singing committee and a bull in a carriage, and a line of "tricycles" to take us to town. We split into 3 and headed to the town which was about 15km away. We booked into the hostel and went straight to our actual home, Palawan Divers and scheduled our diving trips. Phil, Carl and I got our Advanced Open Water and Nitrox Certificates while Chasen and Dave got the Open Water one.
Our diving trip consisted in 9 dives: 2 fun ones, 2 enriched nitrox air ones, 1 deep one, 1 night dive and 3 special-techniques dives. We saw a bunch of cool stuff such as nude branches, school of big-eyed groupers, lobsters, crabs, many clown fishes (NEMO!!!!!!!!!!!!), Lion Fishes and my personal favorite A HUGE TURTLE! Anyways, we dove for the majority of the day, and then usually chilled in the local bars around town or got massages. After 3 days of diving we rented bikes and drove around the island exploring the beaches. Right after we left town, Carl crashed the bike and got nicknamed by the locals as Superman. We got him another bike and continued driving. We found an awesome beach called Calitan and spent the day there. On the way back we somehow ended in the local university and joined them in a choreographed dance routine that they had been practicing. We returned the bike and rented a small boat to take us island hopping to some of the popular spots around El Nido for the following day. We took a couple snorkels and two kayaks and went to some of the most gorgeous spots on earth. We started with Snake Island, a place famous for its low tide in the morning which generates a long walkable path connecting two islands. From there we went to big lagoon, small lagoon, secret lagoon, helicopter island and a couple other unnamed beaches. We raced in kayaks, had lunch in the beach, swam for a while and drank some local brews. What a life. Sadly the day ended and we had to leave El Nido. We went to Ricsons one last night, finished our leftover beers and hopped on a 7 hour van to another city called Puerto Princesa.
After we arrived we dropped Carl off at the airport and headed to the hostel. We dropped our bags and walked around for a while. We found a place that rented bikes and we got them for 2 days. We set off to explore the town and found a Shakeys pizza (Google South Park - Shakeys). They actually exist! We HAD to eat there. We got some shakes and got on our bikes again, this time wandering around closer to the water. We found a couple of locals playing basketball and decided to join them for a game. They were fucking quick! If it weren't for the fact that we had half a foot average on them, we would have probably gotten destroyed rather than winning the game by 1 point. Anyways, it was getting dark so we headed back to Shakeys and ordered a party-size pizza. We ate like we've never eaten before and the met some iIsraeli dudes that where traveling across South East Asia as well. They gave us some hostel recommendations and headed back home. The next morning we got on our bikes and went to a different town 2:30 hours away called Sabbang to visit the Longest Underground Navigable River, one of the new contestants for the new 7 wonders of nature. When we finally got there we got on small boats and went inside the cave. After all of the thrill of maxing the bikes on the highway we had to sit down and listen to some dude talk about the different shapes that stalagmites had for about an hour. No offense to the organizer, but if the ride is that fun, how can you expect us not to get bored on the boat. At least they had monkeys though. After we got out of there we got back on our bikes. This was the most entertaining part since now the road was mostly downhill. We managed to make the ride back in about 1:45 with just about enough time to get our stuff, return our bikes and go to the airport, this time Manila bound.
We landed in Manila that night and met up with Fie and Klara (the Danes from El Nido), they where staying in our hostel too. We decided that the next morning we would go to Intramuros, a famous part of the city surrounded by a wall. The next morning we started our excursion around the city. We took the subway to central manila and walked to intramuros.
We had heard about a secret barber shop that not only cut your hair, but also massage you, give you a manicure and a pedicure all at the same time! the best part was that all of this cost about $25. Phil and Chasen got the full package while Fie, Klara and I went for the full body massage only. After the hour had passed we were all so relaxed that we couldn't move. We decided to go inside a mall called Robinson's next to our hostel to find something to eat and we ran across an all-you-can-eat sushi place. They didn't know who they where messing with, We must have eaten about 12 nigiri platters each before they started feeding us with miso soup to get us full. We left the restaurant and walked around the mall for a while, only to find out that they were hosting Philippine ComiCon. We bought some Angry Birds / Kirbi hats to fit along the crowd and took some pictures of what most have been the strangest scene I have ever pictured. I somehow convinced one of the locals to kiss my buddy Phil and even got it on camera. She was wielding a 6kg sword so that made her even more interesting.
The next morning we headed out to see cock fights. Not only is it legal, but its more of a national sport. Being foreigners we got first row seats and a private bookie to advise us and place our bets. After about 20 fights, Chasen learnt that he had absolutely no skill in picking roosters. Sadly it was time to go back to reality and start packing for home. I had one more surprise before we left. We headed back to the hostel and met up with the girls and took them to a place that I had found before called the Hobbit House. As the name implies it, it is a bar where every employee is a midget. It was an awesome experience! Not only was it one of the most different places i've been, but they had a bar with over 200 different beers! It was the best way to end the trip. We headed to the airport and landed back at around 6am. Luckily for me my classes didn't start till noon. Chasen on the other hand had class at 8. I wonder how that went.
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