El Nido's rain gave us second thoughts

Friday, 20 July 2012

The beauty of holiday is that you loose track for days and time. Can't believe we've been traveling for a week already and today is Party Hardy Friday. The shame of it all is that both Anders and I are not having a good stomach. Alan seems to be fine though. Anders routine this morning included throwing up his one bite of bfast. After being told many times of taking his pepto, he finally did and started to feel better. He didn't want to take it because Louis told him taking many was dangerous, meanwhile he felt ill the whole time prior.

The morning involved each of us stepping foot out of our room to check out the weather. Although it was not raining, it was cloudy and windy. We agreed that after 7 hours of driviving through bumpy roads and feeling nauseous to get to El Nido, we should try to give this island hopping / snorkeling a go. So Alan reserved a 9am tour for us. We got our act together, had some breakfast and did some body regulating, prior to hopping on top-down (tricycle without a top) into town to find Gemini travel and tours. At this point, I'm also popping the pepto.

We got a bit lost trying to find the tour shack, so Alan called Anna (the lady we met yesterday) for directions. Although Filipinos speak English, it is a different form, and many times our conversations becomes lost in communication. As Alan tried to get directions, she thought we wanted to change hotels. It was chaotic. Eventually the message went through and Willy came to our rescue and walked us 200 meters further to the tour office.

We booked Tour A, the cheapest (700 pesos, $17) and most popular. It covered 5 islands and lunch - Small lagoon, Big lagoon, Shimizu, 7 Commando, Secret Cave. The tour was supposed to start at 10am, but filipino time is also give or take 1-2 hours. We waited in the shack and spoke to Jasmine. She was rather cute and entertaining, extremely happy person. She also tried to teach us some tagalog, but we were not that successful at it. Another thing to mention about Philippines is there are almost always additional charges to what they quote. For instance, we had to pay airport fees of 200 pesos to fly into Palawan, 200 pesos for the environment fee to get to the island, and 250 pesos for environment fee to visit the underwater river.

Around 10:30 we began loading up our bangka. We were sharing the boat with a few other Koreans, Japanese and filipinos. There was one Japanese lady that was extremely conscious of the way she looked and exposure to the sun. She had on a huge hat, long sleeves, and a towel around her legs. When she got in and out of the water, she put on SPF 50 powder that made her face white. When she was on the islands she took her tripod with her to take self portraits everywhere.

The first stop was the small lagoon. It took us 45 mins to get there. Along the way we were splashed by the rough sea, and had to put on our rain jackets. Despite the rough ride, the view of the islands were amazing. We passed by the helicopter island, which literally looked like a helicopter without its blades / propeller.

The lagoon was really amazing, we had to swim through a little opening to get to the lagoon, where the water was nice and calm and the surroundings were surreal huge limestone cliffs. Totally night and day from the open rough water. We snorkelled around the green water hoping to see some fish, but the visibility was not great. We saw some fish, but not tons. At one point Anders got nervous because he couldn't see the the bottom and the tour guide started saying there's crocodiles and sharks there. He stood on the rock a bit, then swam back. The water is extremely warm in the Philippines. Very nice.

We just drove through the big lagoon, similar to the small lagoon's limestone cliffs but bigger lagoon, and then headed to Shimizu Beach for lunch. We were supposed to go snorkelling there, but the water was so rough we decided to give it a miss. I had to dip in there a few time, risking my dear life, to go release myself. I had to make sure Anders was watching me the whole time. Also, I had a life vest on to be safe. During our wait for lunch, we snapped some photos on the beautiful small beach, including some silly ones such as standing on one leg. Alan was pretty crap at balancing himself, but we eventually got a decent photo. The lunch was a grilled snapper, grilled pork, crabs, grilled eggplant and rice. Pretty good for beach lunch. Just as we finished our first serving, it started to pour on us. We found shelter where the grill was located. It was already crowed with all the other tourist from the other boats. The guide from our boat started to feed us watermelons and banana. I took some watermelon and a second helping of fish. Every bit I took, I was worrying about the repercussions of my not 100% stomach. I kept on popping the pepto. The rain lasted for a while and the guide asked if it was ok for us to skip the other two islands and head back. She didn't think the weather was going to get better. We concurred and agreed to go back. Anders felt cheated since he wanted to at least go one more place. Bad luck with the monsoon season.

Back at the hotel we started to think the rain in Philippines is going to last for the duration of our stay. We didn't want to stick around for it. Thus, Plan B needed to be in play. We started to look at the weather forecast for other parts of southeast Asia and concluded the only decent weather place seemed to be Malaysia. Thailand, Borneo, etc seemed to be stuck with the same rain. It took us some time to figure out the flight arrangements, which included us changing our airasia flight from Clark (Manila) to KL. Airasia site is ridiculously difficult to navigate. The slow Internet speed also didn't help the cause. Many times the Internet timed out as we were at the critical moment of booking it. It was rather frustrating. We spent a good four / five hours figuring out our next few days. We had to agree on location and pricing, I was a bit strict on the pricing as I'm conscious of how much we should be spending. I know Malaysia in general will be much more expensive than Philippines. I guess this is all part of the joy of backpacking.

After hotels booked, flights booked / changed, we headed for a last night of dinner at Cadlao Resort. Anders and I shared a seafood curry, while Alan had the chicken teriyaki. The food was good as last night, we even topped it off with some desserts. Anders and I shared a mango madness and alan had a banana crepe. Just before Alan's dessert came he was interrupted by his HR lady at PwC trying to sort out is sabbatical. His dessert looked really good and I wanted a bite of it, but had to wait patiently until he was done with his call. It was very yummy when I had a taste of it.

It's a shame we had to end this trip early. El Nido is definitely a beautiful place. A bit difficult to get to, but well worth the bumpy ride.