The Philippines

TL;DR: Flight from Zurich to Cebu via Doha and Hong Kong. Ferry to Bohol to see the Chocolate Hills, Tarsiers and diving from Alona Beach. Ferry to Camiguin, scootering around and some diving. Ferry back to Bohol and ferry again to Siquijor for some more scootering. Ferry via Dumaguete to Cebu, flight to Puerto Princesa on Palawan to catch the liveaboard for serious diving. Back to Puerto Princesa, bus to El Nido. Island hopping with camping on the beach. Ferry to Coron, wreck diving and island hopping. Ferry, minivan and jeepneys to Sabang, Puerto Galera for diving. Ferry and buses to Banaue via Manila. Hiking in rice terraces. Jeepneys to Sagada to see coffins hanging from cliffs. Bus to Manila to fly out to Kuala Lumpur.

Part One – Southern Islands

Cebu

After a rather long flight and having had luck not to pay a fine for bringing too much money into the Philippines I met Amy at the domestic arrivals. We arrived quite late at the hostel and were lucky to find a restaurant hidden behind a gas station close by. As we have not had any specific plans on how to continue on from Cebu, we decided to explore Cebu City and get some diving gear. We bought snorkels, a stick (a.k.a. tank banger) and a mask for Amy. In the late afternoon we went to Fort San Pedro and got a private tour with probably all the employed guides at once.

Bohol

Our more or less clockwise journey through the Visayas (southern Philippines) lead us to Bohol to see the Chocolate Hills, a landscape of mostly flat land with lots of perfectly formed round little hills. The fun was more on how to get to see these hills rather than the landscape itself: after arriving in Tubigon on the ferry from Cebu it required quite a bit of endurance to convince people that we really want to get a jeepney to Carmen and not an overpriced tricycle or taxi. With two children on my lap and a (fighting?) cock between my feet, we arrived safely at the public market. From Carmen we continued to Nuts Huts, a scenic accommodation near the Loboc river.

The next morning we took a swim in the river to a small nearby waterfall and then continued on to see tarsiers, a tiny nocturnal primate with huge eyes endemic to the Philippines. While waiting for a jeepney from the tarsier conservation area a nice lady doing deliveries to Tagbilaran gave us a lift and saved us from potentially waiting a couple of hours.

In Tagbilaran we enjoyed the aircon of the big Island City Mall before taking another jeepney to Alona Beach on Panglao Island. We stayed two nights at Genesis Divers, directly on the beach and did three dives with them. Having dived with Amy on Bali before, I felt immediately comfortable again getting back into the water and none of the slight discomfort I usually had when doing the first dive with a so far unknown operator.

Back in Tagbilaran we again enjoyed the aircon in the mall before jumping into a bus to Jagna, where we stayed at Paseo del Mar and did another dive. At noon we took the just running-again ferry to Camiguin.

Camiguin

The ferry arrived after the sun had already set and we did not have a pre-booked accommodation. At the port we joined the only other two backpackers on the ferry and shared a tricycle to the Enigmata Ecolodge. As the ferry service was newly running again, nobody expected guests this late and we were lucky that the lady running the lodge/artistic summer camp for children somehow got word of our arrival and came back to open the dorm for us.

On the following day we started the quest to get scooters and made the mistake to walk into the city of Mambajao, a good four kilometers in the blazing sun. On the bright side, we got freshly cooked and thus hot Pancit Canton in an eatery on the way. When we finally had our scooters, we drove around the island to a hot spring, waterfalls, an old church destroyed by an earthquake from a volcanic eruption and hiked up to a viewpoint where the way is marked with the stations of the cross.

On the third day on Camiguin we changed our accommodation to Camiguin Soul Divers and continued driving around the island, this time in the other direction and with a snorkeling pause at the sunken cemetery (there are no graves left to be seen though, it sank sometime in the 19^th century due to a large earthquake).

The fourth day consisted of diving Mantigue Island, a marine reserve east of Camiguin. We saw nudibranchs, stone fishes and a lot of other marine life that I am still no able to identify. The second dive of the day, the house “reef” of Camiguin Soul Divers was a bit of a disappointment. It would have been mostly a muck dive, but our guide only had an Open Water certification. Combined with bad buoyancy this lead to a lot of silt in the water and no stuff pointed out. A cute little cuttlefish swimming around and changing colors made up for it though.

Siquijor

Getting from Camiguin to Siquijor was a mission on its own: ferry (next to fighting cocks, of course) back from Balbagon to Jagna, bus back to Tagbilaran (pit-stop in the mall), port, back to the mall to kill time with the movie “Unfriended” (Basically a 1.5 hour Skype-recording where a couple of friends kill themselves one after each other. Best quote “I told you not to show your boobs on snapchat!”).

The ferry arrived at 11pm and as we tried to get some accommodation we shared a tricycle with a French couple to Kiwi Dive Resort. It was no surprise that nobody was awake anymore and instead of submitting to a friend’s cousin’s brother of the tricycle driver who should have a bed on the other side of the island, we decided to sleep in the hammock and the sunbed outside of Kiwi Dive Resort.

Surprisingly nobody asked where we had come from when they opened the bar in the morning and were ordering breakfast. Amy had a burger.

A family on the way to the fiesta in Larena gave us a lift and again saved us from potentially waiting a long time for a jeepney or free tricycle. Our attempt to get scooters in Larena failed and we thus went on to Siquijor Town were we got them easily at the port. We made it just in time to San Juan to get into a bar where the fight Mayweather vs. Picquiao was shown for free. And they served Bicol Express, the more or less only spicy dish in the Philippines.

After sorting out accommodation we drove to the enchanted Banyan Tree with the free fish spa. As the day was already over we headed back and were enjoying dinner at JJ’s backpackers and a long night of chatting and drinking with other backpackers.

On our third day on Siquijor we drove to a waterfall and stopped to visit a church and a catholic school on the way. The waterfall was a lot of fun: getting a neck massage from the water, jumping into the water like Tarzan with rope. On the way through the island and back to San Juan we also stopped at the “Poo Bridge”, a viewing platform on the highest mountain set inside a botanical garden and a probably abandoned jungle conservation project.

As our scooters were showing the tank as empty, we tried to conserve as much gas as possible and let them just roll down the hills. When we finally arrived back in San Juan at the gas station we saw that there was actually quite a lot of fuel left.

For the fourth day we planned to go snorkeling. Unfortunately the 7pm ferry we planned on boarding back to Cebu was already sold out when we arrived at the ticket office at around 10am. After racing back to Siquijor town we returned the scooters and jumped on the noon ferry to Dumaguete to check out our options to get to Cebu.

Dumaguete and Cebu

While leaving the port we were lucky and found a ticket office for an overnight ferry leaving at midnight to Cebu. Having booked our transport to Cebu we used the remainder of the day for a visit of a 30m high waterfall near Valencia.

Back in Cebu City we jumped from jeepney to jeepney to get from the port to the airport and made it in perfect time to board our flight to Puerto Princesa on Palawan where the next adventure, the liveaboard to the Tubbataha Reef was waiting for us.

Part Two - Diving the Tubbataha Reef

After our arrival in Puerto Princesa we first had to get hold of diving gear. Our own masks and the dive computers are not sufficient for a dive after all. The M/Y Vasco, our liveaboard, does not have their own diveshop like it has been the case for Wicked Diving on Flores.

The friendly staff at Moana Diving just next to the airport equipped us. They could also arrange a trip to the Underground River the next day and let us use their shower so we could leave our big backpacks behind for pick-up to the M/Y Vasco.

Underground River

The Underground River, named as one of the seven UNESCO natural wonders of the earth is about 30km north-east of Puerto Princesa and it requires a ticket to get into the protected area.

The ticket gets reserved by the tour agency in a government office, but they have to prove the identity of their client later on. So after everybody who gets on the same van has been picked up from their accommodation the van returns to the ticket office to present the passports. Food vendors conveniently hang around to sell burgers, coffee and cold drinks to western tourists who had to get up early.

Once at the village closest to the river, we had to wait for a boat to bring us to the actual river. Our slot for departure would have been late in the afternoon. But as we needed to be back in Puerto Princesa at 5pm our group of seven people got moved to the airport-lane, a bypass for people who fly out the same day. Luckily the itinerary for the M/Y Vasco was enough to convince the ticket clerks.

The visit of the underground river itself is on a small Bangka that a guide paddles about 1.5km deep into the cave. Along the way are the usual imaginary formations of faces, figures and animals. As the Philippines are very catholic a lot of these formations are associated with religious figures.

M/Y Vasco

The van from the underground river tour that brought us back to Puerto Princesa dropped us at the harbor. After a lot of weird communication with Vasco’s head office we finally got to see somebody with a Vasco T-shirt and were brought to our home for the next seven days. We were relieved that the boat actually existed and that we were expected guests. A chilled welcome drink in the common area made us feel welcome. There we also informally met the other divers.

We finally left the harbor of Puerto Princesa around 8pm, but only after we got a briefing from the Tubbataha Reef Natural Park office and clearance from the coast guard. The dinner was a delicious mix of local and western cuisine and our cabin luxury compared to the cheap places we stayed in the weeks before. And we even got dessert. As there were only seven guests on board instead of the possible 16 we had a lot space as well.

It is very unfortunate that all the nice food, accommodation, amenities and very helpful and friendly crew of the actual boat got spoiled by the unprofessional dive crew. No check if we are actually certified or when we did our last dive. The briefing for the first dive did only briefly explain the dive site, but not how we were actually supposed to dive it. There was no repetition of the signals used. My question of how to signal “close to no deco time left” was answered with a bewildered look. No assignment of buddies. No assignment of groups to divemasters.

Once in the water after the back roll entry there was no group formation either and everybody just went down without checking if people were fine. This would have been fine if the environmental conditions (strong currents or big waves) would have demanded a negative entry, but this was not the case.

A further contribution to the confusion was the number of divers. There were seven guests aboard, but eleven people in the water. Two divers per divemaster? No. As it turned out later, two of the additional people were somehow affiliated with the boat crew and could come along. They did their own “thing” and went to depths way below the recreational 30m limit and did decompression dives. Other guests, unaware of their role on the boat and without dive computer, followed them, assuming them to be divemasters leading the dive and trusting the always broken and inaccurate depth-gauge of their regulator/SPG unit.

While ascending we were told (by the people who turned out to be the actual guys supposed to lead the dive) to level off at about 8m depth. This was fine for Amy and me as we both had enough air left for the safety stop and a safe ascent. It turned out they actually meant “ascend and do the safety stop”, which is why it is important to repeat the signs in the briefing.

I was glad to have Amy as my buddy because we know each other well and our behavior under water from the previous 16 dives together. This experience also made me realize how important it is to have a/my own dive computer and I would never go diving so repeatedly without one anymore.

But all the bad things left aside, the diving in the Tubbataha Reef was supreme. Pristine corals, good visibility and lots of marine life. Among the really notable aquatic creatures were a whale shark, a manta ray and a marbled ray. The more obvious ones like reef sharks, turtles, sweetlips and nudibranchs were not hiding from us either. The scenery when a turtle sat on a small pinnacle and a manta ray circling around it was just unreal.

Part Three – Island hopping and rice terraces

Pick-up and drop off from the M/Y Vasco to Puerto Princesa was free, so we asked them to bring us straight to the bus station to go to El Nido.

El Nido

It took about six hours on the bus from Puerto Princesa to get to Corong Corong, a small settlement just outside of El Nido. Compared to El Nido itself the view and the beach are prettier and apart from the main road it is quiet. Our primary goal for this area was camping on the outlying islands. To get this organized we went into El Nido town. After asking around in various little tour stalls were lucky to run into two other backpackers who were up for a three days/two nights trip the next day.

While we were waiting for the departure of our boat Amy and I had a shake in the restaurant of the accommodation that we booked for the night after the camping trip. As it turned out later, this shake and the unhealthy water of El Nido in general caused us both to be sick for the whole second day of camping.

The camping trip took us along most of the islands, lagoons and beaches day-trippers visit as part of one of the “A/B/C/D”-Tours. With only four people on board, we had the advantage of being very flexible and could stay in the same spot for as long as we liked. Our captain, Gary as he introduced himself, his nephew and his son were preparing the meals. We expected only some very basic food and were pleasantly surprised to see freshly cooked rice, chicken adobo, grilled pork chops and eggplants, other vegetables and fresh fruit. The fish eaters (so everyone apart from myself) could indulge in calamari and some unknown whole grilled fish.

We spent the first night on a small secluded beach that was allegedly being used as the filming location for the Dutch version of “survivor” (Dschungelcamp) of few weeks or months ago. Apart from very aggressive mosquitos and one family at the far end of the beach, we were alone and the lone island feeling settled in. Two bottles of Tanduay probably helped too.

In the early morning of the second day one of our fellow backpackers left because of a medical problem (unrelated to the Tanduay and bad tap water from El Nido). The day was a slow start as we had to wait for the boat to come back again. We were grateful for the additional two hours of solid ground before we went off to see more secluded beaches and lagoons. At around lunchtime the bad water/ice from the day before started kicking in and neither Amy nor I could eat anything of the delicious food anymore and we both limped through the day.

Another night, another beach, where met a different group on a one-night camping trip. I was starting to feel better after having some dinner but Amy was still suffering. At least the other people could entertain our fellow remaining backpacker who had an otherwise rather boring day because of our situation.

Coron

From El Nido we moved on to Coron with a Bangka ferry. The town is well known as a base for island and beach hopping tours just as El Nido, but even more so for its famous wreck diving. After checking on options for onward travel, we signed up for three dives the next day.

The wrecks are very easily accessible and penetrations are done even with freshly certified open water divers. The visibility however is terrible and only somewhere between three and five meters, mostly related to pollution from the nearby towns. The stirred up silt from the unexperienced divers (which I am too when it comes to wreck diving) does not help either. We both considered doing our Nitrox certification there to do a second day of diving on the deeper (i.e. up to 40 meters) wrecks, but bailed because of the bad visibility. The visibility can be better, but it depends on the moon phase and tides.

Instead of diving we did an island hopping tour with a couple we met on the dive boat. The operation here is run slightly different than in El Nido: you go to a little office shack at the pier and request a day trip. The harbor master calls a captain over a P/A and you arrange the beaches and snorkel sites to be visited with him. Someone from the captain’s family (son, nephew, etc.) accompanies you to the local market to buy the ingredients for lunch, which are then cooked by the captain on the boat. We opted for the traditional Filipino dish pork adobo as we thought it will be the easiest to buy the ingredients for. The captain’s little son was of no help in getting the necessary things together. We resorted to basic communication with the friendly market vendors instead and got everything we needed.

Compared to El Nido the hopping itself is slightly more complicated as every beach or snorkeling site has its own fees instead of just a general environmental pass. Some of them are however well worth paying for. The Cayangan Lake, which is accessible over a few flights of stairs, has warm, crystal clear water and the views from along the way are postcard perfect.

Sabang, Puerto Galera

A whole day of travelling on another Bangka ferry, two minivans, an overnight stop in Calapan and two Jeepney rides led us to the barangay of Sabang. There are basically two things going on there: old ugly men whoring around with Filipinas and scuba diving. We obviously went for the latter.

We wanted to dive the rather demanding sites around Verde Island. A dive shop right at the beginning of the “strip” was offering a tour there the day after and we thought, great, this is it. Suspicious as we are we went on looking for another operator and found none. However one of the other shops explained to us that they are not running any trips currently because the tides were too high and diving either impossible or not enjoyable at all.

So instead we opted to go to other sites, such as the world famous “Canyons”. However once we were in the water the currents were too strong and we could only do the backup site “Hole in the wall”. The second dive site was Fantasea Reef, a place with lots of sea fans. One particular big one had lots of pygmy seahorses holding on to it – a creature we were trying to find again on every dive since Bali last year.

On the second day our third dive lead us to the Alma Jane Wreck. The wreck is at a depth of about 30m and the big open cargo holds make the penetration easy. The visibility was also relatively good. The dive could have been great if we had gone shallower once we reached the no deco limit and finished the dive at the house reef which was very close by. Instead we ascended directly after only 30 minutes when both of us had more than 120 bar left.

Amy left the dive shop and went to get ready for the Puerto Galera Hash House Harriers run (“A drinking club with a running problem”) while I stayed for a fourth dive in Sabang and last one in the Philippines. West Scarced was easy diving on top of a relatively flat reef with sandy patches in between. After about 40 dives this was the first time I had different buddy than Amy again. A rather stupid, arrogant and only open water certified dude who obviously forgot that a mask needs to be prepared so that it does not build fog. The third guy at least was more experienced but was chasing marine life. After a few minutes the divemaster stopped pointing out things or rather only showed it to me if possible. Near the end of the dive I could observe a triggerfish attack against the third diver. I only wished he had attacked my buddy...

Part Four – The North

After Sabang Amy and I went separate ways. We both had a flight out of the Philippines from Cebu to Singapore. But in order to get from Sabang back to Cebu it would have been necessary to take a ferry for more than 24 hours. This was something I clearly did not want to do. As I still had time left on my visa, I opted to ditch the Cebu flight and visit the north for a couple of days and fly out of Manila instead. Amy did the trip to Cebu and other divers from the Tubbataha liveaboard commented with “I would pay a 1000$ in order to not do that journey”.

The trip from Sabang to Manila with a Bangka ferry and a connecting bus was relatively easy. The bus dropped me of right next to a metro station. From there I could ride a few stops and then walk to the bus station for the overnight bus to Banaue.

Banaue

Banaue and the surrounding villages with their rice terraces is one the top tourist attractions in the Philippines. The views speak for themselves:

[photo]

The prime destination to see are the rice terraces of Batad, a few kilometers east of Banaue. It is however not that easy to get there, at least not for cheap. A guide waiting in the guestroom’s lobby was handing me a map and explained some possible hikes, obviously in the hope that I’d take him along for a rather high fee.

I took my chances and went out to the street to see if I could catch a Jeepney to Batad. And indeed I was very lucky and could jump aboard a privately hired one that was bringing supplies to one of Batads guesthouses. The village of Batad, or rather a few houses distributed amidst the rice terraces, has no road linking to it.

After leaving the jeepney behind, I started the 20 minutes’ walk down from the road to what is considered to be the center of Batad. From there I continued the hike to the Tappiya Falls, a 70m high waterfall. I lost the official way to go there several times and ended up in the middle of narrow pathways in the rice terraces. Luckily the whole area can be overlooked very well and the random local people will happily point out the way. It took me about three hours, including the break at the waterfall, to get from the end of the road to the waterfall and back to the main cluster of houses.

After having lunch I started walking to the village of Bangaan. The path starts behind a guesthouse, is relatively easy to follow and mostly flat. It took me only about 1.5 hours to get back to the main road. From there on it is 14km back to Banaue. As I did not have any transport arranged beforehand, I was prepared to walk the whole way back if necessary. But I was lucky again and could jump into a tricycle that someone else (who even stayed at the same guesthouse than I did) had arranged.

The second day in Banaue I and two other backpackers from the guesthouse did a hike that started directly in Banaue. It lead us through rice terraces (obviously) and the villages of Tam-an, Poitan, Matanglag and Bocos. Compared to other hikes you really need to ask for directions repeatedly to avoid getting lost. The views however are well worth the effort.

Sagada

To get from Banaue to Sagada, one has to take the only jeepney from Banaue to Bontoc and then get another, more frequent one from Bontoc to Sagada. Multiple contradictory information about the time the jeepney leaves from Banaue made me wait for quite a long time until it finally left at around 9:30 am.

Sagada’s attractions are the hanging coffins and some caves. There were five other backpackers on the jeepney from Bontoc to Sagada and we all went to see the hanging coffins in the afternoon. Unfortunately it started raining as soon as we left the tourist office so that the short walk down and the views were not really enjoyable.

On the second day I was able to join two French girls for a guided tour to the Sumaging cave. Later the day I went back to the hanging coffins in Echo Valley on my own and tried to find the entrance to the underground river connection. Failing to do so, I turned around and tried to follow some other path. This was not the best idea as the path I initially follow soon started to fade away and I was lost in a pine forest. Technology to the rescue, I could see on the map that the road leading into Sagada was not far away. I randomly climbed uphill, hit a path, lost it again and finally arrived at a gravel pit next to the road.

Manila

From Sagada I had to go back to Manila to catch my flight to Kuala Lumpur. I took an early morning bus to Bagui and was hoping to catch another one to Manila soon. Unfortunately the bus stations are not close next to each other and I had to queue quite a while to get a ticket for the bus to Manila. My plan to arrive before 9pm to get the metro in Manila instead of a taxi was thus not working out. I stayed the night at the Pink Manila hostel, edited photos and finally took a taxi to the airport.

Bye Philippines, was nice to meet you. I will come back at some point for more scuba diving and visiting the islands east of Cebu and Bohol.