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Trust
me, it's Paradise - 17/09/2006
The last
two weeks in Palawan signal the final sector of our trip through
Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines. As with
Sulawesi in Indonesia we had rushed through other places in
order to devote more time to Palawan, the final cherry on the
cake. The ferry connections from Manila, or indeed anywhere
else, were absolutely incompatible with our schedule so for once
we flew, and it was cheaper too. Not even a low-cost carrier,
we flew in style, in a big, gleaming Airbus owned by Philippine
Airlines.
First stop
Puerto Princesa. An unremarkable city, if it can be called
that, ‘overgrown village’ is more accurate. Nevertheless it was
a nice place to start and we ended up on our first night eating
the most delicious meal of the whole trip. An American couple
staying in our guest house had been working as an acrobatic
circus act touring Filipino shopping centres and invited us to
their farewell meal at Kalui’s, which involved a brief
performance as we waited for the food, appreciated by all. The
food was outstanding, a seafood platter which included grilled
fish, tuna steaks, prawns, seaweed, fried aubergine and sizzling
seafood sisig (diced seafood in mayonnaise). We continued the
party at Tom Tom’s a bar with beer on tap (first gold star) and
a music collection that ranged from Ian Brown to Frank Sinatra
to the Dead Kennedys (and in this country of Air Supply and Styx
aficionados that merits two gold stars!). In addition our guest
house also had an amazing collection, I was quite happy to spend
the afternoon relaxing whilst enjoying ‘Hunky Dory’!
Entrance to the Underground
river, Sabang
We left
Puerto the next day, heading on to Sabang and the Underground
River. It is thought to be the longest in the world, stretching
for 8km. We only went about 1.5km inside however. It was
pretty amazing, one of the underrated highlights of the
Philippines. You go through in a small paddle boat and the
entrance is a crack in the cliff wall. It opens out in places
into giant caverns, called cathedrals in this Jesus-loving
country. The cave is home to thousands of bats, their guano
giving off its unmistakable perfume. It truly was like
something from Vernes “Journey to the centre of the Earth”. The
only negative aspect was that the boatman spent the whole time
giving us a guided tour of the various rock formations and
stalactites and stalagmites, along the lines of:
“now we
are in the vegetable garden, there is the carrot, there is the
cucumber and there is the pumpkin, now we are in the cathedral,
here is the Virgin, here is Jesus on the cross…”
As you can
imagine it was rather off-putting, each time he paused for
breath I hoped he would be quiet for a while. Inside the river
the occasional moments of silence were deafening.
The beach
at Sabang was also very nice, the usual white sand and crystal
water but we only spent one night there before heading on to El
Nido in the north.
The reason
why we hurried to get here was because El Nido is truly the
jewel in the crown that is Palawan. The Bacuit archipelago lies
just offshore and one could spend weeks here just touring the
various islands, lagoons, inlets, beaches and caves. We spent
five days in El Nido. One day we took a boat trip to the small
and big lagoons on Miniloc island, followed by lunch on a small
beach and some amazing snorkeling, we finished the day on Seven
Commandoes beach which is actually as impressive as its name
suggest, there is a long strip of perfect beach and just
offshore some corals to explore while snorkeling. It was so
nice in fact that we shared a boat with a honeymooning Israeli
couple and got dropped off there the next day to spend the whole
day there. Another day we explored a different area of the
archipelago. The highlight was snorkeling off of Pangalusian
island where I spotted a big Ray. Although it was just a few
days after the untimely demise of Steve Irwin so I did not want
to get too close! Unfortunately there was a Filipino birthday
party on Pangalusian and you could here the karaoke from under
the water. It is amazing, they had the whole island to
themselves, maybe 200 people, and yet none were on the beach or
in the water, they were all crowded around the concrete stage at
the end of the beach, all listening to the (awful) loud karaoke
and dancing and shouting. They could have been anywhere doing
that, Hainford Village hall would have sufficed, oblivious to
the natural beauty around them! I don’t mean to sound superior
or arrogant, but it did make me chuckle! Later that day we
visited Snake island, so called because there is a sandbank that
stretches out perpendicularly from the shore, the postcards look
amazing but of course the reality is less than spectacular, too
many rocks around and it only really looks good at low tide,
which we were a couple of hours early for. Later on we stopped
on an island that seemed like it was untouched for millennia,
even the shells and corals had a prehistoric look about them!
Big Lagoon, Bacuit archipelago
It is very
easy to see how Alex Garland dreamed up the beach whilst he was
bumming around the Bacuit archipelago, it feels like you are
millions of miles away from civilisation, alone on these islands
and beaches, turquoise water all around and only the occasional
shoal of fish nibbling at your toes for company.
On the
land El Nido was not so exciting. The town itself is nothing
special but fairly quite and relaxed, indeed Palawan lacks any
real city and this is perhaps part of its charm. We did have
one night of drunken debauchery on the beach, being led astray
by an Australian couple who had blown thousands of Aussie
dollars by buying drinks for everyone, everywhere, overwhelmed
by their cheapness!
7 Commandoes Beach, nr El Nido
Heading
back towards Puerto we spent our last few days relaxing in Port
Barton, a small resort village on the west (read ‘other’)
coast. Coming from El Nido we missed the only jeepney to Port
Barton and after the usual wild goose chases around the terminal
in Roxas we decided to hire two motorbikes to ride us there.
They striped down their trikes and soon we were on our way.
After 11km of national highway however the turn-off to Port
Barton appears and from there it is 23km along a horrible,
muddy, dirt track. Really dangerous as well, most off the way
we were slaloming debris from recent storms or having to wade
through the deepest mud puddles. At one point Monika’s driver
lost control and they both ended up underneath the bike, lucky
to escape with only minor cuts and grazes. At Port Barton they
asked for an extra 200 pesos because they did not know the road
was so bad, we gave them an extra 100 pesos and they quickly set
off back towards Roxas, hoping to make it back in one piece
before the giant storm lingering overhead broke.
There are
islands to explore around Port Barton, some around Puerto
Princesa as well, but we decided to spend the time relaxing on
the land. Especially after the second morning when Monika ran
from the sea after only ten minutes swimming, her arm red and
swollen and burning up. She had been stung several times by a
jellyfish. We are used to the usual tiny, microscopic
jellyfish/plankton stings, they last only seconds and are not so
painful, but this was a proper jellyfish attack. In fact her
arm looks as if it will be permanently scarred. The locals just
shrugged, covered it in ground coffee and fresh coconut and told
her it was OK because the really dangerous stings go black as
soon as they are dry. In this situation what can you do but
trust them.
Port Barton
Other than
that, and the motorbike accident, we relaxed in Port Barton. An
ideal opportunity to reflect on the past few months without
having to worry about the next few hours or days.
We
returned to Puerto on Friday. We had planned to celebrate my
birthday at Kalui but unfortunately Lui chose this week to
renovate the restaurant. We ate next door, same style of food,
same style of bamboo furniture décor, amazing presentation but
unfortunately the food looked better than it tasted, it is a
good job I took a photo. Tried to hard to impress us with crab
and clams and mussels, but it all tasted the same and there was
not enough of anything, nevermind. We returned to the Banwa and
spent the rest of the evening drinking San Miguel and enjoying
their music collection.
And back
to Manila. What Joy! It is just not a nice city, it is
incredibly polluted, overcrowded and chaotic. The traffic is
worse than anywhere I have ever been, there are fast food joints
and shopping malls everywhere and a distinct lack of any open
spaces. So what have we done since Saturday morning? We have
been cruising the giant shopping malls. If you can’t beat
‘em….
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