Oct. 10, 2006 - Palawan (Philippines)
More scuba diving!
Ok, this happened too long ago for me to remember all of the details. My divemaster was named Omar though, and we saw king mackerel, a big cuttlefish, and more stingrays. And I ate a sandwich in which one of the filler items was ... a piece of white bread.
Oct. 9, 2006 - Puerto Princesa, Palawan (Philippines)
A bizarro tour of a bizarro town!
The bumpy drive to the Underground River officially cancelled my plans to take a bus up to El Nido for a day (would have involved 12 hours roundtrip of aforementioned bumpiness), so I signed up for a tour of Puerto Princessa instead. We drove up and down the main road in town, and pulled up in front of the Palawan Museum. While Palawan does have archaelogical significance, all of the items of interest have been carted off to the national museum in Manila; what's left is some broken pieces of pottery and china, and some photos that look like they were printed off my home printer, and an extensive, but insignificant shell collection. Bizarro.
Next stop was the "Crocodile Farm," officially, the Palawan Wildlife Conservation Center. The tour of the center starts off at a display case, which houses a huge crocodile skeleton. Pinned on the wall behind the display was a huge crocodile skin, allegedly coming from the same animal. Rather than listen to our guide, who gave an overview of the work of the center, people chose to touch the skin and talk about handbags and shoes instead. Oy.
Then we walked through a large greenhouse-like structure, which housed rows of deep plastic bins, each with a dozen or so baby crocodiles paddling around inside. After they grow to a certain size, they graduate to the outdoor complex - two concrete pits, each with a shallow pool of murky water, and crocodiles piled on top of each other inside.
What happens to the crocodiles after this? I have no idea, because for the next part of the tour, you can pay 5 pisos and have your photo taken with a baby crocodile. And then it's over! Bizarro.
We stopped at a few more places on the city tour - a butterfly garden (basically someone's backyard), a senator's ranch house (yes, someone's private property, bizarro!) - and then finished up at Baker's Hill. It's a bakery/residence/park put together by a family from Manila with a string of successful bakeries, but the park itself is a strange mix of a bakery, concession stands, a booth selling cactii and houseplants, lapdogs in cages, and strangest of all, molded acrylic life-sized figures of knock offs of licensed characters (Bugs Bunny, a 50's style pinup type lady). There was a pirate figure as well, with hat, flowy blouse, stripes, and eyepatch. Another tour group pulled up, and as the people emerged from their bus, I noticed one girl wearing a red and white striped shirt with an asymmetrical hemline that ended in a sash, tied at the waist, big dangly earrings, and black tights. I bit my tongue and quietly watched as she and her friends circled around the park, taking pictures with all of the figures. No one else seemed to notice that she was dressed like a pirate, and apparently, she didn't either. She didn't stop for a photo with the pirate figure. Arr! And bizarro.
Oct. 8, 2006 - Underground River, Palawan (Philippines)
Palawan is also the home of the longest underground river in the world, so I signed up for yet another tour (it worked out cheaper than cobbling together all of the transportation on your own). Getting to the park involves one hour on a paved road, two hours on a primitive dirt road, and then twenty minutes on a banca, which swings you around from one beach to the next, where the boats depart for the caves.
Oh. Mans. The road was so bumpy. I thought that I'd been on bumpy roads before in China, where one hand is firmly pressed into the ceiling to keep you from bouncing up into it, and the other is clenched around your seat, to hold yourself in it. This road, dirt with rocks jutting up and holes everywhere, shook us violently for two hours. The boy sitting behind me actually began to cry, because the road was so bumpy that he physically couldn't play his Gameboy anymore. It's interesting to note that, perhaps due to the time of year, most of the travellers in this area are Philipino themselves. My tour today (and the tour I'd take tomorrow) were comprised entirely of Philipino families.
The river itself was somewhat anticlimatic, though interesting nonetheless. While it runs for 8km, you can only tour about 1.5km of it, so it makes for a quick 45 minutes in-and-out boat ride. The guides seem to be trained in the Disneyland Jungle Cruise school of guides, each posessing a well-oiled set of cheesy and cheeky jokes and one-liners, which really isn't too much of a bad thing. ("Is this everyone's first time to the Underground River? Great. Me too.") Inside the caves, the river runs leisurely through interesting limestone formations, casually dubbed with names like "Holy Family Formation," "Jellyfish Formation," "Eggplant Formation," and "Bacon Formation," which actually do look quite a lot like their monikers. The caves also house a number of bats, which were faintly visible up in the high corners of the caves.
Oct. 7, 2006 - Honda Bay, Palawan (Philippines)
Yesterday I signed up for an "island hopping" tour of Honda Bay, a quiet, relaxed bay of seven islands north of Puerto Princesa. Although I would have enjoyed simply laying in bed and not hearing Evanescence, I was up and out of the hotel by 7:30AM.
We visited three islands, and there was swimming, snorkeling, and general beachcombing at each. I hopped from island to island and ... slept on each one. I wasn't unconcscious all day, I did manage to learn that "Palawan" is pronounced with the emphasis on the middle syllable, Pa-LA-wan, instead of Pa-la-WAN. Apparently, Pa-la-WAN is the name of an indigenous tribe from the island, wheras Pa-LA-wan is the name of the island and provice. Now you know!
I switched hotels as well, the the cheaper and much cuter Casa Linda Inn. Once I got back around 4PM, I showered and flopped into bed. I didn't wake up until 3AM. At which point I looked around and flopped over again. This day could be summarized in one word: tired.
Oct. 6, 2006 - Puerto Princesa, Palawan (Philippines)
I flew to Puerto Princesa, Palawan, in the morning. Rain rain rain. Puerto Princessa claims to be the greenest city in the Philippines, and while it may be true, there's still a good deal of pollution from the tricycles that tear up and down the street. However, there is a lot of signage around the city about conserving awter, reducing pollution, and keeping the city and province "green." Right outside my hotel, there's even a banner hanging up about a marine mammal and turtle rescue training workshop taking place soon.
Speaking of banners, the mayor of Puerto Princesa's name seems to be up on banners all over town. I don't think he put them all up there, but it reminds me of Chicago, how their mayor has his name up on Every. Thing. In. That. Town.
After wandering around town, I returned to my hotel to sleep, only to find that the "empty lot" next to us had been transformed into the "Annual San Miguel Oktoberfest Beer Drinking Context." Filipinos love live music, which is great, but "live music" seems to generally consist of cover bands playing American pop songs from five years ago. To compound things, my stomach became extremely unhappy with my dinner, and I spent the middle of the night getting my money's worth out of my bathroom, as an extremely overwrought cover of Evanescence's "My Immortal" rang out around me. (Then again, isn't all Evanescence, cover or original, a little overwrought?) It's truly amazing, once your stomach decides that it's just not going to try digesting anymore, how quickly, and with what concentrated force, it can get the offending food out of your body.
Fyi, if you want to be careful, don't eat at the second Vietnamese place on the right, north on Rizal Ave. from Badjao Inn.
Oct. 5, 2006 - Manila, Philippines
Turns out Jonas and I had parallel flights back to Manila from Boracay, so we shared a tricycle to the airport and met up with each other in Manila. We walked along Manila Bay (by this time, power was restored and the strip was fully lit), but neither the dinner options nor the omnipresent, pulsing music appealed to Jonas so we turned towards Malate (the neighborhood I was staying in) and had dinner at a Cuban restaurant called Cafe Havana. The food was good, conversation flowed easily, and the dessert menu featured such naming gems as "American Decadence" (the description read "During their time in Cuba, the Americans fattened themselves up on rich chocolate cake like this") and "Banana Republic Crumble" (a flaky pastry with bananas and whipped cream).
Oct. 4, 2006 - Boracay, PhilippinesI finished my Open Water Diver certificiation! I celebrated by...spazzing out by myself on the beach, since I didn't have anyone that I could immediately contact.
Later in the evening, I wandered back by my dive shop, Dive Gurus, to take a picture with my instructor Joon Eun. She was about to have dinner, and one of the shop staff was mixing her a rum and pineapple juice. Apparently rum is cheaper than Coke in Boracay, and rum and pineapple is the common drink. Joon Eun asked if I wanted one, to which I replied "oh, no thanks, that's alright," but which she must have heard as "yes, definitely, right away," because she called out "please make one more!" We chatted over rum and pineapple for the next hour.
