Of dust showers, sun burns and Pesos - part one

Report no. 1, June 21, 7:17pm

been back for exactly three and half hours. Have sorted the laundry for washing, which include the two bags I carried for the past one week in Philippines, covered in grime and dust, with the sun and sea water in memories...

JW and I splurged on our last night of hotel stay in the Philippines last night, at the interesting town of Angeles City, near Clark airport where we needed to be this morning for our flight home. We got down from the tiny tricycle and walked towards Swiss Chalet Hotel, within two minutes walking on the streets we realised the area around the hotel, is a major red street district.

What the heck, we liked the huge and CLEAN bed, and its spotless bathroom. It's USD 33 per night and the the last one week we haven't spent anything more than 60 (RM) bucks per night on lodging.


Report no. 2, June 23, 11:52am
DAY ONE & DAY TWO
LCCT - Clark - Manila - Cebu - Malapascua

Ok, maybe I should start again, from day one. A picture essay this would be, I fear my mere words wouldn't do the journey justice so I hope whatever shots I managed to bring home would tell the story.

With help from JW, I managed to repack and these were my luggage for one week, one for clothes n stuff, the New Balance bag is my `handbag' to carry the huge-ass Nikon D70s, water, money and documents.

We boarded the AirAsia plane at 7am without breakfast, when we arrived at Clark Airport (about two hours from Manila) JW felt sick from the flight...with not a single drop of water and food for hours and the lack of sleep the night before. We got a nice mug of cold water from the airport personnel for JW and it helped us got through the immigration check fine.

Some iced-cold Pepsi and slices of pizza later, JW felt better and we were well on our way to Malate in Manila where we would be spending our first night in Philippines.

We arrived at Friendly's Guest House at Adriatico St. Corner Nakpil St Street in Malate after we went to Mall Of Asia to sort out all the flight bookings we needed for the entire trip (all together three internal flights - Manila-Cebu-Kalibo-Manila), I had my washed tee shirt and underwear hung out to dry in the humid evening air, along with other guests' wardrobe.
After my first shower in Philippines I passed out on the bed in our air-conditioned room (700 pesos) for hours while JW went online in the hall to get more research done for the week's journey ahead.

JW chilling out with a novel from the guest house library after dinner.

This is how the trip worked, I told JW when she approached me to join her to Boracay Island, "Fine, you do the work, I just come along and tag around." Having just returned from Perth two days before, my flat was still messy from the unpacking when I packed for Philippines and I was happy to have JW do all the thinking.

Anyway we finally got out of the cool comfort of our room and roamed the streets for our first dinner, at round 9pm. It wasn't an easy task the fact that I don't consume any meat, it's a blessing that JW is the flexible kind, she can eat a lot, or eat very little, eat some meat or eat no meat at all :)

We found a burger store in some corner with a pretty girl. We managed to get her to make me a simple vegetarian meal of oily rice with eggs, with fantastic coleslaw for her burger customers. It was one of the best meals I had the whole week there. There were something special about the rice and fried eggs. Maybe it was the first dinner in Philippines, maybe because I was hungry and wanting, maybe it was the dust around us, maybe because the lady was nice...
My memories of Manila are mainly of dust and grit I saw, but there were also traffic of tricycles and `jeep-nee's, mad but efficient drivers, friendly cashiers, 7-Elevens with jazz music playing, begging children and more dust.

Early next morning we left the guest house early to take our first flight on Cebu Pacific, a local budget airlineto get to Cebu city. We found another burger store just down the road from the guest house which was opened early. Got my egg and cheese burger, the smell was inviting.

JW shared her observation on how food is prepared in this place so far, she would call it `soulful' and you can see it in the way your food is presented to you, whether it's wrapped or served on a plate, and its taste. The humble little burger store man showed us what a skillful burger man he was and his packaging of the two breakfast burgers that were simply, neat. The night before she had her bagel sandwich that was dreamily satisfying too.

She said it's got to do with the music that was playing in the restaurant - you make better food if you have good music playing while you work on the food. It's a fact, Philippines people have good taste in music. Jazz in 7-Eleven and 70s funk in a bagel station, need I say more?

Anyway, back to the next morning....gee, this is going to be one big piece of my thought-detour journey, hope you don't get motion sickness.

Ok, so I got my breakfast in the form of an egg burger and I was happy as hell. We walked and ate and being a slower eater than JW, I was soon approached by a young girl who came out of nowhere and demanded the rest of my breakfast, my first instinct was to give in and gave her but then I changed my mind. You see, the night before I gave my Coke to a boy who asked for it, barely drank. My mind was focus on finishing my yummy breakfast and I was annoyed because the girl wouldn't budged my refusal. She followed us across the road and kept asking, I walked on. Finally she gave up and walked away but not without pinching my hand first.

JW advised me to stop eating and drinking while walking on the streets of Manila. The price of taking a holiday in a country like Philippines, she said. More of this later when we get to Boracay Island.

The streets, the bay area near Friendly's Guest House

The cool budget airline of Philippines, Cebu Pacific, where they print you nice and clear boarding pass with allocated seat, where the seat leg room is so much better than AirAsia.


While waiting on the bus in the Cebu bus terminal to get to Maya...

The bus ride was quite an experience itself, over 4 hours long, took us through a few villages/small towns before we arrived at the destination, Maya, north of Cebu. The view was totally interesting, I share a few with you here.


About 4 hours later, we arrived at the sizzling jetty of Maya. A little drama there, a ride over to Malapascua island normally cost you 40 pesos but when we got there, obviously looking like tourist, we were told that there was no passenger at the moment and if we want to get to the island on a special boat ride, we pay 700 pesos (!!!!) or wait till they got enough passengers (they need 26 passengers on each ride to cover cost, according to the ride operators). Of course we waited, and waited. In the meantime we tried calling this divers' guest house, Skip's Beach Resort, run by Skip and wife, Belle; for help, in case we spend the next few hours waiting for a ride. We finally figured out how to make a call to a local number from my mobile phone, but the person answered the call didn't seem to understand a word we said, she also claimed she couldn't hear us. We eventually got to stay at the resort for a night the following day...pictures later.

Finally we were offerred a ride along with 8 other passengers, for 100 pesos each. It was around 5pm, we said yes.

The boat ride and sights
We arrived at Malapascua island finally...it was maybe round 6.30pm but the surrounding was as good as night time, like our 730pm in KL. A man called himself DunDun approached us to guide us to our lodging for the night. We told him what our budget was and we walked from resort to resort, shopping for a room. Oh yes, by the way, we didn't booked any room anywhere before getting to any place, JW said she doesn't believe in planning a trip all the way. Well, so far the method of no-prior-hotel-booking has worked for us well.

We settled for Danau Resort, got a cottage with 24-hour power, no air-con, for 600 pesos. DunDun and his mate accompanied us all the way till we got our rates and he draw us a map of the island for our itinerary the day after. They didn't ask for any tip and looked genuinely, genuine. We gave them so `duit kopi'.

Again, we were starving from all the travelling and waiting around. After shower we took a walk in the sort of dark beach to get to our dinner place, a classy little place (forgot the name though, something Hippo....) where we spent over 900 pesos pampering ourselves with lots of food and `absolute-mango-shake' (order mango juice or shake anywhere in Philippines and you won't be disappointed).

JW
me, happily waiting for dinner

ok, so that's the first two days...already then I understand a few things:

1. Why back-packers smell the way they do
2. Why back-packers don't need the gym
3. Why I should pack light

Part two and more will follow, in the meantime I hope to update my shopping blog with my treasure hunt in Perth too, so stay tune here and there.